Since this article was published, Google has removed the offending “made for adsense” site that showed Google does include and rank sites of low quality. Google has also removed the hyphenated parsing exploit domain which was noted at GoDaddy’s parked page warehouse.

So we know Google is actively monitoring and correcting what it decides makes for bad public perception. Selectively.

The core problem remains, however, in that certain sites are excluded sans explanation, despite obvious awareness of that fact. Does that confirm intent? Confirm that Google deliberately denies access to certain sites based not on “technical factors” but rather censorship?

d-i-a-m-o-n-d-s-d-i-r-e-c-t.com, a parked page at GoDaddy!

When a blog gets “popular”, the blogger is faced with a quandary. Continue to do what has made the blog popular, or recognize that there is now audience expectation, and accommodate it?…

John…very nice article.

Peace!
Dan

One good link establishing a local address and prehaps some words on the homepage would certainly help. Some good tips there ;-)

(*I am only talking about indexing ranking the site on it’s keyword(s), not the subpages) Ignore the site and address the basics.

John replies: Ben, I hear what you’re saying, but I think we have different meanings for the word “SEO” in this case. Yes, search engine optimization can be considered a factor for inclusion, as you say (because search optimization starts with inclusion… of course), but I was referring to the ranking factors normally known as SEO factors. So yes, SEO can solve the inclusion problem (by doing what it takes to not be a parked page and to be included) but the barrier to inclusion in this case is not normal SEO factors - it’s Google’s specific intent to block “parked” pages from being included. That said, the question really is, how long can they hold that position as parked pages get more “normal”? Again, I don’t mean “normal” from an SEO perspective, but normal as in “they are still obviously owned by domain parkers, but they are very much like regular web pages”.

If the site is only a few months old, it definitely still doesn’t have enough quality backlinks to rank for anything in Google — even its own name. Yahoo shows only 7 links to the homepage, and none of them are very compelling.

I could definitely see Google automatically penalizing a site that clearly is just a Yahoo shopping feed as well — rightly or wrongly.

There are also a number of very basic SEO things that need to be done to the site. First, every page has the exact same title tag and meta description. That’s a clear indicator of generated content, or at least a site that doesn’t know how to use those tags. Second, some of the pages have hundreds of markup validation errors. This may or may not cause problems, but when you couple it with 1,230 lines of debug code before you ever get to the actual start of the HTML, it can’t be helping.

The site looks outstanding, though, and functions extraordinarily well, so I’d be really interested to see how it ranks once these problems are cleaned up and the site gets some age and backlinks behind it.

John replies: Shane, you make good points w/r to seo, but let’s not forget that SEO is not a necessary condition for inclusion. Validation and non-unique title tags for example have nothing to do with inclusion. For now, let’s not look to this page as an example of SEO (because it is not) but rather an example of a real site that for some reason is not included in the index (I assume you did not suggest that lack of SEO could be responsible for lack of inclusion).

You said it shouldn’t rank based on youth, but I am noting it is not even listed in the index. If you want to make a case for youth correlating with non-inclusion, I would argue with you unless there is a current hold on index updates (I haven’t looked this month, but it has happened). Absent some unusual barrier to inclusion like that, this site should be at least listed in the index.

I’d love to see Google confirm that a site built around a Yahoo! shopping feed is a candidate for non-inclusion. Again, I have no evidence to suggest that, especially because this is not in travel or any of the niche markets Google itself is monetizing. As for quality as a “thin” affiliate site, that was my point. Where does one draw the line? Is every affiliate of BlueNile jewelry a candidate for non-inclusion? I doubt that is the case, either.