rbacal - 4:15 am on Nov 14, 2006 (gmt 0)

For many webmasters, with lot of brand equity, starting from scratch is Not an option. Just make the changes Google recommends and wait a while.. It worked for me.. I really had no choice, except to wait and keep looking for new sources of traffic..

Good previous post btw. What I was referring to was, let's say a person who has good tech skills, sets up an affiliate site using feeds, etc, and has been making good money this way by bidding low on adwords, and doing well in the affiliate area.

THAT person sees his site as "quality", but that's NOT what google thinks is quality (and many surfers would agree). So google shuts off the cheap traffic, and the site itself is so weak that it can't generate "natural" traffic.

For someone who really has no content of value seperate from all other sites using the same content, all the adding privacy notices isn't going to be enough.

I 100% AGREE that if you follow the google advice, make an effort to understand the POINT of all this, and stop trying to make a buck with no other expertise except that you can buy a domain and set up a site, that the chances for success are good.

But for those who have 10,000 pages of affiliate feed dumps and nothing else, they don't have anything much to work with. They didn't create any permanent value before, and they don't have any now.

PS. There are a LOT of people (and I'll bet you are or will be one) that are making this all work. Some have offered suggestions (as you have) about how to make it work, but those suggestions often get dumped on by people who are simply not willing to recognize their clone sites were not so great before, and aren't adding value.

I think it would be just great if there could be a thread here that takes off from your post with suggestions, but every time the topic gets discussed, the threads get hijacked. A lot of people who ARE doing ok with QS simply aren't bothering to share what they've learned .