Can Google News Cause a Drop

google news

[c41lum]

Back in December 2006 we were lucky enough to be listed as a news feed on Google. Sounds great more coverage for the site. I know what your think "what the hell has this guy got to winge about". Well when we post a news article on our site Google pick up on it and then very thin affiliates and scrapper sites copy this news snippet into there sites and then sometimes link back to our site to read the full story.

My point is, are these sites damaging my ranking because since December we have lost 70% of all of our G traffic. Has any body else noticed a drop when being accepted to G news.

[errorsamac]

It's possible your site was hit with the -950 penalty for getting too many links at once.

[walkman]

I could see this happening, especially if you didn't have many solid links before that happened. Of course this could be just a coincidence too.

[c41lum]

Thanks for the replies,

We have gained quite a lot of links but from low quality sites that just scrape Google for new content. Why dosen't Google have something in place to stop these sites. Google says that no other site can effect your ranking but it seems quite clear that G News is effect my ranking by letting these dodgy site copy snipets and then link to me.

[avalanche101]

Hi c41lum
I'm a bit confused by this:
"..but it seems quite clear that G News is effect my ranking by letting these dodgy site copy snipets and then link to me. "

Surely all those extra links to your site should give you a boost in the rankings and a PR boost?

If you enter one of those snipets as a google search does your site come top for the search?

[c41lum]

Hi avalanche101,

If you search for a snippet in Googel the sites that use our content come well before we do.

[Illah]

The same happened to me this time last year (though not due to G News) and it's a real pain in the butt! The good news is after a few months all was back to normal...if not even better. It just takes them a minute to figure out what's what.

--Illah

[SEOold]

My site is in Google news and this did not happen when we were added. Like the others mentioned above it can be a few things but it seems like if you did not have good quality links to begin with, these scraper sites could have hurt the site. Also go back to some other changes that you may have done during that time period.