E135–Google’s Content Removal Tool - a podcast by Mat Siltala & Dave Rohrer

from 2020-02-02T02:12

:: ::

If nothing else test the tool to see what an email from Google looks like so you can monitor for someone doing shady and trying to remove your content.





Beyond that, use the tool as needed to remove content or monitor your removed content and that you haven't tripped Safe Search Filtering.





Announcement & Coverage











The Good



Anytime Google gives us more ways to alert them or tell them via a sitemap.xml, tool or the Google Search Console we are all for it. There may be a number of uses when pages you DON'T want indexed or available but it is, this is just another way to speed things up.





  • Wrong/Bad Product Page
  • Outdated Page
  • Thank You Page




The Bad



We couldn't think of much as we love when Google gives us more control or ways to inform them of what is going on with the site. The one thing that scares us is how people may look for ways to misuse the Public facing form.





Transcript



[00:00:00] Matt Siltala: Hey
guys, excited to be here with you on a another one of these episodes. How's it
going, Dave?





Dave Rohrer: [00:00:16]
Top of the morning,





Matt Siltala: [00:00:17]
top of the board into the afternoon whenever





Dave Rohrer: [00:00:22]
is we're recording. I don't know.





Matt Siltala: [00:00:23]
Or when they're listening. What else? Whatever you need it to be. Um, but you
know, we don't often jump into these type of topics. Uh, you know, we, we tend
to record a few of these at a time and, and, uh, but we kind of felt this one
was an interesting one to get into, but, uh, this is something that has to do
Dave, with Google's content removal tool, the new tool that they just put out.





Now, Barry, um, of course posted about it on the 28th of
January. And in the morning, I guess, or Google did a post about it in the
morning of [00:01:00] January 28th and then Barry posted about it, jumped right
on it, and yes, as he does. And, uh, but it's got some, you know, some as, as
always with stuff like this, there's same some, uh.





Mixed reviews going out of about it. There's lots of
different views and lots of different, uh, um, things that people are saying
about it. And so we thought we would probably just jump in and spend a little
time, give some of our thoughts like, uh, and Dave, you know, you could talk
about, uh, you know, who you were sharing with posted about it earlier if you
want.





But, uh, you know, some of my first initial thoughts and our
conversations with us is if there's a way for someone in our industry to abuse
it. Hey, well,





Dave Rohrer: [00:01:46]
yup.





Matt Siltala: [00:01:46]
And so again, those are like my absolute very first thoughts and I'm thinking,
okay, well, you know, who's to say that a, again, we joke about, uh, we, we
just talked about the, uh, the, the term span that we [00:02:00] believe, uh,
it was Brett tap key, right?





That, uh, you know, sites the sites position above mine.
Damn. And so, you know,





Dave Rohrer: [00:02:10]
everything's spam. If it's in front of me, that's the only reason.





Matt Siltala: [00:02:14]
So let's go and report these guys. Well, is it outdated content? It's spam.
It's above me. I'm going to get rid of them. And so anyway, and then how many,
um, fake. Google accounts.





Do people have, I was just joking with you. I think my kids
probably have for each, but, um, and they're not even in this industry. It's
so, uh, I dunno. Well, if you know, what are your thoughts on this?





Dave Rohrer: [00:02:38]
Yeah, so the public, um, you know, the Google blog, it's the, the, their post
went up on the 28th. It was new removals report in search console.





And then Barry's report, um, he probably has it on se round
table, but he was on search engine land and went up, uh, what LLS 9:00 AM, um,
[00:03:00] on search engine land. And it was, you know, Google search console
launches, new removals tool. And he does a really great job of digging into,
um, kinda repeat some of it as he does from the blog post, but he's got the
shots and breaks it down pretty quickly about.





There, there is a temporary temporary removal. Um, there's
outdated content. And then also safe search filtering, which I don't, whenever
I do an audit for an technical side of things, I usually hope, and most people
don't have it. So if you don't have being webmaster tools set up, please go set
that up. Um.





We've talked about it before, and I'll keep mentioning it
because most times people do not have it set up unless they're an SEO. Um, go
set that up. Um, it does give you data. It does give you lots of interesting
insights as well, but anytime I can, I look and see if there's any sort of,
anything has been flagged.





Um, any security or manual actions against any [00:04:00]
types of sites that I'm doing review on. Um, I look for security issues. I look
through their, you know, whatever their CMS is. Usually if it's WordPress, I
look through for security holes. I do save search type stuff. I look and make
sure that, you know, they're not being flagged or anything.





Just weird stuff that may or may not be impacting you. Um,
but the safe search, safe search filtering might be interesting because there
might be one off pages. That, you know, especially if you're in a health or some
type of content, maybe pushes aligned somehow or it might get flagged because
of certain keywords.





You know, like, just like in YouTube, if you do stuff in
YouTube, there's a lot of keywords now that if you mention them, you can get
demonetized like almost immediately is my understanding that you can get your
content demonetize monetize, which is, you know, if you're making your life.
Your, your, your money off of that, that is the worst thing you can do.





So there are certain keywords that will trigger [00:05:00]
demonetization because advertisers, which I can't really blame them, don't want
to be associated with that type of content. Um, which is interesting because
there could be, yeah. We won't get into that. That's, yeah, that's, that's a
whole weird topic. Um. For me that's interesting to see the safe search
filtering, outdated content, temporary removals.





Um,





Matt Siltala: [00:05:24]
I just see so many competitors, um, abusing this, but one of the things that I
think that we discovered was, uh, you have to be logged in for this to work.
Now again, it's goes back to the fake accounts and people still abusing this.
But, um, I mean, do you think that would factor into more people being able to
still abuse it or not?





Dave Rohrer: [00:05:45]
I was trying to, I literally didn't, I missed this the other day and I'm just
playing around with it today. Um, so how do I use the tool? You go to tools,
removal of webmasters, so it isn't a webmaster. And I tried to, I tried to get
to it without being [00:06:00] logged in and basically it gives me the, the
Heisman kind of stiff arm, and I was like, no, you've gotta log in with one of
your accounts.





So I think that could make it a little bit more difficult.
Perhaps, but yeah. How many accounts does people, you know, with the VPN and
you know, a burner Google account, you know, that you set up your automated, at
least set up what you can do. Um, you know, I don't think that it's just an
extra step. Yeah. So the people that really want to misuse this will probably
misuse it, you know, go through and take out your five competitors.





Main site pages.





Matt Siltala: [00:06:42]
Yeah. I just,





Dave Rohrer: [00:06:44]
it will be view it. Um, but I just wonder ho I don't, I didn't always assume
that people are gonna miss you. Stuff like this. I just hope that the mind,
it's small because it is kind of handy.





Matt Siltala: [00:06:56]
Well, that's what I was going to say. The sad thing too, this is, I can
understand [00:07:00] why they're getting, cause I'm, I, I think about,
especially in our industry, like I think about the poor individuals coming into
this industry.





And if someone has turned dates or comments or whatever off
on their blog post, and there are the quote unquote SEO blog, and I'm reading a
post, or I'm going through and I'm searching a certain tag and I'm reading all
these posts, but I don't know that I'm reading a post that was written back in
2003 and it's talking about something and I'm like, you know, should I be doing
that still or.





Does this really work? Or, and again, that's an extreme
example of going all the way back 2003 but even, you know, going back to 2014
and doing some of the stuff that was recommended, like, so I can see like the,
the, the, the, the reason why that they did it, and I can see the positive side
of it, but again, just that, you know, that marketer and me knows that this
industry is going to try to figure out some way to exploit it and ruin





Dave Rohrer: [00:07:59]
it.





[00:08:00] Always someone that ruins it for everyone.





Matt Siltala: [00:08:04]
And I, and again, maybe not even I should say like the black hat side or just
the, I don't know, you know, just, uh, those that will abuse those, that those
people that are outranking and they just want that edge. And, um, I can, I can
see them trying to take advantage of it in a not so nice way.





Have you heard feedback from anyone else on it?





Dave Rohrer: [00:08:26]
No, I haven't. Um, I haven't seen that really that much, but it was
interesting. I mean, I have a large number of, I don't even know how many sites
at this point. Uh, access to a lot of accounts and a lot of sites, a lot of
domains, and a lot of, um, Google search console accounts and out of all of
them.





Only one of them is currently, which I was a bit shocked and
it's my conference site where I tried to remove some stuff or just block it
cause I was tired of Google trying to crawl it and telling me that it was a bad
old [00:09:00] page. I'm literally the only two pages that have our flag does
outdated page removal in all of my accounts, um, are two from my little
conference site, which is kind of old.





Impressive and weird. Yeah. You would have expected more.
Um, I don't usually remove a lot. Um, at least not with the tools. I might have
to look at it more often. Usually it's a mix of three O ones and four fours and
you know, some other kind of thing to get it out. Um, but if you do need a
specific page or if there's a legal reason or some other reason.





Them beefing up this tool or these, this set of tools and
also making it a little bit easier to find. I'm very happy to see, um, the
outdated content thing is a little weird. Um, like, to me, like, it's like,
what is, when you, when you see what is this? It says [00:10:00] outdated
content. It's like, what does that mean? Um, and that's what the public's going
to flag.





So the temporary removals is what you flag. The outdated
content is what someone, you know, Joe public, um, or Josephine, um, as you
know, requested. So it's part of my audit. I'm going to have to make sure that,
you know, there's not anything weird going on with, you know, competitors going
forward that competitors are doing, you know, bad stuff for that.





A single person is, you know, trying to cause them harm.
Well,





Matt Siltala: [00:10:36]
also educating those that we work with on this because they're going to want to
go in and like, Hey, let's go remove all the content of my competitor. And





Dave Rohrer: [00:10:44]
I don't think that many people will do it. Honestly. I just think there's going
to be a few bad seeds, or, I mean, I'm, I'm actually tempted to try it on one
of my own sites just to see what happens.





So. Um, I'm already looking through one of my sites to
figure out [00:11:00] which page I actually want removed. And, uh,





Matt Siltala: [00:11:02]
I wonder if they're getting any kind of notice, like if they get any kind of
notification.





Dave Rohrer: [00:11:06]
That's what, yeah, that's what I'm curious. Um, like I said, we, right before
we started, I literally saw this stuff like five minutes before we started
recording today, and I was like, Ooh, that's interesting.





Um, so I've just been doing some research on it this
morning, but I'm gonna probably try and. With my own in my own sites, just so
that I know what the email looks like. I can create an email alert, um, in my,
you know, in whatever email system you use, just to flag it of





Matt Siltala: [00:11:36]
some old outdated content somewhere.





Dave,





Dave Rohrer: [00:11:40]
probably on one of my sites. Yeah. Uh, I'm sure I do. Well, no, but I'm just
thinking through, like to make sure that I don't, if someone does try to go in
there, does it send an email? If it does. I'm going to, I want to see that email
and I want to create an alert in my email system, whether it's going to my
[00:12:00] Gmail or my, um, you know, outlook.





I want to create a thing that'll flag it for me.





Matt Siltala: [00:12:06]
So what are we telling you here? People like the same thing we've been telling
you forever. Test,





Dave Rohrer: [00:12:11]
test attention





Matt Siltala: [00:12:12]
and pay attention. And, uh, figuring out, you know, it could end up being a
great thing. Like I, like I talked about like. Know, I could see it being very
useful for certain specific industries.





Tom,





Dave Rohrer: [00:12:25]
I see a lot of use for either content. Um, problem is, is a lot of times when,
like I just did an audit where we had like a hundred thousand pages we wanted
out at this tool isn't going to work. Um, but if you have a product page or,
um, say you're some sort of SAS and. That feature is no longer around, or you
know, like Facebook or Google, you know, has, it has something that they take
away from Google webmaster tools, which they kind of do from time to time or
analytics or any of their tools.





And you want to make it so that you know, [00:13:00] the
other search engines don't know about it. Not a bad idea. Or if you screw up.
And you push a page before a migration, you can go through, um, if Google gets
through, you know, and it's really like water. Um, it finds its way through
everything. Even if you have no index, no follows and stuff.





If it finds some pages internally that you've just, you
know, like thank you pages. Um, as I think about what I might use it for, one
of my clients, um, we should probably take some of those thank you pages out.
We can go through and do it. Um. With the tool. Maybe we could have before, but
you know, it only lasts six months.





Matt Siltala: [00:13:41]
Just makes it





Dave Rohrer: [00:13:41]
easier, but it just makes, and it saves search. I haven't worked with any
clients recently that would probably run a fall from this. But again, you know,
just looking to see if you've been caught up somehow in some way because of the
type of content. If it's more medical, you know, maybe it's a.





[00:14:00] They're somehow wrongly putting you in bucket.
You knew with different types of sites. I know someone that just registered a
domain the other day, um, and I know he listens from time to time. First thing
I thought was that he had just rescued registered a porn site cause I was





Matt Siltala: [00:14:16]
like,





Dave Rohrer: [00:14:18]
dude, that domain it's going to get you flagged.





I'm curious to see if it does get flagged just because of
what it is we'll see. Um, if it has no history, maybe it's got a better chance,
but yeah, for like that domain, I, I'd be curious to see if it just gets, it
finds its way into safe search. Anyway.





Matt Siltala: [00:14:35]
That's funny. Do I know this friend?





Dave Rohrer: [00:14:38]
Yes. You do





Matt Siltala: [00:14:41]
have to.





I'll have to ping you when we're off the air. Yes. I'll tell
you who it is after.





Dave Rohrer: [00:14:47]
Um, but yeah. You know, anytime Google gives us more insight into stuff like
this and more ability, I'm not so crazy about the, you know, letting people
flag stuff. We'll see how that goes. Maybe they'll take that [00:15:00] away.
Um, who knows?





Maybe, you know, if five people or even 50 or 105 hundred
people screw with it, that's probably not enough for them to. Be annoyed. Um,
and I'm sure they can pretty quickly look at one account and go, wow, you went
to eight different sites within 15 minutes and flagged, you know, 30 pages,
whatever you're done dealing with





Matt Siltala: [00:15:22]
Google.





They're pretty smart. So,





Dave Rohrer: [00:15:23]
yeah, they've got access. And you know, again, it's just another thing for me
that I'll start making sure that whenever I do an audit or everyone, anytime
when I talk to my clients. You know, make sure no one is going through and
screwing with your site and flagging you. Um, and make sure that, you know, the
temporary removals, whether it's been you or Google.





Um, cause like I blocked in October, you know, my
conference, like my one slash day. Um, and anything under program. Um, I
blocked these two different directories cause I was tired of everything showing
up in the four fours and redirects and stuff. [00:16:00] And is there is
nothing there. That's what I talked about when I talked about the site map
stuff couple of weeks ago.





That was, that was the content that wasn't supposed to be
indexed. That was the stuff. So yeah, I think anytime they can give us more
access to this and more abilities, um, I'm, I'm all for it.





Matt Siltala: [00:16:18]
Well, I mean I just wanted to make sure you guys were aware of it, cause I'm
sure that there's going to be quite a few people that hear this then it might
be the first time that they're hearing about this.





But. Uh, well, yeah, and I mean, as much as berries,
everywhere, you know, sometimes we miss stuff that he puts out there and
sometimes we miss a Google update and, uh, or post, I guess. Uh, anyway. All
right, well, um, thank you guys for listening. As always, we want to encourage
you, if you're a fan of this podcast, please, please, please go and check us
out on iTunes.





Uh, write us a review. We would love for you to, uh, to give
us a review. And, um, yeah, I mean, we'll accept that as [00:17:00] well.
Awesome. Well thanks guys. We'll for Dave with the North Northside metrics I
met with avalanche media and thank you guys for joining us. Bye bye.





Dave Rohrer: [00:17:10]
Thanks.

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