Social Bookmarking List Operator Identifies Large Deindexing Event

Jan. 20, 2013 - PRLog -- Virtual Media Options, which is best known for its content focused web directory, also manages some of the most widely used lists in the SEO industry. This organization recently discovered an above normal deindexing event trend in the social bookmarking industry. According to VMOptions, approximately 15% of the bookmarking sites that they monitor have been banned in Google.

Social bookmarks, which originally were intended to store ones favorite places in a single location online, have become quite popular with those in the search engine optimization industry. While only a handful of social bookmarking websites actually drive traffic, many others are typically used by those searching for a quick link to their sites. The explosion of unmoderated social bookmarking sites is one of the many reasons that VMOptions believes they are now being targeted for removal from Google's SERPS.

According to VMOptions, as was confirmed at http://forums.vmoptions.com/showthread.php?t=8907, it is common to see approximately 6% of the active social bookmarking websites deindexed from Google. The deindexing event that VMOptions has recently discovered is over twice the normal rate and impacts both networks and individual social bookmarking websites. While this trend does not come unexpected, VMOptions does offer tips to those that want to run a successful social bookmarking website.

Careful Use of Meta Information

VMOptions notes that most of the deindexed social bookmarking sites they are seeing rely on the default Meta tag information used by their chosen script. A failure to change these Meta tags sends a strong signal to search engines that the site is a poorly managed boilerplate website. Search engines typically frown on such websites as their value is rather limited to end users. Social bookmarking website owners that take the time to use unique and accurate meta information are less likely to be deindexed from Google.

Interlinking Websites

Another trend that VMOptions has identified is that many deindexed social bookmarking websites employed the use of interlinking to artificially inflate the Pagerank of their networks. As Google's webmaster guidelines clearly state, the use of such techniques to distribute Pagerank are frowned upon. For this reason, many websites have been forever removed from Google's SERPS and webmasters should avoid such a strategy if they want their websites to remain healthy and in Google's index.

Unmoderated Social Bookmarking Sites

VMOptions has noted that many social bookmarking websites do not adequately moderate the submissions they receive. Some of these sites allow users to submit any URL, which is then posted live, without any moderation whatsoever. Besides manually reviewing submissions, VMOptions also notes some other steps social bookmarking website operators can take to control spam and unwanted submissions from bots. Such steps include changing the registration page URL and using CAPTCHA to greatly reduce automated submissions.

It is important to note that VMOptions offers the tips above from their years of experience in operating a popular social bookmarking list located at http://www.vmoptions.com/social-networking-list.php. In managing their social bookmarking list, they are able to collect data and analyze trends in fine detail. The information that VMOptions has offered is based on their analysis of the current deindexing event, which was noted by them to be of a rather large scale.