Does Google hate the dollar sign, am I sandboxed, or am I just paranoid?

Between July 1st and July 13th I was getting really good search traffic between 200-238 search hits a day. But now it has slowly dropped all the way down to as low as 93 hits a day.

Does Google hate my site because I use dollar signs in the URL and title?

Or is this the "sand box" affect that I am feeling?

Or is this just happening because of the PR update?

Or is there maybe something more sinister going on here?

Any input is appreciated.

My site is www.lawltech.com

 

I would guess sandboxing. Can't have much to do with PR since that's a minimal factor in ranking.

 

google does not hate $ sign . i think your problem is sandbox

 

It unlikely has anything to do with the dollar sign -- just keep plugging away on your SEO and be patient. Don't stress over hiccups along the way .

 

I think you are both paranoid and in the "sandbox". I see your website is only 2 months old, and google last cached the site on July 25th. Biggest thing to focus on right now is your content and working on your backlinks. Those backlinks from more reputable websites is what will help pull you out of google's sandbox much faster.

 

Phishie, bear in mind that I'm a Web developer, and what I'm about to say will be mainly from that perspective.

I took a look at your Web site's source code (as well as running it through the W3C HTML validator). You have 322 HTML validation errors that need to be cleaned up pronto. I understand you're using a content management system, but with a little care, even the worst CMS can be bent to your will.

One of the common problems with your (lack of) validaiton is the use of the amphersand character in your URLs. Amphersands are delimiters, and should not be used as data (either in your page content or your links). Simply put, you need to ESCAPE them. You can do this by using the Unicode character entity & in your links. For example, the link (in your code) would look like yoursite.com/index.php?action=products&product=hockey-stick (just an example), but the browser output (not to mention the search engines) would read it as yoursite.com/index.php?action=products&product=hockey-stick

Clearing up that little mess will help user agents (which include browsers, mobile devices, and search engine spiders) better be able to parse those links.

You also have attributes that require values, yet are being left blank (scope="" being one of them). I strongly suggest you clean up your validation errors and get your page to validate before doing anything else (the "anything else" will be covered in the next paragraph of this post).

Looking further at your code, you have a LOT of it, and I do mean a lot. You have script files that should be called from external files (and preferably blocked via a robots.txt file) and inline styles that should not even be in the HTML code anyway (call them from a single external stylesheet instead). You also have a LOT of individual topics competing for attention on your home page as well - I'd move them to separate pages instead. Perhaps featuring a few of the offerings on your home page every week could help. Especially since the page would be updated regularly - search engines love content served fresh all the time.

I'm not really fond of the layout tables, but from a search engine's perspective, it won't make a bit of difference since it'll happily gobble up as much of the content in them as possible.

If you want more tips and suggestions though, don't hesitate to ask. I'm sure you'll get a lot of wonderful advice here that would help you out.

 

how old is your site again???

 

I think you are in sand box

 

thats a good piece of advice Dan.. rep added.

 

My site is only three months old... Wow... for some reason I thought it was like 5-6 months old. This site used to be a tech news blog, but then I discovered that I don't really enjoy blogging and "if you write for readers, then you'll get readers." I don't want readers, I want buyers. Haha. So I've only started the daily deals and "buyer content" a little over one month.

Maybe I am starting to look a little more spammy and Google doesn't like that?

Great advice Dan, I'll work on the W3C Validation a bit.

So you are saying I shouldn't put every deal on the main page? Maybe I should only put the really good ones on the main page? Or are you talking about how I have the computer review mixed in with the Daily Deals?

Thanks. I appreciate the help.

 

All of the above, Phishie.

 

How about if I split the long "review" articles so that you have to click "read more" to read the whole thing. Would that be good, or should I still just keep them on another page?

 

I'd put the reveiws in their own section. You could feature a specific review on your home page and then have your reviews section be like an archive of reviews you've done in the past. Afterall, the point of a home page is to draw people further in to your Web site - if everything is on the home page, not only will it be cluttered (and look worse than my closet when I was a kid) but your visitors will have little to no incentive to look at your other pages.

Forget SEO for a moment (when you have some free time of course) and go visit your favorite Web sites. Look at them the way you usually do when you're not worrying about Internet marketing - you're just a regular user at this point. Ask yourself "what is it about their home page I like so much?" Study how the page is organized (don't worry about the overall appearance, but do consider the placement - and the amount of - of the information).

After looking at a couple of your favorite sites in this manner, you should identify some key practices you may wish to incorporate into your own home page.