Google buried my blog - possibly because of adding syndicated content?

Anyone got any ideas about the following?

I have a niche blog, which I update with good original content as often as possible. However, in order to make the blog more useful to my readers, I also add in syndicated content from other relevant blogs/news feeds. I use feedwordpress for this, but I'm not nicking content - I have the links pointing to the original artical and I feature the contributing sites in my blogroll.

So from a users perspective, I am making a site which has original content but also has useful information from other sites.

However, Google appears to have buried me. This has only happened since I started adding the syndicated content so I can only assume that I have triggered some duplicate filter.

Has anyone else had any experience of this? Is it wrong to add syndicated content which is of use to my readers? If not, why does Google have a problem with it?

Thanks in advance...

Well, I'm not sure where your feeding in this content, however a quick solution is you can block the web pages containing the content via meta robots tag and using nofollow attributes pointing to those specific web pages, this way your not indexing those specific web pages.

As to if it's because of a duplicate content penalty and not something else it can be hard to say, from what you described it's possible, but not the solo reason behind it sometimes.

I am betting that you got buried either for the dupe content or a DMCA complaint.

If it was a dmca issue Google would notify first... so unless they can't contact at all is the only reason you'll get removed [not buried - absolutely removed]

That said... this is "likely" a multi-issue occurence.

1. "Buried" sound like you're supplemental meaing you don't have alot of links to your domain providing link juice...

The supplemented feed content isn't a big issue "even if" dup and Google kills the post page... you category pages will likely be the ranked pages to start with and you really don't want someone elses post ranking - you want you own...

BUT if #1 is true the supplemented feed content is actually harm your ranking chances because you have more mouth to feed on an already strapped budget.

It's best to disallow: /feed pages "completely" so you own page can survive... noting that the content is still in your category pages so it's still useful info to your domain [search engine-wise]

2. The other issue... if you have lots of categories with few posts - you're wasting link juice... keep category low in number and as you link juice grows - expend your categories... however it you're not getting links naturally and you ain't doing link development...

Your niche blog "is already dead!" .., and likely why Google buried it.

Syndicated content never works as well as original. Sites with syndicated content just don't rank as high. Try dropping the syndicated posts and see what happens.

thanks for the feedback chaps.

I don't think its a DMCA because I haven't received any complaints, and I credit all syndicated posts back to the original publisher.

I might just have to take off the syndicated content and write more posts myself.

However, I have just had a thought. can over-pinging damage a blog? My feedwordpress plugin is set to check news every hour or so, so I guess in theory my blog could be pinging google throughout the day. Would that have a detrimental effect?

Thanks,