My site used to be at the top of Google for many, many important search words...now I'm hardly anywhere to find and my site dropped from a PR5 to a PR3. I have all the key words on my site that relate to my site and it is not a spam site. I've tired adding more articles on my site and writting text in normal english without hidding any obvious repetitive key words that google might catch....and yet for the last year I haven't seen any improvements on my site. I tried finding what my competition has that I don't have on my site...and I have a lot more valid information on my site. Then I started wondering maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way...maybe I should be wondering about what I have that they don't have. The only thing I see right now, is google ads. They are all over my site...could this be the problem?
Google wont punish your site for google ads. This is the most illogical answer. Check if you got any penalty for paid links, duplicate content etc.
It wouldn't be to smart of Google to penalize one of its ad publishers. If you provide a URL I can overview the site and see if anything sticks out. SEO doesn't ever end, your always going to have to adapt, optimize, experiment, research etc constantly to keep your current SERPs & rank or get higher.
ya why will google punish your site for putting their ads on ur site , by they way they will not punish you but praise and give you some higher rank the ranks are falling because of limited link to your site there should be many so keeping getting link and your pr will go up
I do not believe that this is the case. As others mentioned, it is not in Google's interest to lower the ranking of a site that displays AdSense ads.
Your are making Google more money, they wouldn't have there shareholders in mind if this were the case.
Actually, I heard the opposite. I remember reading from two people who took off all thier adsense ads from their site and put in Yahoo ads. They claim their site's SERPs tumbled after that.
May be you are using other Paid Link Program (Did I say text link ads ). Cause it seems that google now want to monopoly this market too. You will never ever hear by google about using NOFOLLOW in google adsense.
Its not about "adsense ads" its about ads in general & google do include their own "adsense ads" in the calculation. I have had a number of experiences where having ads on a site can hurt your rankings. Its more about how much content you have versus the amount of ads particuarly with small content sites targeting a competitive topic, my personal experince has lead me to not place ads on a site "targeting a competitive topic" for a good few months maybe more in certain cases a middle ground can be after a few months putting a few ads on all pages except the home page.
Thank you all for your replies...that's a good thing it doesn't affect it (hopefully) but it still makes things worse cause I'm frustrated with google. One day it likes what you do and the next it decides that's not what it wants... Anyway...my site has been around since I believe June 2004...I know it's some time in 2004. It didn't come out of the sandbox until Jan 2005. But it came out really high.
I agree with godmode, Ads is good and google won't punish sites who have ads unless you violate adsense rules.