Google Manual Penalty - Thin Content

[Daniel L]

Hi all,

Has anyone had any experience with "Thin content with little or no added value" manual penalty?

We've a large UK home service site that's been flagged albeit all of the content is 100% unique and the business has spent hundreds of thousands on content.

My questions are -

Is the site recoverable? or are we at a total loss?
Can anyone help recover the site at speed?
Will it ever recover 100%?

The website supports 30 young families and there's massive pressure on me to sort this!

Thank you all,

Daniel

 

[ChromaX]

I obviously disagree with you on just about anything you've said so far. OP website was deindexed because he had location pages, and these pages are perfectly good. People like those pages; they click on them and book through them. Companies that provide services at their client's locations create those pages because they cover these areas. So users and webmasters are happy, but Google is not happy. The truth is this tactic is legit - if you open these same SERPs right now, you will see nothing else but location pages. So did Google fix anything by penalizing OP? Not really - it only ruined his website and a few others, but the tactic is as good as ever. What they are doing with these penalties is "perception management". They want you to be scared to do this, but they are not penalizing every website that does it. They just want to "break the spirits, " so the game goes on. These penalties don't fix anything; quite the opposite, they create incentives to spam.

 

[keyserholiday]

I obviously disagree with you on just about anything you've said so far. OP website was deindexed because he had location pages, and these pages are perfectly good. People like those pages; they click on them and book through them. Companies that provide services at their client's locations create those pages because they cover these areas. So users and webmasters are happy, but Google is not happy. The truth is this tactic is legit - if you open these same SERPs right now, you will see nothing else but location pages. So did Google fix anything by penalizing OP? Not really - it only ruined his website and a few others, but the tactic is as good as ever. What they are doing with these penalties is "perception management". They want you to be scared to do this, but they are not penalizing every website that does it. They just want to "break the spirits, " so the game goes on. These penalties don't fix anything; quite the opposite, they create incentives to spam.

Did you really end this with, "It's Google's fault that we have to spam them?" How are 3000+ location pages around carpet cleaning a value to a searcher? As I hate to assume, I am sure that the OP had; rug cleaning city, carpet cleaning city, upholstery cleaning city, couch cleaning city, etc. That's excess and overkill. I see statements like yours a lot. My competitors are spamming maps with fake business profiles and reviews. Why shouldn't I? SEOs have ruined the internet and continue to do it daily. I will continue to applaud each time a website gets deindexed and receives a manual action.

 

[Fergster]

I just had same penalty on a site that has been going for 3 years without issue using location pages.

Basically a £750k a year business wiped out in the stroke of a pen. Removed the location ages and submitted a reconsideration request. Have few other sites with same setup. One doing a few million year so hoping not same scenario.

Wondering if its the competition reporting the sites to Google. Will wait for the outcome

 

[ChromaX]

"It's too much" - Yeah? Obviously the algorithm does not agree with you, obviously people use these pages to find the service they need, so who are you to say they cant? As long as your company covers these areas creating these pages is perfectly fine. There is nothing fake about it so your Google business analogy just doesnt work.

 

[keyserholiday]

I just had same penalty on a site that has been going for 3 years without issue using location pages.

Basically a £750k a year business wiped out in the stroke of a pen. Removed the location ages and submitted a reconsideration request. Have few other sites with same setup. One doing a few million year so hoping not same scenario.

Wondering if its the competition reporting the sites to Google. Will wait for the outcome

From what I see, this is all Google's doing and not a competitor reporting you.

 

[keyserholiday]

"It's too much" - Yeah? Obviously the algorithm does not agree with you, obviously people use these pages to find the service they need, so who are you to say they cant? As long as your company covers these areas creating these pages is perfectly fine. There is nothing fake about it so your Google business analogy just doesnt work.

First, you said, "... they create incentives to spam." Now you are saying it's not fake. Which is it? I have against location pages, but did the OP need 3000 pages? No, they did not. It's excessive and overkill. You say that these pages are good and that they work. Why couldn't the OP have a city page for Leeds and talk about all of the services that they offer on one page? A mass difference exists between being great at marketing and being a great marketer.

 

[Daniel L]

@keyserholiday - With the upmost respect, the site that you promote on your bio has several "doorway pages" with extremely thin content. You have a list of several states and a duplicate page. Whats the difference? Why would your site not get banned?

The more I think of it, i believe we were targeted either by a competitor or by google. If google switch off our organic then we have no choice to pay for PPC. Google won't ban us if we were paying for PPC everyday!

We only wanted to server more customers in small locations, thats all. Most smaller pages had traffic, and enquires to them too.

 

[keyserholiday]

@keyserholiday - With the upmost respect, the site that you promote on your bio has several "doorway pages" with extremely thin content. You have a list of several states and a duplicate page. Whats the difference? Why would your site not get banned?

The more I think of it, i believe we were targeted either by a competitor or by google. If google switch off our organic then we have no choice to pay for PPC. Google won't ban us if we were paying for PPC everyday!

We only wanted to server more customers in small locations, thats all. Most smaller pages had traffic, and enquires to them too.

My website was penalized and lost rankings at the beginning of 2020. Google had an update where they targeted harmful ORM websites and demoted their rankings. My website is for me only. I use it to vent and write the content that I care about. The difference is that I built a brand, and I have reporters and businesses contact me for help because they heard about me.

 

[Daniel L]

We have 200,000+ customers, over 30,000 reviews and turned over £6 mil plus. It was very much a brand.

 

[keyserholiday]

We have 200,000+ customers, over 30,000 reviews and turned over £6 mil plus. It was very much a brand.

You confuse a brand with revenue. If somebody talks about fake reviews, my name gets mentioned. If somebody talks about Google spam, my name gets mentioned. I am on several forums, and people reach out to me because they see the value I bring with my answers. That's how I built my brand. Joy built her brand by bringing value to local search. My buddy, Craig Mount, built a brand and a community around specialty peanut butter. He doesn't have reviews. He has a fan club and is crushing it.
I do a lot of pro bono work, and I consider it a success when I get a win like this.

 

[ChromaX]

First, you said, "... they create incentives to spam." Now you are saying it's not fake. Which is it? I have against location pages, but did the OP need 3000 pages? No, they did not. It's excessive and overkill. You say that these pages are good and that they work. Why couldn't the OP have a city page for Leeds and talk about all of the services that they offer on one page? A mass difference exists between being great at marketing and being a great marketer.

I dont know why you keep trying to misrepresent what I've said but that doesnt work either. The incentive to spam I am talking about happens because people want to diversify and build multiple properties to mitigate the risk of penalty.

Everything you've said so far is arbitrary. OP covers these 3000 areas, there are searches for these areas so he builds pages for them - there is nothing more to it. There are ways to rank a page for multiple locations but you cant rank a page for so many terms.