Today we’ll be looking at some negative SEO issues that have come up including how an onlyfan performer may have taken down reddit’s homepage, your IP address in Google results, Meta’s new restrictions on advertising, and the worst practice for handing over a site from one agency to another.
How easy would it be to remove reddit’s home page from Google’s index? Apparently a simple DMCA is all it took. Cyrus Shepard noted on twitter that the main reddit homepage wasn’t ranking #1 anymore and some further investigation looks like a DMCA request was the culprit.
If you read the entire twitter thread, there’s more examples of other people’s sites being taken down from these requests. Looks like we’ve got another negative SEO tactic that we’ll have to add to the list when the site all the sudden disappears from search.
While you are checking out the tweets, also take a look at Cyrus’ company Zyppy and their SEO success factors. Probably one of the better put together lists of ranking factors you should and shouldn’t care about.
https://zyppy.com/seo-success-factors/
We’ve all been there, a staging version or just the straight IP version of the site gets indexed. I didn’t bring this up yesterday as part of the office hours recap as John somewhat touched on this issue, but there was a reddit thread where he put in a lot of effort into the reply and I think it’s important enough to mention. John Mueller said that generally, Google will list a site in its search results with the domain name rather than using an IP address. But if you see both and know your website is crawlable via this protocol then there’s no reason to worry about being deindexed. My opinion is that you should put something in place to not allow for that, even if Google knows they’re the same, it’s just not worth having both versions out there. You should also figure out the root cause to this, which is often part of the deployment process from staging. Also, blocking direct IP access is preferable to reduce the amount of opportunity for something like this.
Starting January 19th, 2022 Meta (You know, Facebook) will no longer allow you to market certain targeting options relating to sensitive topics. A list containing examples for all types of sensitive categories was given
- Health causes (e.g., “Lung cancer awareness”, “World Diabetes Day”, “Chemotherapy”)
- Sexual orientation (e.g., “same-sex marriage” and “LGBT culture”)
- Religious practices and groups (e.g., “Catholic Church” and “Jewish holidays”)
- Political beliefs, social issues, causes, organizations, and figures
I think this is a great move, and I am happy to see this. Having worked in marketing in the medical field, I did sometimes feel like we were able to target a little too accurately and it felt someone intrusive. Little by little, we’re getting less targeted ads, but we’re also safeguarding our privacy. I think the balancing act is a tough one, but this is the right direction. This also is something I think will help balance out the ability to influence a specific group too much, and forces advertisers to broaden their ads to a larger spectrum of people with differing political or social beliefs.
https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2021/12/08/updating-metas-detailed-targeting-options/
Just a fun little reminder of the URL removal tool in Search Console – which is used to temporarily remove a result from the search result pages. Think of it like a filter for results, and you are asking Google to filter the results out that follow a specific pattern. I’ve seen this used in negative ways when handing over a site from one agency to another, it’s a bit hidden but a great way to hide the important parts of a page with nothing else wrong with the site. There’s also, as I recall, no indication when you do a URL inspection in search console that it’s been removed via the tool.
Transcript:
Welcome to the opinionated SEO , or we talk about recent news and updates in the digital marketing world of SEO paid advertising and social media that impact you as a marketer. Also throw in some of my opinion into the mix. Today, we’ll be looking at some negative SEO issues that have come up, including how an only fan performer may have taken down reddit’s homepage, your IP address in Google results, Meta, or Facebook, their new restrictions on advertising and the worst practice for handing a site over from one agency to another.
How easy would it be to remove Reddit’s homepage from Google’s index, if you didn’t have any kind of access to it? Apparently a simple DMCA is all it took Cyrus Shephard noted on Twitter that the main Reddit homepage wasn’t ranking number one anymore. And some further investigation looks like a DMCA request was actually the culprit.
If you read the entire Twitter, There’s more examples of other people’s sites being taken down from these types of requests. It looks like we’ve got another negative SEO tactic that we’ll have to add to the list. When the site, all of a sudden disappears from search while you’re checking out the tweets also take a look at Cyrus’s company Zippy and their SEO success factors.
It’s probably one of the best put together lists of ranking factors you should, and shouldn’t care about links are in the show note.
All right. We’ve all been there. A staging version or just the straight IP version of the site gets indexed alongside you. Our main site. I didn’t bring this up yesterday as part of the office hours recapped on touched on this issue, but there was a Reddit thread also.
And he put a lot of effort into a reply on there. And I think it’s an important enough issue to mention John Mueller said that generally Google will list a site in its search results with the domain name rather than using the IP address of it sees both. But if you do see both and know your website’s crawl level with this protocol, then there’s no reason to worry about it being de-indexed my opinion is that you should put something in place to not allow for that.
Even if Google knows they’re there. It’s just not worth having both versions out there. You should also figure out the root cause to this, which is often part of the deployment process from staging. Get your dev ops involved block the direct IP access is probably the preferable route. It’s going to reduce the amount of opportunity for something like this happening issues with potential duplicate contents of the IP version ranking over your main version, things like that.
You’re also possibly going to have issues in your analytic software, where you’re actually going to be seeing two different host names, things like that. Or if you have that restricted, you may not actually be seeing all of your traffic. So something to look into
Starting January 19. 2022 Metta, you know,the, as Facebook still, but they will no longer allow you to market a certain targeting options related to what they’re considering sensitive topics list containing all the examples are given here in the show notes, but basically health causes. Lung cancer awareness, world, diabetes day, things like that, or sexual orientation, things like LGBT or same-sex marriage, religious practices and groups. You know, Catholic church juice holidays, things like that. Political beliefs, social issues, causes organizations and figure.
I think this is actually a great move. I’m happy to see this having worked in marketing in the medical field. I did sometimes feel like we were able to target just a little too accurately and it felt somewhat intrusive, little by little, we’re getting less targeted ads, but we’re also safeguarding our privacy.
I think the balancing act is a tough one. But this is the right direction is also something I think will help balance out the ability to influence a specific group too much and forces advertisers, or just anyone using the platform to broaden their ads to a larger spectrum of people with different political or social beliefs.
So take a look at Facebook’s developer blog post for some more information.
And just a fun, little reminder of the URL removal tool and search console, which is used to temporarily remove a result from the search result pages. Think of it like a filter for results. You’re asking Google to filter the results out that follow a very specific pattern.
I’ve seen this used in negative ways when one agency who lost their account and was handing it over to another and it’s a bit hidden, but a great way to hide important parts of a site and pages . Where it’s really hard to tell.
Also, as I recall, there’s no indication when you do a URL inspection in search console that has been removed via the tool. So you search and you go, why isn’t it ranking? And it’s because all of these pages were listed in the removal tool. Now it’s temporary. But it really makes it look bad when they handed over.
And this is something that I’ve seen a couple of times done by these agencies who are a little disgruntled that they lost this account. John Mueller has a little bit of a Twitter status update that I’m linking here in the show notes. Take a look at that talks a little bit about the different types of filtering.
Thanks everyone. Have a great day. We’ll see you tomorrow.
