What's the Worst Google Has Screwed You?

[MrX]

With the recent threads on dramatic SERP drops, and that guy who lost 2 employees "because of Google", I thought it would be good to ask: what's the worst thing that happened to you as a result of a Google SERP change, or even AdSense change?

[Mong]

My one very clean site doesn't appear on first page :o
Niche is Education.
And no black hat at all except some days of coop use.

Its indexed well but have valuable inbound links as well.

[Antz]

I hear all these stories about Google screwing people over, and pissing them of, but they've been fine for me, they've only penalized me for stuff that I deserve. :D

[1EightT]

I once had an 8 year old pr6 site get completely banned for no reason. It took 6 months for me to get it back in the index.

[SEOSURAT]

Sometime this happens due to link farm and bad links you got

[vid]

It is really interesting, what do you think maybe google page ranking algorithm has some bugs. Because I know lot of people that has such problems (from nowhere) ...

[ferret77]

I have tons of banned domains ...

but I think the worst is they are punishing good pages on a website because there are "bad" pages on a website

and by bad I mean duplicate, if you have a great site about dogs, and you add some pages of amazon products for dogs, so you can earn a few bucks off your site

The good pages of the site should not be punished for that

[tbarr60]

With SERP's, I take anything I get as gravy, it's free traffic, Google doesn't owe me any traffic. I just need to be diverse in my topics so I don't get crushed if one sites slips in the rankings. They create algorythms, they don't include code to get some little guy. I don't flatter myself by thinking they are doing something with me as the target. Any damage is friendly fire.

[teamshop]

Putting my entire PR5 download site into their supplemental index definately wasn't nice of them...

[karan265]

Google AdSense screwed my happines...

I lost so much money

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=200995

[oseymour]

Google AdSense screwed my happines...

I lost so much money

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=200995

sorry to hear...they have been good to me....never had a banned site...I love google :D

[minnseoelite]

technically google does not screw anyone its an algorithm a computer so if you have a site that has something really bad happen to it either 1. You finally got caught with your spamming black hat ways 2. You where lazy and did not work on your sites content or incoming links enough to deserve to hold your ranking 3. Some a** Google bowled your site cause they was pissed off at you.

[tbarr60]

Google bowled

Somehow I missed that term and it's been around for a year. Could I have Google bowled my own site by putting site wide links to my site from another one of my sites? I have sites with over 200 pages and add links and banner ads globally to help out a new site when I launch. I feel better about giving myself site wide links than I do submitting my sites lots of directories. My links on my sites are pure advertising, directories are just links for search engine bots to see.

Am I Google Bowling myself with my site wides? :confused:

[kevinn]

Google doesnt screw anyone, if you dropped in the rankings - it's either something you did to cause it or your competitors are working harder then you.

[minnseoelite]

Somehow I missed that term and it's been around for a year. Could I have Google bowled my own site by putting site wide links to my site from another one of my sites? I have sites with over 200 pages and add links and banner ads globally to help out a new site when I launch. I feel better about giving myself site wide links than I do submitting my sites lots of directories. My links on my sites are pure advertising, directories are just links for search engine bots to see.

Am I Google Bowling myself with my site wides? :confused:

Sitewide links are ok to a degree just dont over due it. More often than anything Google bowling occures when one of your competitors places thousands of links to your site on non related bad neighborhood sites using all kinds of crap anchor text.

[NetMidWest]

technically google does not screw anyone its an algorithm a computer so if you have a site that has something really bad happen to it either 1. You finally got caught with your spamming black hat ways 2. You where lazy and did not work on your sites content or incoming links enough to deserve to hold your ranking 3. Some a** Google bowled your site cause they was pissed off at you.
You probably never heard of a 302 hijack (http://clsc.net/research/google-302-page-hijack.htm#002a), nor seen one. At this time, it seems fixed, but the effect was that you loose your serps, pagerank, everything. It took awhile to figure out that linking absolutely would solve most of the problem (they would need some good links to get Google's attention and time to let the duplicate content penalty pass) but linking relatively is a perfectly allowable method, simplifies scripts, and can decrease a page's size. 302 redirects were used as click tracking long before Google came around, and they did nothing while this problem raged for quite some time. See this section of the same page: http://clsc.net/research/google-302-page-hijack.htm#004

I was caught in more than one, working to get de-listed from one site, only to find another taking over. Many were spammy Adsense pages, and Google had no motivation until enough attention was drawn to the problem that temporary fixes were placed, making it a rarity. But it would still happen occasionally, particularly to brand new sites or domains that would receive attention quicker than solid links could be built. It really stunted the growth of many sites and companies.

Fixed or not, everyone should link absolutely - with the full http-domain-file version, not /file or ../file, etc., as the problem has been seen elsewhere, and I don't trust Google not to roll back to an algo or crawling pattern that would bring it back. Many engineers did not see it as a big problem, or saw it as something wrong with the site itself. It can take some effort to link absolutely, editing scripts, templates, etc., but...

A mistake made once can be made again.

[cafinater]

Google has more humans than ever looking at sites. a few sites I know of had a human visitor from google, and soon after had penalties.

[cafinater]

If you suddenly start making a LOT of money from adsense, (i.e. $300 a day) due to great Google SERPs, and then after a time it suddenly drops off again, did Google screw you, or give you a break in the first place? Believe me, if you start to hit the big money, don't count on it continuing... If it does, great, but DON'T count on it... (now it's back to fighting hard for every little increase...)

[JohnScott]

PR8 to PR0 kind of hurt. But just because at that time PR was more closely tied to rankings.

[naphets66]

Christmas 2004 they banned a site of mine. Not one since, luckily. I have changed my ways a little. I went from $5000 a month to zero and was looking at the tax man coming in three months.

[minnseoelite]

You probably never heard of a 302 hijack (http://clsc.net/research/google-302-page-hijack.htm#002a), nor seen one. At this time, it seems fixed, but the effect was that you loose your serps, pagerank, everything. It took awhile to figure out that linking absolutely would solve most of the problem (they would need some good links to get Google's attention and time to let the duplicate content penalty pass) but linking relatively is a perfectly allowable method, simplifies scripts, and can decrease a page's size. 302 redirects were used as click tracking long before Google came around, and they did nothing while this problem raged for quite some time. See this section of the same page: http://clsc.net/research/google-302-page-hijack.htm#004

I was caught in more than one, working to get de-listed from one site, only to find another taking over. Many were spammy Adsense pages, and Google had no motivation until enough attention was drawn to the problem that temporary fixes were placed, making it a rarity. But it would still happen occasionally, particularly to brand new sites or domains that would receive attention quicker than solid links could be built. It really stunted the growth of many sites and companies.

Fixed or not, everyone should link absolutely - with the full http-domain-file version, not /file or ../file, etc., as the problem has been seen elsewhere, and I don't trust Google not to roll back to an algo or crawling pattern that would bring it back. Many engineers did not see it as a big problem, or saw it as something wrong with the site itself. It can take some effort to link absolutely, editing scripts, templates, etc., but...

A mistake made once can be made again.

Yes I have heard of a 302 hijack just forgot to mention it and yea I have been caught in that before and since then I use only absolute URL's in my linking no relative URL's

[MattKNC]

I have seen my AdSense income drop to 10% of the amount I was made, but I don't blame Google completely. Competition has squeezed me although I am irritated by all of the spammy "AdSense ready" sites created for no reason other than to get click money.

[Cartman]

October 2005, out of nowhere Google just came in and knocked us out completely, and things have never recovered. Totally legit e-commerce site, all white-hat, as with the OP, limited co-op use (but completely removed back in May 2006). No outbound advertising, AdSense, etc. We still rank great in MSN, but that's not helping too much.. It has REALLY affected our bottom line, as that's our primary source of income. :(

We're trying a different approach and targetting one of our less prominent products, since they're a lot less competition for those keywords. Right now, we're in position #968 in Google. And we fluctuate between #7 and #8 in MSN for the same keywords. It's proving to be quite the uphill battle!

[mikkom]

I have no idea what happened but it seems that Blosker adult section has been put 100% supplemental, guess what that did to my traffic, I'm pretty fucking annoyed to be honest (traffic dropped by thousands per day)

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:porn.blosker.com

edit: Oh great, few days ago other sections were not in supplemental, now EVERY FUNKING PAGE is in supplemental. What the f?

[gabrielangel]

The worst Google has screwed me was really my own fault. I waited until my X mas shipping deadlines were over to do a little face lift of my site. There were some semi major design changes and definitely some internal link changes. I was so dumb as to move or delete an files, but I DID have to rename a few and add some more internal links.

Needless to say my Google traffic dropped, but yahoo is now on a steady rise for me. I've just started getting increasing hits back from Google, so in early 2007 things should get back to where they were and hopefully beyond. Of course, everyday is another round of grinding it out trying to build natural links.

[visio]

With the recent threads on dramatic SERP drops, and that guy who lost 2 employees "because of Google", I thought it would be good to ask: what's the worst thing that happened to you as a result of a Google SERP change, or even AdSense change?

Well first of all Google doesn't screw anybody you do. Let me re-phrase the title more accurately. 'What is the worst you have ever screwed yourself?'

Its your fault when your rankings drop and change. You can't blame that on Google. Blame it on laziness, ignorance or not enough time but it certainly is not Google.

And I have not had any troubles with Google. I get more and more traffic everyday from Google so am very happy. When that changes I will figure out what I did wrong.

[nddb]

Google doesnt screw anyone, if you dropped in the rankings - it's either something you did to cause it or your competitors are working harder then you.

If you think those are the only two reasons people drop... you need to read more threads. =)

They just make changes constantly, it's constantly up and down, regardless of changes, regardless of competitors. You can not change anything, and rise and fall around competitors that aren't changing anything.

I think they have just build randomness into their algo myself.

[visio]

If you think those are the only two reasons people drop... you need to read more threads. =).

They are. Googles updates only elliminate factors, dis-value factors, increase value of factors or add new ones. The backlink building I do is not effected by Search Engine changes atleast not googles. I shouldn't read more threads you should stop reading threads. There is a lot of mis-information on DP forums and you need to be careful.

[NetMidWest]

Well first of all Google doesn't screw anybody you do. Let me re-phrase the title more accurately. 'What is the worst you have ever screwed yourself?'
I sure would like to hear your comments on the 302 redirect.
Be certain to read this post carefully:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=1964767
And of course, Claus Schmidt's page, linked from there.
On that page you will also find links to some interesting posts by Matt Cutts, one in which he discusses the fact that it was a part of the algo to return the wrong page (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-discussing-302-redirects/)... paragraph 3, to be specific.
That post was in early 2006, after they had fixed most of the problem.
You should also bear in mind that by default, a redirect outputs a 302 status code...

[transversestyles]

Every since this updated a few years ago I lost my #5 rank (for my main site) for most keywords and have been hovering around the 5th and 10th page forever it feels...

[jaree]

I had one of my big earner go from 1st position to 19 :( Lost all the traffic and loads of $$ but recovered within a week or so :) I dont know but it was for no reason. Site has been there for over a year (According to previous owner) and it was there for as long as i owned it but everything went fine after some time :)

[gabrielangel]

I see a new roller coaster in the future of Six Flags Theme parks ... it's called the Google coaster. Only some of the harness' will fit snug and the rest will have you holding on for dear life. The coaster will have record highs, record drops, and will from 0 to 60 in 4 secs and vice versa.

Seriously though, I could see a Google coaster at a theme park someday. They are trying to take over the world, so why not. A roller coaster would be a very fitting tribute.

[Netizen]

Google and their arrogant secrecy screwed me without notice and refused to even hint at what I did wrong.

I had an AdSense account that made an insignificant amount. I bought a website and suddenly started bringing in over $200 per month. They claimed I violated the TOS and closed my account. I appealed and they repeated the same canned statement. No clue as to which site did something wrong although it was probably the one I bought. I still don't know what I did wrong. If I had a clue, I would have fixed it. I refuse to advertise on Adwords now.

[dannbkk]

I payed for an advertising spot in adwords some time ago and it took them 1 month before my account was active with credit. I had telephoned the bank, they said it had went through successfully and after emailing google day after day they apologised and eventually activated it, but it had to go through about 10 hands before anyone acted on it, along with scanning and sending my payment of the bank invoice through and everything else. This has made me definately worried for the next time I want to credit adwords, so I dont think I would use the service again to be honest, or atleast until they introduce a more friendly way of crediting your account, im surprised they dont accept paypal?