I would like to market a web site, but before I do, I need the straight scoop. However, comments made by a trusted friend need to be questioned first. Allegedly this occurred two years ago. My friend had a top 10 ranked site in Google, with over a million visitors. She launched an internet store on another site. She signed up with AdWords to market the other site. She worked hard and got the new site to be top ranked also. The increased revenue and visitor stream from Adwords did not justify the cost, so she stopped AdWords. Both of her sites immediately lost their Google rankings. She says she had no Google ranking for one year to the day. Is it possibly true that Google may have penalized her site rankings intentionally for leaving the program?
I'd first check to see exactly how she worked hard to get the sites ranked. It could just be that she did something against Google's policies at a time when they changed their algorithm. It might just be a coincidence.
Thanks for the responses. She really did have a terrific site to begin with. It was unique, extremely popular, and she had it running for many years. In particular, was there a time when they first began Adwords that they experimented with penalty algorithms for withdrawing ads? The "year to the day" comment, from someone I consider reputable and knowledgable, with no reason to lie to me, makes me very cautious of jumping in. I am hoping that all was coincidental. I would be very relieved if such was the case. I have actually had ISP's and domain sales companies give me credits to run Adwords, but I always feared jeopardizing my rankings. I've actually been just a click away from signing up, but I backed out in fear over losing rankings. If anyone has an experience that they think they were penalized due to ending or scaling down an Adwords campaign, please advise. If there are no corroborating reports, I'll assume coincidence and consider laying down a little money for Adwords or competitive programs. I appreciate the immediate response of No. If everyone says there is no penalty, I suppose the biggest remaining problem is false clicks, but that is another topic.
Could the traffic came from the adwords and the adsense backlinks and when she removed that, the number of backlinks fell and thus the change in the ranking position ?
She never tried AdSense, so that's not it. She never put AdWords on her popular site which had a million visitors prior to the AdWords campaign. I'm trying to think of a possible explanation other than the penalization theory. Perhaps her site legitimately disappeared from rankings due to a plethora of new, competing sites in her subject category. So far, nobody says they've been penalized in terms of search engine position after stopping their ads, so that's a very good sign, and makes me feel more confident. Thanks for the responses!