Some of you noticed a very strong fall of visits in your shops. The zlio.com field currently undergoes a selective penalty (partial sandbox) on the Google search engine. That results in a downgrading of some of your shops in the research results.
Shoprolls in question?
We suspect the shoproll to be the cause of this penalty. Indeed, too many links exchanges can lead to the conclusion that shops are regarded as strong links by the Google algorithms.
We thus decided to apply the attribute “nofollow” to the HTML tags links pointing towards other shops. Those will not be taken into account by the search engines. But your visitors will always be able to click on it. We hope that this measure will improve the situation.
What shall you do?
Keep on taking care of your shops normally
The best way not to be penalized is to keep a normal activity within your shops. Keep on maintaining it, updating it by adding products and improving the contents of your products factsheets.
Do not insert links toward directories.
1. Avoid as much as possible massive subscriptions in directories. Prefer links exchanges with trustworthy sites.
2. Carefully select your links exchanges: they must always be close to your themes set.
3. We advise you to remove to the maximum (see all) the links towards directories. They rarely generate traffic and can penalize the whole of the network.
Make your shop unique!
1. Improve your product factsheets by adding content to it: display your opinion, push your visitors to give theirs. Do you own the product? Write an opinion, even a quick one! The more your original contents will be important, the more you will have chances to be well listed.
2. If necessary, personalize the name of the product and always try to expand the product description.
3. Several descriptions are suggested for a single product. At the time of addition, in the tab “Describe the product”, a drop-down menu offers you sometimes other sources. Do not hesitate to modify them and adapt them to the spirit of your shop.
One shop = One theme
Always comply with this rule. It is strongly advised to have a precise set of themes for your shop. If you wish to diversify: create a new shop!
When will it get back to normal?
We are unfortunately unable to communicate any deadlines. The problem can be solved within few hours, few weeks as it can be solved within several months in certain cases.
We are doing everything we can to restore the situation as soon as possible.
October 10th, 2007 à 5:49 pm
Hi guys
Thanks very much for this very much needed updated on the matter. I owe shops that are affected by Google but I am optimist that the things will change soon.
Just an idea, if the Zlio field is under penalty, why don’t you temporarily give a no-follow tag from these fields to the shops. I am of course not fully aware of your structure, so that might not be appropriate but just trying to help.
We survived Amazon, I am sure this one will be a bad memory soon too
All the best!
Lily
October 21st, 2007 à 7:59 pm
We thus decided to apply the attribute “nofollow” to the HTML tags links pointing towards other shops. Those will not be taken into account by the search engines. But your visitors will always be able to click on it. We hope that this measure will improve the situation.
When is the best time to add shops to our shoproll?
December 20th, 2007 à 11:57 am
Hi again
You most probably know that Webmaster Tools now have additional feature called Content Analysis. It’s very helpful for one to find out how to improve their content and especially the meta data. For my shops unfortunately it shows that the meta descriptions for all pages are one and the same. You know that we do not have access to fix that, so I’d like to ask. Is it possible use some kind of automated snippet to show up for description. For product pages it could easily be the product description, and some random content from the shop for sub- and categories.
What do you think?
Cheers
Lily