Google Shopping Blocking All Vitamins and Natural Products - Glitch or Deliberate Censorship?
-
Hi everyone.
We have a client that manufactures and supplies dietary supplements all around the world. We are slightly concerned that a recent Google shopping glitch (or change) is now seemingly excluding products from the shopping search results.
This currently appears only to be happening in the US but we are really concerned, as our client ships all over the world and the potential loss of revenue could be quite large.
There is already a YouTube video that demonstrates what is going on which is available below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNDyS0tF4dY
Just to clarify, these are products that should not be included in any of Google's “sensitive” categories as they currently stand.
Taking Vitamin B12 as an example, it is recognised as a permissible dietary supplement within pretty much every regulatory framework around the world, including those governed by the US FDA, The Euopean Commission and the Australian TGA. Therefore there would be no legal reasons to prevent it's inclusion in shopping results in any country.
Has this just slipped under the radar or can anyone point us to a resource that may be able to clarify why this has happened?
Thanks in advance guys!
-
Not sure this was a glitch, sounds intentional (imho):
A vitamin vender who claims to have been able to reach a Google AdWords Specialist says he was told to contact Google's legal department at [email protected] for more information. This department could not immediately be reached for comment about the Google Shopping anomaly, but the vender believes the issue stems from the European Union (EU)'s recent ban on vitamins and herbs, and Google's attempt to thwart potential trade sanctions...
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How long does google takes to crawl a single site ?
lately i have been thinking , when a crawler visits an already visited site or indexed site, whats the duration of its scanning?
Algorithm Updates | | Sam09schulz0 -
Does Google like pricing information?
Over the last year I have noticed a trend in a couple of industries. Google seems to prioritise landing pages with pricing information in the content. This seems more important than it used to. One industry is high end industrial machines. Traditionally there isn't a price list as everything is bespoke for the customer. Low end machines that display an off the shelf price are now ranking higher than they used to. This is frustrating because the different machines meet different customer requirements. However, both sorts of customers are likely to use the same search terms. Has anyone else noticed this trend?
Algorithm Updates | | Brighton-Soundsystem0 -
Category Containing a Product searched shows up higher in google then the product page itself?
Hello Moz Wizards, We have recently launched a new eCommerce website www.memoky.com and think we did a pretty good job with the markup structure for feeding the hungry google bot all information available about a the products. However google doesn't like us very much : ( It seems every time you google a product that we carry; the category pages that contain that product will show up, but the product page itself does not. Below are two examples, however this seems to be site-wide which makes me feel like there is an underlying issue that we are missing. Examples
Algorithm Updates | | Memoky
when searched for "Eduardo floor lamp - matt black/matt yellow shade"
Shows ups - http://www.memoky.com/lighting/floor-lamps.html
Does not - http://www.memoky.com/eduardo-floor-lamp-matt-black-matt-yellow-shade.html when searched for "Derrick arm chair - white leather/ walnut"
Shows ups - http://www.memoky.com/living/lounge-chairs.html_
Does not - http://www.memoky.com/derrick-arm-chair-white-leather.html_ that is the pattern for almost all the products on this site. Any thoughts on why this could be the case?0 -
How can I check Googles Page Cache ?
Hi I use to have a handy tool in Firefox (Google Toolbar) that was very handy for checking page ranks and what date a page had been cached. For a while with the newer versions of Firefox I cannot seem to locate this useful tool, Can anybody recommend any useful tools for checking the above. Thanks Adam
Algorithm Updates | | AMG1000 -
Implications of removing all google products from site
Is there any data on the implications of removing everything google from a site; analytics, adsense, webmaster tools, sitemaps, etc. Obviously they still have their search data and they say they dont use these other sources of data for ranking information but has anyone actually tried this or is there any existing data on this?
Algorithm Updates | | jessefriedman0 -
Will signing up for Google Places affect my national rankings
OK, Here is a question which I can't find but think people have thought about. I would like to know others opinion. I have had a site that ranks well under generic national keyword terms. (not geographically specific) Its a small website, only 10 pages. We get 85% of our business from online applications. These applications come from all over the united states.Our SERP rankings generate 70% of all our traffic. My question is this: we operate in a state where we don't do business. We are a virtual business. Should I sign up for google places? Will It hurt my national SERP rankings?
Algorithm Updates | | FidelityOne0 -
Accidently blocked our site for an evening?
Yesterday at about 5pm I switched our site to a new server and accidentally blocked our site from google for the evening. our domain is posnation.com and we are ranked in the top 3 in almost all pos related keywords. When i got in this morning i realized the mistake and went to google web tools and noticed the site was blocked so i went to fetch as google bot and corrected that. Now the message says: Check to see that your robots.txt is working as expected. (Any changes you make to the robots.txt content below will not be saved.)
Algorithm Updates | | POSNation
robots.txt file Downloaded Status
http://www.posnation.com/robots.txt 1 hours ago 200 (Success) When you go to google and type "pos systems" we are still #2 so i assume all is still ok. My question is will this potentially hurt our rankings and should i be worried and is there anything else I can do.0