Google Hates EbooksFromTV

For some reason I don’t quite understand, Google has basically shut off this site in its index. I can even tell the day it happened, last week between November 3rd and 4th. Via searches, we were getting something like 200-300 hits a day and just like that, it dropped to 30. Yesterday it was 12.

I’m not sure exactly why this happened or how to rectify it. One of my fears is that this site appears spammish to search engines or to first time visitors. It’s true that there is a certain pattern to the posts, but also true that when you post links to books a dozen times a day there are only so many ways to say it. I have automation to gather up the book links and to scour the TV guide information. In same cases it has to scrape the websites as they don’t publish to the TV guide sources. (This is also why there is so little CNN and Fox News programming on here – it’s very hard to get that information in an automated way.)

I try to write at least a unique blurb for the guests and their book each time, specifically to make this site seem less mechanical. It appears that isn’t enough for Google . At this point, that puts the site at a crossroads. If I’m getting penalized and will remain like this indefinitely, then I can’t really justify dumping 1-3 hours of my scant free time every day into making these posts and maintaining the site. On the other hand, whatever is happening with Google isn’t going to be made any better by failing to put new posts up. I’m just kind of stuck.

For a week or two, I’m going to reduce the comprehensivity of my posts. I’ll do a few each day but I’m backing off of my stated goal to publish every single author TV appearance I can find. I’ll evaluate where things end up from there. If anyone has any suggestions on how to figure out what happened and/or fix the situation, please leave a comment on this post. Thanks.