Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Too many takedown requests today, all SEO articles have been deleted

I have just deleted all SEO articles, 4115 of them. Today alone I have received requests for 15 separate articles to be removed. That is just too much. I removed them all, so from here on out nobody should be complaining. I have some coding to do in order to finalize the changes (removing the SEO category completely), but that can be done at a later date. Right now, anyone visiting it will simply see no articles.

While I feel a little bad for all the work put into making those articles, given how much trouble it has cost Mizozo I can't say I regret the decision.

The request to remove Google's Manual Action against Mizozo has been made

Last night I finally made the request to Google to remove the Manual Action put against Mizozo. It seems that I have done everything necessary in order to return to good terms with Google, but I guess I'll have to wait and see. When submitting, I was told that it may take several weeks for a decision to be made, so I'll be patient.

Similarly, I have implemented one more change to our SEO policy. From now on, when any change request is made for an SEO article, the article will simply be removed from the system. Previously, I would remove all links from the article but retain the article itself. Now, I am just going to delete it entirely, regardless of request.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

More Site Changes due to Google's Manual Action

As of 5 minutes ago, all publishers who have been flagged as SEO have been disabled. I expect a barrage of emails in the upcoming days complaining that they don't have access, since few actually read this blog (or so it seems).

All the published articles are still live on Mizozo, and will likely stay live unless I find out that it is better for the site as a whole to simply remove them. Likewise, as already stated, no new SEO registration will be allowed. The real question is, who will now write articles for Mizozo? I can already see that many of our home page categories have emptied due to this change.

I have yet to confront Google about removing the Manual Action, but I plan to tomorrow. I hope that I have done everything that is expected of me. We'll soon see.

I think I've resolved Mizozo's issues causing Google's Manual Action against us

Due to our little issue I discussed a bit yesterday, I have had to make several quick changes to Mizozo so as not to feel the full force of Google's wrath. I can't say that I disagree with their tactics in the least, but its never pleasant when you are the recipient of any negative action.

In order to rid Mizozo of the bane of our SEO publishers, I have manually gone through and flagged all SEO users (this was actually done throughout, but I had to recheck everyone anyway). Next, I wrote some SQL to flag all their articles as SEO. Finally, I had to write some code to take advantage of this.

From the coding perspective, here's what I did:

  1. The flagged articles are being put into a hidden category, SEO.
  2. All articles, upon loading, are specifically checked for this new category, and if so their URL is rewritten properly (this ensures all old URLs still exist, not sure if this is better or if I should just turn them off, but I chose the former for now ... easy fix if Google disapproves).
  3. Some .htaccess work was necessary, as was several Mizozo core files.
  4. I removed all these articles from our RSS and XML files.
  5. I updated the robots.txt to ignore all articles in the SEO category.
This should do it. I need to now review what I need to send to Google, but that can wait for tomorrow. Now, we sleep ... 

Of course, there is still the question of what to do with the SEO publishers. Do I kill all the existing ones? Maybe I should just remove all their articles? Obviously, I will do my best to ignore all registration requests from them, but there is still much thinking left here.


Friday, January 24, 2014

An interesting guy, that Google

Its funny how quickly this new revenue stream was picked up on by Google. Earlier today I received the following email: (minus any URL parameters)



Google Logo

http://www.mizozo.com/: Unnatural outbound links

Google has detected a pattern of artificial or unnatural links on this site. Selling links or participating in link schemes in order to manipulate PageRank is a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
As a result of unnatural links from your site, Google has applied a manual spam action to mizozo.com/. There may be other actions on your site or parts of your site.

Recommended action
  • Identify paid or otherwise inorganic links by using rel="nofollow" or redirecting to an intermediate page that is blocked by robots.txt.
  • Remove any problematic links from your site.
  • When you're satisfied that your site follows Google's Webmaster Guidelines, submit a reconsideration request.
  • For an updated list of manual actions currently applied to your site, visit the Manual Actions page. If no manual actions are listed, there is no longer a need to file a reconsideration request.
If we determine your site is no longer in violation of our guidelines, we'll revoke the manual action.
If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please visit the Webmaster Help Forum.




It seems I now have to make some changes to Mizozo in general. Based on what I understand from the email at this point, if all SEO articles are marked in the SEO category, then I add the SEO category to my blocked list in my robots.txt, I should be able to lift the manual action against the site.

The way I see it, I will need to do something like the following. First, on the Database level:

  1. Identify all SEO users
  2. Update all articles by SEO users to the SEO category

Then, on a software level:

  1. Add code to ensure that all SEO articles only resolve under the SEO category
  2. Add the SEO category as a blocked item in my robots.txt

Once this is complete, I inform Google and make a request for the Manual Action to be lifted.

Another interesting change will be how I handle SEO users in the future. I will give this more thought, then post my ideas.

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Do you still want to post SEO articles to Mizozo?


It looks like many people were upset over our latest move of restricting SEO publishers from registering on Mizozo. We had several people queued up for review, and after alerting them to this change some were borderline hostile. Interestingly, many of them feel entitled to unlimited users on Mizozo, and by denying them this I am somehow impeding on their God given rights of freedom. Wow!

Well, lets do this a different way, then. If you want to publish an SEO article on Mizozo and either you don't have a user already or our SEO quota is full, you can buy a publication. This publication will come in three price points.

#1 - Our Budget Plan. This article will be posted by our Standard SEO User (username: guest_user). The posted article will be flagged as SEO, but will listed in our XML and submitted to all search engines. It will also be searchable throughout Mizozo. Price, $50

#2 - Our Advanced Plan. This article will be given his own user, which can then be used for future posts. Similarly to #1, this article and user will be flagged as SEO, but will be listed in our XML and submitted to all search engines. Likewise, it will be searchable throughout Mizozo. Price, $75

#3 - Our Premier Plan. This article will also be given its own users, which can also be used in the future. However, the posted article will not be marked as SEO. Hence, it will hit our homepage and all pages within the site. This doesn't in any way guarantee all future articles by the user will be treated similarly, but it helps. Price, $100

All articles, regardless of which plan you choose, will be reviewed before approval. If the article doesn't meet our requirements, you will need to rewrite. We will not negotiate publication for a higher price. Likewise, all prices are fixed, no negotiating there either.

Of course, if you don't want to pay, just wait. Or, register a normal user to skew the ratio then when we open SEO registration, register another user. I'm sorry to have to do this, but things are getting out of control.


UPDATE - PLEASE NOTE: Due to items discussed, this page is no longer relevant.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Temporarily halting all SEO registration requests

When creating Mizozo, we had hoped that anyone and everyone who had something to say could register and be able to publish whatever they want (within reason). We had this utopian dream which would give anyone with the desire to express themselves an outlet to do so. While the idea was great, the reality turned out a bit different.

The unfortunate fact is that the vast majority of subscribers to Mizozo are simply using it as a platform to further their SEO goals. While some of the SEO articles aren't all that bad, the majority of them are utterly worthless to readers of Mizozo. We have taken some steps to reduce this, like moving the majority of the SEO articles to our SEO Page, also by changing our Registration Rules and Publishing Policies. The registration change definitely had an effect on reducing registrants, but recently that has changed once more.

For starters, we have learned that some registrants have been deceitful, claiming Social Networks that weren't in fact theirs. Those users have been removed, and their articles have been removed as well. Others seem to be SEO companies using their clients social networks as a guise for their own profiles. I am not really sure why each SEO article requires its own user, but I am against it on many levels. If you are an SEO company, make a single profile and use it. If you don't like those rules, well, then post elsewhere.

So, here's what I plan to do. I will setup a ratio of SEO users to non SEO users. The ratio needs to be held at 10 to 1. Meaning, I will not allow more than 10 SEO users for every regular user. By my current count, we have 8 regular users on Mizozo (I know, pathetic), but we have 110 SEO users. This is insane. So, until we get 4 more regular users, SEO users will not be allowed to register, Sorry.

What do I consider an SEO user? Very simple, if you have an article about a particular subject, and a link going to a business of that subject, that article is SEO. That's it. I don't care if you have 10 links, if at least one of them points to a business, it is SEO.

As a side note, if SEO companies want to register more, they will have to contribute something to Mizozo. They can create a regular user who will simply write articles with no SEO benefit. Now, if the guy is just writing crap, they will be removed, so it won't help anyone. But, if they want to keep registering users, they will have to contribute.

One last thing. If you lie to me during your registration, your user will be removed and so will whatever article you published, so its in nobodies interest.

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Mizozo's 2013 Year in Review

2013 has been quite an interesting year for Mizozo. Much changed, much was tried, and a lot was going on.

We started the year with an attempt to gain new publishers for the site. By giving back all our profits in the form of prizes, the hope was that people would be interested in winning the prizes and try writing some articles for Mizozo. Unfortunately, this didn't really happen, so the prizes just went to those that were already writing. While this is in no way a bad thing, the money could have been spent better in hindsight. Personally, I feel that this was a failed attempt, but much was learned regardless.

Overall, 2013 was a good year. We saw just shy of 2,000,000 visitors, and just shy of 3.25 million page views. Not great, but not bad.

Also, I have begun moving Mizozo to WordPress. This seemed much easier at first than it does now. Its not difficult, per say, but it does require a ton of time, something that I seem to be lacking, especially around New Years time.

While we didn't see a rise in real publishers this year, we did see a huge influx of SEO writers. This posed a different challenge, specifically how to handle them. While I see no real benefit to Mizozo in allowing them, I can't really turn them away given our open nature. Their persistence in registering and posting sometimes ridiculous content forced us to rethink our registration policy, and setup an SEO space on Mizozo.

Lastly, 2013 showed the highest revenue of any year. Considering this is only the second year we are trying this, it shouldn't have come as a surprise. In total, Mizozo earned just over $3000. Given the starting capital of $1000, we had some decent money to play with. The operating expenses for Mizozo are about $1700 for the year, so the profits weren't all that great, but were noticeable. We ended the year with $1000 in the account once more, and after giving 20% to my silent partner, we closed with a cool $800. I anticipate 2014 will bring higher revenues and higher profits.

In the spirit of transparency, a thorough breakdown of our company finances was also put in Google Spreadsheet form. There isn't much going on, so there isn't too much to see there, but it will give you an idea of what was spent where and how much we earned.

The only real plan for 2014 is to get Mizozo onto the WordPress publishing engine. So far, I have managed to write a migration script that isn't fully working, but at about 90%, however there is still a ton to do including design work, moving functionality across and much more. This is going to be fun, no doubt!

Closing the year, Mizozo's December Numbers

December saw another steady rise in visitors, finishing off the year quite nicely. I will be posting a year in review soon, so I will only be looking at December's numbers here.

For a quick rundown of December, here are the figures:

Visitors: 112,539
Page Views: 198,010
Pages/Visit: 1.76 
Earnings: $201.22

For a more complete look at the numbers, here is the Google Spreadsheet