Google punched me in the stomach

Discussion in 'SEO' started by abbynormal1, Jan 7, 2007.

  1. #1
    So, went to check our rankings on a few keywords today, since our orders were way down. We've been dropped to page 3+ for all our major keywords. We're even number 2 for the name of our web site, which is pretty unique. Ahead of us is a site that wrote an article that links to us.

    The only change we've made to the site within the last month is a small wording change to a link on our main page that links to one of our inside pages. Nothing significant.

    We climbed our way to #1 for 2 keywords and #2 for 1 by carefully finding and purchasing text links, articles, etc on quality, related web sites.

    Now we're dead in the water. Many of our content pages are being listed as "supplemental" results when I do a site:example.com. Any significance there?

    I'm just hoping I wake up tomorrow to being back in our previous position. Most likely, this nightmare is here to stay.
     
    abbynormal1, Jan 7, 2007 IP
  2. rosiee007

    rosiee007 Notable Member

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    #2
    Is your site new? How long have you been seeing 'good' rankings on Google?

    There must ne something wrong which caused all this. Are you getting links for your site.. and are you using unique content on your web pages? They shouldnt be going in Supplemental Results.
     
    rosiee007, Jan 7, 2007 IP
  3. kgrad

    kgrad Well-Known Member

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    #3
    Probably your competitors are really optimizing their sites. :)
     
    kgrad, Jan 7, 2007 IP
  4. chem

    chem Active Member

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    #4
    I'm doing a little web work for a company that sells homes and RVs. They were ranked for some AWESOME state terms and now their competitor(milliooonnnn dollar company) is up their next to them and on top of them in some keywords/phrases. I just impressed him the other day with what all he comes up for and now it's all gone. I hope he doesn't go check and get upset. One thing I suggested to him was getting sites to link to him and he may rank for other terms or rank higher for the ones he has and he responded with "I'm happy with where they are now".

    So, should I take this into my own hands and spend a few extra bucks on links? He already mentioned that if I get RVs and Homes selling because of the websites/internet I would be getting paid more. So far I have got him 1 interested buyer.

    Ugh, search engines.... work with me! :-p

    Good luck with your company, please tell me how you fix the problem. If I come into any good advice I'll update you! =)
     
    chem, Jan 7, 2007 IP
  5. Cypherus

    Cypherus Peon

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    #5
    The same thing happened with one of mine sites.. I have no idea what went wrong, because I hadn't been doing any blackhat seo! This is 3 weeks ago now, I my site SERP's still sucks :/
     
    Cypherus, Jan 7, 2007 IP
  6. abbynormal1

    abbynormal1 Peon

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    #6

    Google shows 1,140 backlinks to the site. Yahoo shows 59,768 backlinks. All our content was written by me personally. It's a pretty basic 7 page site. The supplemental thing is really odd.
     
    abbynormal1, Jan 7, 2007 IP
  7. abbynormal1

    abbynormal1 Peon

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    #7
    I'd like to add to this, we recently hit #1 for the most competitive keyword in our niche. We had been there for about 2 weeks before this happened. Could one of our competitors sabotaged us in some way?
     
    abbynormal1, Jan 7, 2007 IP
  8. kgrad

    kgrad Well-Known Member

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    #8
    Can you please tell us your url, then probably we can help you..
     
    kgrad, Jan 7, 2007 IP
  9. hadeedg

    hadeedg Banned

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    #9
    It sounds like something temporary in my opinion. Just check back soon and it should be fine
     
    hadeedg, Jan 7, 2007 IP
  10. abbynormal1

    abbynormal1 Peon

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    #10
    Ok, after more research, I've discovered that it appears that all my sub pages are still ranking. It's the main page (index.php) that seems to be completely removed from Google. Although several pages are listed as "suplemental" using the site: function, they still seem to rank.

    Any idea why the index.php page only would be removed from SERPS?
     
    abbynormal1, Jan 9, 2007 IP
  11. DSB

    DSB Peon

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    #11
    Have you got 'duplicate' home page links on your site?

    i.e. do you have links to your home page on your site that point to both http://www.YourSite.com and http://www.YourSite.com/index.php?

    If so, you might be being punished for 'duplicate' content.

    You might find out at the next PR update - have a look to see if different Google servers are ranking your site differently.
     
    DSB, Jan 9, 2007 IP
  12. Freewebspace

    Freewebspace Notable Member

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    #12

    Google's algorithim is a weird thing and I had a site called www.freewebspace.co.nr which has a framed page and Google will index only title and description of my site and not content and also

    google use to index a page called
    www.freewebspace.co.nr/home.html

    where I did not have a home.html page

    and also for one of my sites

    I changed the content some days back and Google is showing two index.php's for my site

    One index.php which was at the beginning and the other one index.php which is showing the changed content

    There is some thing weird going on
     
    Freewebspace, Jan 9, 2007 IP
  13. robster

    robster Peon

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    #13
    Same thing happened to me yesterday ... I was getting over 200 google referrals per day, and yesterday, I have all the sudden dropped to 0. I did reorganize my site in a very small way, using div tags instead of tables....

    Would this change it??

    Or would me changing the links to be absolute (http://www.mysite.com/xxx.php) instead of relative (../xxx.php)??

    Would it punish me for that? This seems pretty odd to me, and has halted most of my traffic.

    GOxxOffxxCampusxxdotxxcom is my website, if someone is willing to take a look
     
    robster, Jan 9, 2007 IP
  14. RNB Guru

    RNB Guru Peon

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    #14
    I have the same problem on my site (rnbxxhavenxxdotxxcom). The site was ranked #5 for a variety of terms including 90s r&b and 90s rnb but as of yesterday, my site dropped into the 30s for both terms. For most of its terms, the site disappeared completely, falling from ranks from 10-20 to nothing.

    The only reasoning I can think of is that I've been submitting to directories lately. Beyond that, my changes over the past few weeks have only been the adding of original content.
     
    RNB Guru, Jan 9, 2007 IP
  15. abbynormal1

    abbynormal1 Peon

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    #15
    Yeah, but what appears to be happening with mine is that only the main page (index.php) is removed from the Google Directory. That's why I've lost my rankings, because the main page is the page that had all the rankings!
     
    abbynormal1, Jan 9, 2007 IP
  16. superpump

    superpump Peon

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    #16
    you said you baught links, did you buy them to point to just your home page...

    I believe google will punish sites that have huge amounts of links pointing to one url
     
    superpump, Jan 9, 2007 IP