We Have Been De-googled | Hacker News Reader

We Have Been De-googled

studiobriefing.net

127 pointsacangiano79 comments

All of the articles I've seen thus far on studiobriefing.net are scraped verbatim from another source, assumedly celebrifi.com. This is against Google's terms of service, and this activity is likely to result in a ban. Instead of whining about how Google is persecuting an innocent website, these guys should have an honest discussion among themselves about what they are trying to do with the website and why their activities might have pissed off Google. Or they should hire competent in-house SEO help. For a 2k monthly retainer, I might be available, as long as I can telecommute (I don't want to move to SoCal).

There's usually a reason for Google bans. It's best to address this reason directly and honestly instead of stirring up drama. If the entirety of HN became consumed with righteous indignation, Google still wouldn't reinclude a low-value affiliate spam scraper site.

I agree, but the complete lack of transparency on Google's part is still disturbing. I understand that customer service isn't Google's strong spot and that there may even be valid reasons for being a bit opaque when combating black hat SEO, but there's no excuse for not telling you what you're alleged to have done in the termination email.

And there needs to be a better appeals process than the current system of "find someone who works at Google to escalate your issue for you."

OK, quick: Everyone who, upon installing a new piece of software, reads EVERY LAST SENTENCE of the terms of use and prints out the terms for future reference before hitting "install", raise your hand.

As a separate issue from the quality (or more precisely, lack thereof) of studiobriefing.net's content, I do think it's reasonable for studiobriefing.net to want to know what, exactly, they have done that is against the terms of service. Yes, you are in theory supposed to pay close attention to all of the terms of service, understand completely how your web site complies with said obligations, etc. But in practice, people don't always know what the problem is, or understand the legal and/or technical issues involved.

So even if Google is 100% justified in cutting off studiobriefing.net, I think that as a matter of courtesy, Google should be willing to state specifically what studiobriefing.net did to get cut off, i.e. the enumerated paragraph/sentence in the terms of service that governs the issue.

Of course, that is assuming that the studiobriefing.net account is an accurate report of the communications from Google.

If the software is important to you, because, for example, your livelihood depends on it, then yes, I recommend reading the EULA closely :) IMO the same applies to running a business that is reliant to a significant degree on traffic from search engines. Failing to at least achieve basic familiarity with what Google does and doesn't like is equivalent to neglecting vital market research before undertaking any other business venture.

Well here's a place to start reading: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en...

This page on duplicate content might be appropriate: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answe...

In general, if your site does not present any original content then don't be surprised if it's delisted by any of the search engines. Also don't be surprised if the original source sends your ISP a take-down notice for copyright violations.

Yes.

Is the title perhaps vague or misleading? studiobriefing.net appears to have been delisted, not IMDB itself.

Saying 'we', given the domain, kind of implies IMDB - I appreciate it's a quote, but it's out of context.

Did the title get edited or something? It seemed absolutely clear to me, and I don't even see IMDB mentioned anywhere?

Yes, the domain was originally imdb.com.

Which begs the question as to why this is on imdb at all? Is imdb syndicating their "film news"?

Raises the question. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question#Modern_usa...)

Though I guess I should give up at this point.

Never give up.

Never surrender!

http://begthequestion.info/

That site, and implicitly, your post, are negligent of the fact that things with precise formal meanings often creep into the realm of being figures of speech. When someone says, "It doesn't follow that..." they don't mean, "there exists no proof which verifies A -> B" they mean, "that doesn't make sense".

There is certainly a place for precise terminology, but it's not necessary in casual conversation.

Your example and "begs the question" are different cases. In your example, when people say "it doesn't follow that" they mean one can't draw the following conclusion from what has been said. That's the same meaning as in the technical sense. The only difference is that in a technical context, there's a whole lot more evidence backing up the statement. It's a difference of degrees, not fundamental meaning.

On the other hand, "begs the question" is a logical fallacy in the technical sense; it means someone has assumed what they were trying to prove. It has no relationship with "raises the question." They're not trying to say the same thing.

It's easier to change what the minority thinks it means than what the majority thinks it means.

True, though some people firmly believe that the dictionary has the "right" definition and other definitions are "wrong."

Others (like myself) believe that the dictionary is just a catalog of how people actually use words and that if there's a disconnect, it's because the dictionary is out of date.

No it's not. The majority arrived at its conclusion by coincidence. The minority arrived at its conclusion by research and thinking. It is much easier to convince the majority, as the minority is not going to be receptive to your argument.

I prefer to avoid using the phrase entirely. Can we deprecate parts of language? That seems like the easiest solution.

AKA "I'd rather be popular than be right"

Maybe just raising awareness

I had the same sort of thing happen to my blog. Google refused to show my ads due to 'landing page or ad quality' but I couldn't ever determine what the problem was or get anyone to review the site after that.

If Google has an achilles heel it's definitely lack of customer service.

Same with my blog. It appears on search, but one day they decided something fishy was going on with the ads and simply terminated the service. The automated e-mail said I could appeal and the appeal resulted in a "yes, it pretty much was something fishy" automated message. No further information, just silence and a warning that they would ignore messages about this subject from that point on.

AdSense needs competition. Badly.

I don't know if this helps, but a search for adsense competition (on google no less) brought up the following:

http://www.associateprograms.com/articles/208/1/Adsense-Comp...

Which has a list of different things like adsense you could use. Out of curiousity, is there any reason why you can't switch to using these companies for advertisement? I can see how google has a complete monopoly on ad-words, but surely adsense is a free market.

They don't pay nearly as well, from what I've heard.

Google is not required to provide customer service. If "SEO" is important to you, I recommend rereading Google's terms of service and landing page quality guidelines. Google Webmaster Tools is the best way to get feedback on your particular site, though I don't recommend using it on every site in your network.

Yeah, I'll just take my business elsewhere... oh wait.

Since we're focused on Google, logically the best strategic decision is to accept that you can't change the terrain on the battlefield, and adapt your strategy accordingly.

Or follow the rules of the agreement in good faith, which appears to be challenge for some folks.

Can someone fix this link to point to the actual page:

http://www.studiobriefing.net/studiobriefing.net/FILM_NEWS/E...

If it's so annoying that Hacker News won't link to it, why should we be surprised that Google won't?

I'm guessing that they used the link to imdb because it's copyable text, whereas on the studiobriefing.net site the post is actually a PNG file. That's the sort of thing that makes think they deserved to get kicked out of the index.

They have another post at http://www.studiobriefing.net/studiobriefing.net/TV_News/Ent... where the text is copyable. I wonder if someone made a PNG of this page and reposted it at the other link.

Have they checked website optimizer? Google isn't a call me and let's talk about it company. It has very efficient and streamlined tools to help people figure out what is wrong.

There's a good chance there is an indexing problem that could easily be rectified if they just check webmaster tools.

(PS. Ditto on the misleading URL)

I can't comment on "efficient" or "streamlined" but I would echo this recommendation to at least create a Google Webmaster Tools account before complaining to the Internet at large.

If Google won't let them open any new accounts, CAN they still open a Google Webmaster Tools account?

Consultants sometimes provide a Google Webmaster Tools verification file to the site owner in question. Once the site owner uploads this to the site's root directory, the consultant will be able to access Google Webmaster Tools data on the site through their own Google account. However I've never tried this with a banned site- It is certainly possible that Google will see the domain name and refuse to show any data. Also if the site has been banned for a period of time which is longer than Google's expiration date for stored data (I forget what the time increment is... 1yr? 6 mo.s?) there might be no data to speak of. This is still ok; assuming Google makes GWT available to banned sites, all we would be looking for is a reasonable description of the problem above and beyond "we banned you for some cryptic reason".

Looks like a garbage site updated every couple days with entertainment rubbish. And it has an auto-play video ad. Gosh, what a shame.

Deleted comment

It isn't IMDB that has been "de-googled". It is StudioBriefing.net

Not IMDB.

Rather, that is for a web site with vast quantities of graphic ads surrounding a very small box of celebrity-focused text content.

If it's not a landing-page advertising web site, then the site in question is certainly constructed very much like one.

And based on a very quick look, the text of the article on getting banned by Google (which is reposted on IMDB) is vastly larger than the text on the other web pages sampled.

This isn't about IMDB, it's about Studio Briefing. And regardless of whether you consider it garbage or not, it might have had value to other people - which is why they were using it, I suppose - and it appears Google has been unreasonable in taking it off the index / shutting down the ads. Either that, or we're just hearing one side of the story.

"Either that, or we're just hearing one side of the story."

And likely that's all we'll ever hear.

Ads are bad enough, but to be de-indexed, with no way to know why or how to fix it is scary from a business point of view. It could, and does, happen to anyone.

yeah no worries

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site:imdb.com&a...

shows 50mm 600k imdb.com webpages indexed / its their spam blog that did it / It immediately fired away with a audio ad that auto plays :(

good riddance.

Studio Brief had a much more prominent place on IMDB in the news section. It consists on little snippets of news about the entertainment industry.

For an example entry: http://www.studiobriefing.net/studiobriefing.net/FILM_NEWS/E...

The page has a title, selectable text article, ad column to right, and user comments. It is much like a digg page (heavier on article, less clutter).

The only real thing I see wrong with the page is the empty title tag. I wonder if this set off some issues. It certainly makes it hard to have multiple pages in tabs.

The page looks completely empty to me without JavaScript, except for some small parts of the navigation. That might be an additional point.

Move along, nothing to see. Flagged this, as it's non-news... "crappy spammy-looking site gets delisted from Google". The only notable aspect of this is that somehow IMDb is syndicating this trash.

It's of interest to me mostly because of all the people here rushing to defend a spam site.

Its ridiculous to assume that a popular newsletter and site which had been running for 15 years would be "left with no alternative but to shut down" because one search engine won't index their content. I don't buy that for a second. Does ALL their traffic comes from organic search?

Also, as someone else pointed out this company's meta tag structure is awful. They've clearly invested no time in trying to optimize their site for search engines.

This is a ploy to get media attention. Why am I contributing to the probelm?

I have read that Google is more and more explicitly ignoring meta tags (with the exception of description). It makes perfect sense. You can game the meta tags, but you can't game real content as easily. What's the point if your content sucks?

This seems really similar to the recent posting about Craigslist shutting off someones yahoo pipes based proto-business. CL and Google seem to be trying to prevent what I would call parasitical bottom feeding businesses from leveraging their service. And these said businesses are whining about it.

So, well, good riddance -- when I search for "Courtney Love," the last thing I want is to have a stupid re-aggregator like studiobriefing.net...

I guess people just vote this up without actually reading it or realizing that the post is just being syndicated on imdb.com from studiobriefing.net (the site that has been de-googled).

I also think de-googled implies that they were removed from the index when in fact they were simple kicked out of the adsense program. My bet would be for running too many ads or for clicking on their own ads.

No, they claim google is no longer indexing their site: "Not only did Google delete the Adsense advertisements appearing on the blog, but it diverted its spider from the site as well. As a result, StudioBriefing.net ceased being cited in Google search results."

I'm not surprised they got kicked out as "... we were encouraged by a few industry warhorses to launch a unique blog that would link the items in our daily digest directly ..." sounds suspiciously like something that looks like a link farm to an alogorithm.

The original article is one giant PNG file (i.e. no actual plain text), so perhaps Google's bots don't see much content on the site. It's rather amazing that the site owners do this and yet claim to be mystified by Google's actions -- really?

The site seems to be pretty high-profile, and I seriously doubt they are "mystified." Looks to me like they're trying to drum up support and/or attention, and this post making it to #1 of HN indicates that their strategy may be working.

Caution, monopoly at work.

Every time I see both a complaint about Google's ad policies and learn any facts about the case beyond whiny blog posts, it somehow turns out that the complainer broke the rules of the agreement - and often quite flagrantly.

This case certainly doesn't break the trend.

As a web-geek, am I supposed to feel bad that someone failed to game the system?

Strongly agree with this comment. The "wounded indignation" tone is very familiar to me, as the online SEO community is full of these stories which don't seem to go anywhere and which hamper real discussion. Reminds me of alcoholics who are deep in denial - "I don't have a problem, you should have ducked when I threw that TV at you!"

Before Latin American countries privatized their telecom companies, it would often take weeks or even months to get a new phone line. Despite being owned by the government and not operated to generate a profit, a monopoly service resulted in extremely poor service.

I think it's a good comparison to Google. The big G can say "We're not being evil!" all it wants. But the fact is that it has a near monopoly on search engine advertising which allows it to treat its advertisers awfully. Imagine a radio station randomly pulling ads without a proper explanation. What would happen? The radio station next door would get the ad dollars.

Try calling Google Adwords phone support (trust me it exists, my friend works there.) You won't find the number listed on their site. I googled and found it on some obscure forum. I was answered with a teleprompt, asking me for my adwords customer number. I'm not a high roller (couple hundred bucks a month) so after the system identifed me it dropped my call. I had to use their crappy email system, where I was answered by a cut-and-paste response that didn't answer my question.

I've had no trouble reaching Yahoo and MSN's search engine marketing groups by phone.

Completely misleading comparison...

Radio, Newspapers and Television were traditional media monopolies which limited the number of advertisers and limited the overall range of opinions and content that became available. They still exist, in fact, and if Google rejects your ads or content, you can take it to them - except they really are still quite a bit more limited than what you put on the Internet.

Google is the opposite of a traditional monopoly. It uses automated filtering of content in order to charge the lowest rates and offer high rates to its users and high profits to itself. The fact that Yahoo and MSN provide "good customer service" proves that it's available - it just isn't profitable.

Indeed, today's ultra-competitive world is going to force people to deal with automated systems rather having other people help them. Google is just one part of this world. It can be a pain to deal with but this is very different kind of pain than the pain of a monopoly.

There are plenty of things that are a pain about Google but monopoly isn't a label you can pin on it.

It's certainly not a monopoly by choice. I think the Google big heads know how much they can get shot at if they become a monopoly.

It just so happens that everyone else is really really shitty.

Google is not a monopoly. You can go elsewhere for your ads, email, and search. If Google starts sucking even a little bit, other people will do the same, and Google's market influence will decrease even further.

From a consumer's point of view, yes, that's true. It's easy to switch to a different email provider or a different search engine.

From an advertiser's point of view, that is just not the case. Advertisers are forced to use Google, because that's what an overwhelming majority of consumers use. The alternative is to be crushed by your competition.

It's interesting to me that so many of Google's paying customers complain about them, and so many of their non-paying customers love them. Isn't that backwards?

Most advertisers don't need to reach everybody. Most can't afford to even reach their entire target market. Are you referring to an advertiser who needs to get ads to every single searcher? Or are you saying that despite any abuses, Google ads are still the best deal around?

This is an interesting HN thread to watch, because you can see waves of (automated?) anti-Google votes roll through the thread. The article is sitting at #1 despite being terrible for a number of reasons already pointed out here. If this isn't indicative that we now need better quality control, I don't know what is.

edit: yay, it's dead. Maybe I should take back this comment :]

I'm not surprised, and I'm glad Google has cut them off.

Every article I checked on studiobriefing.net appeared to be a direct, word-for-word copy of an article also found on contactmusic.com. This is easy to verify just by cutting and pasting sentences from the articles into Google.

Google is extremely vigilant against such blatant content duplication + ad spam, and for good reason: it muddies search results, dilutes advertising value, and really pisses of the original content provider.

Will any of us miss this parasitic, ad-ridden web site?

Can you verify that studiobriefing.com is copying contactmusic.com's content and not the other way round?

I don't have a vested interest either way, but I would be interested to know what your method is for proving that one site is copying the other instead of vice-versa...

Why is this at the top ? Its not IMDB thats been de-googled , its studiobriefing.net - which looks like a Spam site.

All in all this affair is fishy.

However, it's not the first time we hear from google cancelling adsense accounts and cut all communication. I know it's the user's responsibility to make sure his stuff is clean, but most the time the user has no f*ing clue what stuff he did/does wrong.

Perhaps instead of jumping on the de-Google bandwagon, they should jump on the website-design-that-works-in-all-browsers bandwagon so they don't steer readers away due to their blatant incompetence.

http://imgur.com/L7v8L

Opening studiobriefing.net was like watching time lapse photography of some butt-ugly flower blooming.

God knows what they did.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - nevertheless, there is always a cause and effect. Admittedly, in complicated systems it can be hard to find either.

With potentially the worst meta title tag of all time "" on all news pages...they had no chance of been indexed.

Fix this and the URL structure - back in the game (dont know if that is positive for anyone though - couldn't see any value in the posts).

Probably, someone with money contacted Google and asked them to do it. StudioBriefing did news articles about the entertainment industry, so it probably had pissed off some company or other high-rolling entity.

What is "probable" about that theory?

It's "probable" in his mind because it's his theory.

My heart bleeds. If you've ever tried to remove or alter one's personal information in IMDB (I am aware that this article references a blog operated by IMDB rather than the IMDB itself), all you get is a boilerplate non-response, even as a paid subscriber to the pro version. A company which declines to allow its users any control over the privacy of their information has no business whining about being fobbed off by Google.

The blog isn't run by IMDB, it's just syndicated there along with dozens of other news sources (including tvguide.com, People Magazine, and Huffinton Post): http://www.imdb.com/news/

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