blueeyes197177
New Member
I run a NY sports themed site: http://www.nysportsboard.comParticipation has been scarce lately, so I installed an automatic news input posts off of some RSS feeds. I created a user named NEWSFEED and periodically run the update and have news pumped into the forums. The posts are snippets of the article with a link back to the original news source.I did this to try and stimulate more posting - I figured if I could have fresh content auotamtically updated daily, it would get members to be more apt to post replies to those topics.I had it set to unlimited responses, which I think is too much. I will limit the updates to a few areticles per day so as not to flood the boards - especially now when I have little action.So my question is this - will this get me banned by Google? WIll they consider this some sort of SE spam and block from search results/ PR?I posted the topic on the news area of my site here: http://nysportsboard.com/ftopic1193.php and ATNO pointed this out to me.It won't get your site banned by Google, no, it's just adding more content. But, Google's system is smart enough to notice when sites suddenly start getting huge increases in content, and they can spot duplicate content - which may harm you a bit.Good call. I think the smartest thing would be to limit the posts each day to 3 or 4. As more people start posting I could probably increase the frequency and amount. I don't want some topics being buried by 40 news posts per day.Well, obviously I gave my opinion at your board, but in an effort to help, I think I'll add a couple things here. I think your overall idea is probably pretty good. I just find it hard to agree that forum posts are the best venue for an RSS feed. I have often considered an RSS feed for BR, but have always planned and will probably do it as a sidebar.My overall opinion is that it's just too impersonal. I thought you were doing just fine without it. I mean, I know you are in a lull, but it's just the time of the sports year. An alternative thought would be to set up sort of a "test" board for yourself and have the feed post there. Then sort through the articles yourself and post the ones most relevent to your forums that you think will spark interest.In the longrun, it comes down to the fact that I would rather reply to a post that a real person made that I have some expectation will interact with me, than I would a computer generated post. It takes time and effort to grow your forum and gain a consistant membership of regular posters. Just ask any of the forum owners here who have successful forums. For the first year or so, you are going to be making a lot of the posts yourself until you get the interest and participation up. Nothing to get frustrated about -- it's just sorta reality.Not a bad idea to send the feeds to a private forum, then move over anything worth keeping in the live forums. For now I've just limited it to 3 feeds per day in each forum, hopefully that will provide some fresh info every day and not flood the forums with a posting bot.