Google penalty because of using an XML feed?

[fahad direct]

My e-commerce site is built on XML feed which i am getting on daily basis from my provider against all of his products including updated prices and product contents. My pages look and feel is different with lot of other stuff which my provider doesn't have but still i am using his product description by adding one paragraph in begining and one in the end.

I have more than 1 million indexed products though Google is indexing my pages very fastly and i am not having any Google issue report in webmaster tool but organic traffic i am getting is just 70 to 100 hits.

Am i penalizing by Google due to duplicated contents?

[tedster]

How many words are in the feed's description for the average item, and how many total words in the average page's content area? It seems unlikely that your situation is a duplicate content "penalty" (or really, a thin content penalty) if there is a significant amount of unique text on each page.

However, if many other sites are offering the same items from the same provider, then your site needs to offer something quite unique and compelling compared to the competition - at least if you hope to be one of the results Google would offer for the main product keywords.

You can't do well in search traffic today if you are "just another website offering the same list of products" that many others also offer.

[jimbeetle]

A really basic question: How old is the site? Are the "70 to 100 hits" down from some higher number in the past, or is it a fairly new site?

[johnhh]

Do you offer the products on Google Shopping ?

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

70 to 100 is par for sites that Google doesn't think are particularly authoritative. basically every site with 100 or more pages will get this as a minimum, assuming non-copied content. Your sites problem may be lack of backlinks from related sites and/or lack of interaction by visitors Google deems interested in your subject.

Google's been profiling people and so you must now figure out how to attract people who SHOULD be interested in your site.

[fahad direct]

Thanks for all replies.

There are about 100 words in the feed's description for the average item. In the contents area there are self written 5 to 10 unique bullet points regarding product features.

"70 to 100 hits" down from some higher number in the past, or is it a fairly new site

It is 2 years old site and it happened twice that traffic went down from 300+ organic Google hits to 70 a day.

Do you offer the products on Google Shopping

No, i am not offering.

[Shaddows]

I have more than 1 million indexed products

How long did it take to write "5 to 10 unique bullet points" for each product? Are they really unique, or do they use a set format, with a particular variable pulled from the features that are included in the feed?

1 hit per 10000 pages per day is indicitive of a site Google doesn't deem in any way valuable. What features or signals are you focussing on to change this?

[fahad direct]

Bullets are as (Field name : value) where as Field name is purely written by us and 100% unique and value is from feed like Television Screen Size : 40 Inches

[aakk9999]

i am using his product description by adding one paragraph in begining and one in the end

self written 5 to 10 unique bullet points

So it is not really a paragraph you are adding, instead it is a set of bullets.

And the same set of bullets would be repeated on many product pages, so the would not be so unique? I mean many TV products would have the same/similar set of bullets,e.g.

Television Screen Size : nn Inches

I think it is likely that you are suffering from duplicate (and perhaps also thin) content.

[tedster]

Agreed - and that's "thin content" in the original meaning of the word that Google applied directly to sites that reproduce the same feed that many other sites also use.

[martinacastro]

@fahad direct

which kind of penalty you have? Minus 50?

[fahad direct]

My competitors who are also using XML feeds having duplicated contents still coming on top against top keywords. Is it because they have high profile of backlinks?

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Product feeds, especially from big brands, are poison to your site. To overcome the problem you need to have a good amount of backlinks and real users. Expect to need to pay for traffic at first if you use product feed text. Number of pages indexed has very little to do with traffic, it is possible for a one page site to get more traffic that a 1 million page site.

Interesting fact: The former head of ebay partner network, whom has been promoted to a global position recently, used to run his own shoe related affiliate site as well as his own online business before working for ebay. That business did nothing but create unique product descriptions in bulk. In other words he knew that generic descriptions have been a problem for a very long time now.

[fahad direct]

I have more than million products under 12 major categories do i need to get backlinks for only homepage or major categories or individual product pages?

[Planet13]

...do i need to get backlinks for only homepage or major categories or individual product pages?

Yes!

[fahad direct]

I am not clear. Do you mean for homepage only or for major categories only or my landing product pages?

[Planet13]

Yes!

Get HIGH QUALITY links to your homepage, AND your main category pages, AND your product pages!

And the BEST way to get HIGH QUALITY LINKS to those pages is to have HIGH QUALITY CONTENT on those pages.

Have a BETTER home page than your competition.

Have BETTER CATEGORY pages than your competition.

Have BETTER product pages than your competition.

But since you have over a million products, on second thought, let's concentrate on your home page and 12 main category pages :)