User generated content - manual warning from Google
-
Over the weekend our website received large amounts of spammy comments / user profiles on our forums. This has led to Google giving us a partial manual action until we clear things up. So far we have:
- Cleared up all the spam, banned the offending user accounts, and temporary enabled admin-approval for new sign ups.
We are currently investigating upgrading the forum software to the latest version in order to make the forums less susceptible to this kind of attack. Could anyone let me know whether they think it is the right time for us to submit a reconsideration request to get the manual action removed? Will the temporary actions we have taken be enough to get the ban lifted, or should we wait until the forum software has been updated?
I'd really appreciate any advice, especially if there is anyone here who has experienced this issue themselves
-
Thanks both - I wasn't expecting that answer. I suppose you learn something every day. I have now submitted the reconsideration request so hopefully that will go through fine!
-
Hi,
Since you've fix the issue - you can send the reconsideration request now. Make sure you explain, briefly, what you did and you should be fine.
Cheers.
-
My understanding is that you've now corrected your 'violation' (although you weren't in control of it) and therefore you can submit a reconsideration request. Google is unlikely to decline your reconsideration request based on the fact it might happen again, especially if it's your first warning.
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
-
Defining duplicate content
If you have the same sentences or paragraphs on multiple pages of your website, is this considered duplicate content and will it hurt SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mnapier120 -
What is Google supposed to return when you submit an image URL into Fetch as Google? Is a few lines of readable text followed by lots of unreadable text normal?
I am seeing something like this (Is this normal?): HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Autoboof
Server: nginx
Content-Type: image/jpeg
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
Last-Modified: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 15:23:04 GMT
Cache-Control: max-age=1209600
Expires: Fri, 27 Nov 2015 15:23:55 GMT
X-Request-ID: v-8dd8519e-8a1a-11e5-a595-12313d18b975
X-AH-Environment: prod
Content-Length: 25505
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 15:24:11 GMT
X-Varnish: 863978362 863966195
Age: 16
Via: 1.1 varnish
Connection: keep-alive
X-Cache: HIT
X-Cache-Hits: 1 ����•JFIF••••��;CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v80), quality = 75
��C•••••••••• •
••
••••••••• $.' ",#(7),01444'9=82<.342��C• ••••
•2!!22222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222��•••••v••"••••••��••••••••••••••••
•���•••••••••••••}•••••••!1A••Qa•"q•2���•#B��•R��$3br�
••••%&'()*456789:CDEFGHIJSTUVWXYZcdefghijstuvwxyz���������������������������������������������������������������������������•••••••••••••••••••
•���••••••••••••••w••••••!1••AQ•aq•"2�••B���� #3R�•br�0 -
Stolen website content
Hello, recently we had a lot of content written for our new website. Unfortunately me and my partner have went separate ways, and he has used all my unique content on his own website. All our product descriptions, about us etc, he simply changed the name of the company. He has agreed to take the content down, so that i can now put this content on our new website which is currently being designed. Will google see this as duplicate content as it has been on a website before? Even though the content has been removed from the original website. I was worried as the content is no longer "fresh" so to speak. Can any one help me with this,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alexogilvie0 -
Duplicate content reported on WMT for 301 redirected content
We had to 301 redirect a large number of URL's. Not Google WMT is telling me that we are having tons of duplicate page titles. When I looked into the specific URL's I realized that Google is listing an old URL's and the 301 redirected new URL as the source of the duplicate content. I confirmed the 301 redirect by using a server header tool to check the correct implementation of the 301 redirect from the old to the new URL. Question: Why is Google Webmaster Tool reporting duplicated content for these pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOAccount320 -
Switching from Google Plus Local to Google Plus Business
Greetings, We have a website design firm located in India. We wanted to target customers in our city who are looking for website design locally. And with google plus local and a few content marketing would get us into first page very soon because none in the competition is using social signals or even content marketing. BUT unfortunately from last month even though our Google Places is verified we cant verify our Google Local Plus page https://plus.google.com/b/116513400635428782065/ It just shows error 500. Its a bug and its been a year for people without it being addressed. So we are skeptical if our strategy would work without Google+. At the least we decided we would just make company local page and connect it with website. But it might not have effect as local. So we are still unsure which step to take either to wait for google to fix it.(feedbacks emails calls nothing worked) OR We start the process with Google Business Category.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hard0 -
Joomla duplicate content
My website report says http://www.enigmacrea.com/diseno-grafico-portafolio-publicidad and http://www.enigmacrea.com/diseno-grafico-portafolio-publicidad?limitstart=0 Has the same content so I have duplicate pages the only problem is the ?limitstart=0 How can I fix this? Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kuavicrea0 -
Duplicate content
Is there manual intervention required for a site that has been flagged for duplicate content to get back to its original rankings, once the duplicated content has been removed? Background: Our site recently experienced a significant drop in traffic around the time that a chunk of content from other sites (ie. duplicate) went live. While it was not an exact replica of the pages on other sites, there was quite a bit of overlap. That content has since been removed, but our traffic hasn't improved. What else can we do to improve our ranking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jamesti0 -
Duplicate page Content
There has been over 300 pages on our clients site with duplicate page content. Before we embark on a programming solution to this with canonical tags, our developers are requesting the list of originating sites/links/sources for these odd URLs. How can we find a list of the originating URLs? If you we can provide a list of originating sources, that would be helpful. For example, our the following pages are showing (as a sample) as duplicate content: www.crittenton.com/Video/View.aspx?id=87&VideoID=11 www.crittenton.com/Video/View.aspx?id=87&VideoID=12 www.crittenton.com/Video/View.aspx?id=87&VideoID=15 www.crittenton.com/Video/View.aspx?id=87&VideoID=2 "How did you get all those duplicate urls? I have tried to google the "contact us", "news", "video" pages. I didn't get all those duplicate pages. The page id=87 on the most of the duplicate pages are not supposed to be there. I was wondering how the visitors got to all those duplicate pages. Please advise." Note, the CMS does not create this type of hybrid URLs. We are as curious as you as to where/why/how these are being created. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dlemieux0