Recently, I have noticed that my blog posts weren't showing up in Feedburner, I got little notes from readers that they were no longer getting my emails with updates as I posted and anything that started with book description copied from an author's website, Amazon or Goodreads were not being viewed like they had been in the past. Yes, Google has started noting that these posts were essentially spam since a book blast is probably posted by 50 blogs in a 24 hour time period and they all look the same. I have even heard that a few blogs have been shut down because they were deemed spam blogs.
First, I checked my feedburner account and found there were errors there. I reduced the number of post showing to three, which fixed quite a few errors on that side of the equation. (If you need help with that, feedburner actually provides easy to follow instructions that I did myself in about 30 minutes HERE.) Any time you get an error in a blog post (those nasty <DIV> not closed notes), pay attention to them and fix them before your post goes live. Most of the time a simple hitting of the return key fixes them and reduces errors in your feed.
Next, I started changing up how my posts are formatted. I have used the same format for posts since I started blogging. I post the book cover, book blurb, and then the author information. Most of this stuff is from the publisher and of course, everyone uses it which google now sees as spam. I am still trying to understand the analytics about how this works but basically if you start your post with unique content by making it personal, your posts will show up easier in Google. I now start my posts with my review or interview and a "hey, look at me!" type comment at the top. A good place to start is with Google's Webmaster Tools. I am slowly going through the articles to make sure my blog is visable.
I don't often start with the cover blurb, only now and then when it's simpler than beginning "This book is abut a girl who..." How strange! I haven't a clue what Feedburner is. I just write and post. I don't know how soon the post appears on Google, but it gets there.
ReplyDeleteFeedburner handles subscriptions services (RSS feeds and email) for most blogging platforms, especially Blogspot blogs. Google might supress your blog when they are searching for reviews. In some cases, the have been hiding and deleting blogs altogether because of TOS violations for being bots. This is something that started recently, like in the last 6 months of so. A lor of bloggers that had 18+ restrictions on their blogs were notified that they may be deleted because of content. I didn't think it was doing anything to my blog either until I started to see my pageviews decline rapidly.
DeleteI just started doing this and my feedburner emails went back to normal. The good tour hosts will let you know that you need to switch up the post they send you. I just didn't pay attention until I noticed my pageviews dropping tremendously.
ReplyDeleteI stopped receiving emails from you and every blog I'm subscribed to that uses Feedburner. This went on for a month. I'm so glad it works again.
ReplyDeleteGoogle isn't supporting feedburner any longer. I am in the process of moving my blogs over to a self hosted site because of all of the issues blogger has now. The service is still spotty Alyn. I am still working on the problems here. Sometimes feedburner works and sometimes it doesn't.
DeleteHmmm... I wonder if people are getting my posts? I guess I didn't pay attention but I haven't heard anything. It's a good reminder that we need to switch things up though, just so it's not spam. I mention that they are welcome to change the wording in my tour posts but I'll be sure to make it more clear that they are HIGHLY encouraged to change things up a bit. Thanks Mary!
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