New Campaign to Abolish Secret Search Ranking Penalties
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM----(Marketwire) - A new
campaign has been launched to gather examples from website owners who
feel they may have been unfairly penalized by leading search engines.
Named "Have I been penalized..?" the campaign aims to abolish secret
search penalties.
The campaign website - www.haveibeenpenalized.com
- asks website owners to submit brief histories of when Google or other
search engines have unfairly cut their site traffic or page ranking.
Commanding over 80% of the internet search market, Google in
particular has a huge influence over almost every website's success or
failure. Without Google's traffic, most web businesses have little
chance of commercial success.
Yet, Google makes it almost impossible for site owners to find out if
a drastic fall in site traffic or page ranking is the result of
penalties it has introduced.
With a large number of case studies, www.haveibeenpenalized.com will ask leading search engines such as Google to introduce three transparency measures on penalties.
-- First, to bring in a simple mechanism that tells the site owner that
they have suffered a search penalty
-- Second, to establish a communication mechanism which allows site owners
to find out more about the nature of the penalty
-- Third, to instigate a fast and efficient appeals process if site owners
wish to challenge the penalty
The new "Have I been penalized..?" campaign is spearheaded by One
News Page, a news aggregator which suffered a seven-month Google
penalty, causing a 96% fall in Google organic site traffic. The campaign
is supported by ICOMP, the Initiative for a Competitive Online Market
Place, an industry consortium promoting fairer competition on the
Internet.
Dr Marc Pinter-Krainer, Chief Executive Officer of One News Page Ltd., said:
"We are not alone in facing a huge fall in our Google traffic.
Despite writing to Google eight times, our frustration stemmed from
being unable to find out why we were penalized and the nature of the
penalty. After seven months it went away, and in two days, our traffic
shot back up to pre-penalty levels.
"Today, we are launching our new "Have I been penalized..?" campaign at www.haveibeenpenalized.com.
Given the importance to the economy of online businesses, it's vital
that website owners can operate in a fair, fully transparent online
marketplace, where the fruits of their efforts cannot be destroyed on
the whim of search engines that don't even allow them to know if they've
been penalized."
To upload a case study, please click on http://www.haveibeenpenalized.com/submit.php
Notes
About One News Page
One News Page is an international news navigator website featuring
original news coverage and syndicated news content from major trusted
news sources around the world. The One News Page portal provides users
with a powerful search engine to locate relevant news coverage easily.
Users are referred to the source website directly by clicking on a news
headline.
Users can access the One News Page website for the latest news headlines at http://www.OneNewsPage.com.
One News Page is free of charge.
About ICOMP
ICOMP, the Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace, is an
industry initiative for businesses and organisations involved in the
online marketplace. Its overall objective is the sustainable growth of
the Internet and key goals are to encourage competition, transparency,
data privacy and respect for intellectual property rights as well as the
adoption of best practices to promote creativity, innovation and trust.
Over 50 companies, trade associations, consumer organisations and
individuals have endorsed ICOMP's principles. These members represent 14
countries across Europe, North America and the Middle East.
ICOMP is funded by member contributions as well as sponsorship from
Microsoft. Burson-Marsteller acts as its secretariat and Lord Alan
Watson is ICOMP's first Chairman.
For more information, please contact
Gresham PR
Neil Boom
MD
+44 (0)7866 805 108
neil.boom@greshampr.co.uk
or
One News Page Ltd.
Dr Marc Pinter-Krainer
CEO
+44 (0) 7770 588 173
marc@onenewspage.com
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