Organic Search in Google - Does it mean anything?

[mr_lumpy]

I run a hobby / collector site, along with around 10-15 volunteers (writers, photographers, archivists). Our collective experience spans decades, and we are an authority on all things to do with our hobby (think collectible action figures of a particular sort which I'll call widgets). Companies send us merchandise samples, volunteers write articles, users publish their collections online – we are a busy site with an active message board with over 1500 users. People are generally honored when we put their submission on the site. Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista all rank us fairly (read: highly). Our site uses no tricks or funny techniques to increase our search engine ranking.

If "organic" search is the Google goal, why on earth does G rank our site so lowly - especially when it used to put us near the top of the list? We have meticulously cataloged (over years!) every type of product in our hobby. Our pages are so "on-target" it is astounding. Yet spammy and useless results are at the top of Google's result pages, and we're buried.

I noticed recently if you looked up, say "widget piggy bank" (we have thousands of collectibles for the hobby), OUR page wasn't present, but some sort of spam MP3 site had our text in the snippet. I believe this is scraping? Has this killed our results in Google?

If scraping or other malicious techniques kill Google rankings, why is there no way to click a flag that says "XYZ site is known and good"? You simply cannot find a more authoritative site on the web than ours for our hobby, and it is frankly maddening that our ranking is so low.

I know "organic search" is the goal of Google. But if there are "bad actors" out there scraping sites and destroying their ranking, there simply must be a reset button to press, or person to contact to set things right.

[mr_lumpy]

Hello again.

So it has been suggested to me that I should send out DMCA notices and removal requests for every URL that has been "scraped".

Although I appreciate the advice, there is no way I can locate all of these scraped pages.

Why is there no "submit to google that this site has been scraped" option? I can't understand why the problem is not even acknowledged. If organic search is real, why aren't the real problems addressed?

[Hissingsid]

If scraping or other malicious techniques kill Google rankings, why is there no way to click a flag that says "XYZ site is known and good"? You simply cannot find a more authoritative site on the web than ours for our hobby, and it is frankly maddening that our ranking is so low.

Google is so preoccupied with fighting spam and in so being is destroying its own search quality and real top qulaity sites like yours.

They forget that every action that they take has many unpredicatable knock on effects. And the worst thing is that the main cause of the Spam that they are over reacting to is Google's own Ad(non)sense.

Sid

[followgreg]

I'm not sure how reliable current Google SERP's are. I think that it is about to move again very soon, they are working on it...actually they never really stopped. But I hear you, currently there are some funny sites popping up.

[Steph_R]

"So it has been suggested to me that I should send out DMCA notices and removal requests for every URL that has been "scraped".

Although I appreciate the advice, there is no way I can locate all of these scraped pages."

mr_lumpy, I use CopyScape to find sites that copy my content. It saves me a lot of time in finding scrapers.

I usually find about 8 per week that have lifted my valuable content. I send them DMCA letters and if they don't reply, I send the complaint to their web host. It is very time consuming, but I refuse to let people copy the content that I work so hard on.

[mr_lumpy]

Thanks for taking the time to answer me Hissingsid, followgreg and Steph_R.

Steph_R, I will look into Copyscape. This scraping business is so...horrible...it is such a low thing to do.

Thanks again,

mr_lumpy