I Don’t Like Penguins Anymore

The flightless black and white birds who live in the snow are cool (pun intended), but we’re not fans of the Google’s most recent update, “Penguin.”

Sites that we’ve worked very hard to build seem to have been flagged as SPAM by Google’s latest attempt to improve their search results.  For example, one of Nolo’s niche sites, TheBankruptcySite.org, was hit pretty hard. This is a site that’s been getting a lot of love from some of the recent Panda updates, yet had all that affection overturned by Penguin.  That’s particularly frustrating for the four different Nolo editors, half dozen expert attorney authors, and the SEO analyst who spent a year making sure that all the content on this site was up to Nolo standards.

The only thing we can come up with to explain these results  is that certain set’s of 50 state articles have a fair amount of templated content, primarily the intro and other “non-meat” bits.  This was a concern when we were creating them, but the bulk of the content is unique, and specifically tailored for each state.  In some ways, it seems like we’re being penalized for being thorough.

Aside from that, we can’t figure this thing out. At this point, we’re just hoping it’s collateral damage that will work itself out.

We’re just going to go play golf.