Today I have been introduced to the perils of online video marketing. I logged into my YouTube Account, only to find the following message:
ATTENTION
The following video(s) from your account have been disabled for violation of the YouTube Community Guidelines:
- Internet Marketing Tools – (donutdrinkp)
Everyone hates spam. Misleading descriptions, tags, titles or thumbnails designed to increase views are not allowed. It’s also not okay to post large amounts of untargeted, unwanted or repetitive content, including comments and private messages.
Your account has received one Community Guidelines warning strike, which will expire in six months. Additional violations may result in the temporary disabling of your ability to post content to YouTube and/or the termination of your account.
Date Received: August 12, 2010
The video, however, is nothing like SPAM. The tags were correct, the links away from it were to relevant sites mentioned in the video. It was linked to from credible blogs like the site of John Henshaw, the JAR Group, and other places. It was, since January, ranking #4 if you googled “Internet Marketing Tools”. And yet today, I logged in today and my video had been removed. I have been looking at the forums, and I’ve noticed that everyone accuses people who claim that Youtube pulled their video of lying. Well, I’m not lying. My video isn’t SPAM, it wasn’t marked incorrectly, and it was informative. You can view it from the VodPod channel below.
The truth is, I’m really upset by it. Because your apparently not allowed to appeal a video’s removal if it’s taken down for violating “Community Guidelines”. I guess this means that I can conclude that YouTube’s algorithms (or whatever is responsible for removing legitimate videos) needs work. I wish I could just leave YouTube, but it’s the biggest video site on the web, and so I sort need to be on it. But (in case someone from YouTube even cares), I feel a bit like someone just robbed my house. I feel vulnerable, violated, and helpless. I can’t really do anything about the fact that my video has been removed except write this little post. But God it makes me hate Google.
Have you ever had a video illegitimately removed from YouTube?
