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Welcome back to the series
a series for online content creators
and content managers...
Who also handle monetization.
I'm Monetized.
And I'm Organica.
In this episode,
we'll talk about user-generated content
and building your community.
Organica, do you also feel there's someone missing?
Yes, where's Aurora?
Aurora?
Hey, ladies!
Have you seen Aurora?
We haven't.
What are you doing here?
Oh, right.
I'm Martin Splitt. I'm an Open Web Cheerleader.
And I received a special invitation from Aurora
to participate in an episode
on user-generated content.
That's so 2008, by the way.
How is that still a thing?
User-generated content
is a great way to engage your users on your website.
Let me start by explaining what it is.
User-generated content
is content that users contribute towards
and that is visible
to at least a subset of other users of your site.
User-generated content
can include comments at the bottom of your pages,
images, video, discussions between users,
or complete pages created by users.
This is content submitted by users
who operate independently from your site.
Frequently, user-generated content
is different to the content that you create
and, hence, it can be difficult to supervise.
Any content published in your website
created by you or your users
will generally be considered together as a whole
for monetization policies
and ranking purposes.
Let's deep dive into user-generated content
in comments,
forums,
photo, video, and file sharing,
and online dating sites.
Wait.
Did you say comments?
Really?
Is that still a thing people do?
What's the deal?
If you want them,
enable them in your CMS or block system,
and you're done!
You've got to take this more seriously, Martin.
Comments are a great way for site owners
to build community and readership.
Because of that,
comment sections are often used by spammers
who run automated programs
that post spam to abuse them.
If you've come across comments
that looked like an advertisement
or a random link to an unrelated site,
then you've encountered comment spam.
Google might not always be able to differentiate
between your content
and the user-generated content
on the same page,
so you want to make sure
that it meets the guidelines.
Otherwise, these spam comments on a page
can impact your site's rankings.
If you allow automated spam
to appear on your site,
you'll be violating our AdSense program policies
and risking demonetization.
Right,
so comments are valuable,
but I should take care of them
so that they are actually constructive and useful.
Exactly!
Remember, your content can be undone
by hateful or vulgar comments from users.
Beyond violating monetization policies,
this has the potential to hurt your brand
and offend your user base.
That's why you should approach user-generated content with care,
creating a thriving community
while minimizing the risks.
How can I stay on top of all the comments
that users are posting on my articles?
There are a few things
you can do to that end,
like exercising active moderation,
for example, by publishing the respectful comments
and filtering out the hateful or abusive ones.
Consider using a trusted third-party plugin for commenting.
Many of these have robust moderation
and content filtering functionalities.
Having said that,
another way to tackle this
could be through a simple design change.
Rather than placing comments
on the same page as your content,
you can transfer comments
to a separate page with no ad code.
At the end of your monetized content,
place a call to action,
such as "User comments" or "View comments."
When a user clicks on this,
they are taken to a new page
with no Google ad code.
What about these good old bulletin boards?
Are they still around?
You mean forums? Yes!
They're still a very important place
for online communities
to gather around a variety of topics.
That is good, right?
Well, they can be an excellent way
of fostering a community.
People will share text, images, and videos with each other
and get to know each other.
Unfortunately, sometimes automated bots
invade these communities
and spam users.
Yeah, I understand that,
but moderating an active forum on your own
can be a little overwhelming.
Well, if there's an active community,
you can rely on it
and create different levels of trusted users.
For example, consider giving moderation abilities
to trusted community members
or limit posting for new users.
As your users provide their trustworthiness,
you can progressively allow them to post directly.
A variation of this
could be to limit the types of content
nontrusted users can submit.
For example, allow them to post text
but not images or links.
Yeah, that certainly helps build trust in the community.
Also, keep an eye on nontextual content,
like photos, videos, or other files.
These can be problematic
in terms of adult content,
copyright, malware,
or even illegal content,
and, therefore, violate publisher policies
or cause issues in Google Search.
Right, but...
I do like sharing my diving photos and videos
with other content creators and seeing theirs.
Is there a risk there?
As with text,
they can be a wonderful way
to build a community
around shared interests or creativity,
but you want to take similar measures
as you do for textual content
to prevent unwanted content
from showing up on your site.
That makes sense
because Google might not be able to distinguish
between the user-generated files
and those I put on the page.
Precisely!
Also, these services can be abused
to violate copyright,
spread malware or unwanted software
and violate publisher policies,
so constant surveillance is important.
I'm a bit confused.
If those things require a bit of extra care,
how is it with online dating
and user-generated content
that's potentially quite sensitive, too.
Online dating sites
are places where users add their photos, videos,
and other content to their profiles.
They can often include revealing images
that are not family safe.
While these types of images
may be relevant to the website,
non-family safe images are prohibited
under our AdSense publisher policies.
Therefore, don't monetize pages
with photos that are potentially non-family safe
or dating profiles
that may have non-family safe content.
Also, if a site is primarily oriented toward adult dating,
it is likely not compliant
with the Google AdSense Program Policies.
Let's say,
I were the site owner of a dating platform,
and users uploaded those pictures,
would that still be my responsibility?
If you want to monetize your content with Google,
you will be responsible
for all content on your pages
where the Google ad code appears.
This means
that to participate in Google's monetization programs,
you need to ensure
that all content,
including user-generated content,
complies with all applicable program policies
on pages with ads.
Because users can post anything,
you need to ensure
that what they post
complies with all applicable monetization policies.
Hola!
No! Not at all.
We were just discussing what to keep in mind
when having user-generated content
on your site.
Great!
Did Organica and Monetized convince you already
about how cool it is
when creating and engaging online communities?
Yes!
They also told me
what site owners should look out for.
I got to say
I'm a little bit scared now
of user-generated content.
Fear not.
Let's look at some implementation recommendations
to prevent abuse.
First and foremost,
assess the risks associated with user-generated content
before monetizing a page that has it.
For most publisher sites,
we recommend not to place Google ad code
on pages with user-generated content.
Any page that displays Google ads
is subject to policy enforcement.
Google applies its monetization policies
to the entire page.
If, for example, you have a comment section
below an article,
and one of the comments a user makes
contains dangerous or derogatory content,
which violates our policies,
your entire page could be demonetized.
To prevent this from happening,
you can apply a simple design change.
Move the user-generated content,
in this case, the comments section,
to a different page with no ad code.
Let your users know
that they can visit and participate in that section
with a call to action, such as "View comments."
Unless you can actively manage user comments,
this is likely the easiest solution.
Publish a content policy on your site.
Setting the rules of the game is important.
Clearly let your users know
what they're allowed to publish on your site
and what they're not.
Block user-generated content pages
to be indexed by default
so that you have control over what pages
you want the index to include.
This can be done with a
in the head section of a page.
You can remove that
once you have approved the content
on that specific page.
Another great and actually underused way
of telling Google when links posted on your site
have been added by users and not by you
is to mark such user-generated content links
in, for instance, comments or forum posts,
as
That discourages comments spam
and prevents these links
from being associated with your site.
If you want to recognize consistently trustworthy contributors,
you can actually remove this attribute
from the links they post.
Enable your users to report violations.
Next to each element of user-generated content,
add a flag or a report violation option
that allows your users
to report potentially problematic content.
Make sure you regularly review these reports
and act on them.
Yeah!
Your community can support you in running a tight ship.
Definitely.
In that sense, recruit moderators.
Right, because as your site grows,
a passionate community will, hopefully, form around it.
Then you can recruit moderators
to help you review content
and maintain a healthy community engagement.
Disable ad serving
until a post is reviewed.
Only enable ad serving
when you're sure
that a post complies with publisher policies.
Build or use an automated content filtering system
to detect the violations.
You can learn more about content filtering
in the resource linked in the description box.
Use a Captcha
on content submission
to fight back against bots.
Before users can submit content,
ensure that they're human beings and not bots,
For example,
by using Google's reCAPTCHA.
I see,
so user-generated content
is not a blast from the past
but it actually continues
to be great to gather a community
and engage people
around the content we produce and publish?
100%!
Yes!
Also,
with this great power,
comes a responsibility, too,
like, for instance, moderating the user-generated content
empowering trusted community members
to keep the platform clean and safe
and actually paying attention to what's happening on my site
in order to make sure
it does follow the guidelines for certain ads.
Bravo, Martin!
Remember, user-generated content on your site
may be considered as another element of it
as a whole,
so don't neglect it,
but don't leave it out entirely either.
It can be a great way to foster a community
around your content.
Thank you for entering our community, Martin,
and sharing your views
on user-generated content.
The next episode will be around tools
and understanding their benefits
when creating sustainable monetized websites.
Like and share this video
and subscribe to this channel
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Can we actually do this again?
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