keyword tracker violates google policy?

We have been using keyword tracker to check ranking for several weeks now and have remained constant in rankings, position 4-6 for our keywords. We have today dropped to 189 and 319. Googles policy states:

You may not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system without express permission in advance from Google. Note that "sending automated queries" includes, among other things:

using any software which sends queries to Google to determine how a website or webpage "ranks" on Google for various queries;
"meta-searching" Google; and
performing "offline" searches on Google.

Have we been penalized for using this keyword/ranking tracker? If so I've just lost my job!

 

If that were true it would be an excellent way to burn your competiton.
So..... I think it cannot be true...

 

The keyword tracker uses Google's API to do the queries, so it there is no problem at all with it.

 

Doubtful as the Keyword Tracker uses the Google API which is one of its intended purposes. The Google terms are to prevent automated queries using the normal search and then scraping the page, not the API.

edit: Beaten to it by fryman

 

Thanks, that makes me feel a little better, I still need to explain why we dropped off the map today.

 

Here's the API TOS:
http://www.google.com/apis/api_terms.html

You should check your actual positions on Google, ehenderson. The API isn't returning your actual Google rankings.

See #25 here:
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/faq.html

 

I have checked, they are accurate, unfortunately

 

Then you'll need to post a website review (get more posts first) with full details so we can examine the situation.

 

Or wait a day or two to see if things return to normal.

 

We just hired an SEO company about 3 weeks ago to work on the two sites that fell off the face of the earth, I would blame them except that our competition has also fallen in rank for the first time in 5 months. Others have just moved up. Anyone heard of Google doing making any changes over the weekend?

 

If any one of us could answer that question, we'd be filthy rich

 

I'd be interested to see what the 'SEO Company' did. Seems quite a coincidence.

 

I think Google made some changes in the algo this weekend. I saw my SERP's go from below the radar to less-than-acceptable rankings for one of my sites Saturday. G seems to do this on a somewhat regular basis: Mid-March I saw the opposite happen for the same site.

I used the lull in traffic to redesign the site. The avg number of pages viewed went from 6 to 12 per visitor and the percentage of visitors bookmarking the site rose to nearly 16%. I figure if G ever decides my site is worthy again, I'll be ready.

SE traffic is a great way to get visitors but they (SE's) are fickle.

 

Fickle, OK but from a ranking of 6 to 189 is absurd. All of our keywords, even the obscure ones have disapeared. We went from #1 to 82 overnight. We held #1 for this keyword for 5 months. We purchased a new domain last week and duped the content from one of our other sites that had a PR of 5 and a ranking of 12 for our main keyword. Could this have had an effect?

 

Yeah, I'd say that's a good place to start.

 

It is safe to say that the culprit is not the Keyword Tracker. Your posts have thrown up other possibilities. I´d say that wth an across the board drop like you describe, something´s gone awry. I´d start with looking at what the SEO company did.

If I understand the dupe thing, you duped content from an established site on to a new one which I think would just result in the new one being ignored.

 

Thats what I thought. I have a lot of explaining to do and wish I knew where to start. The SEO company would be a good place but doubt they could have that detrimental an effect in such a short time. I'm hoping the results will return to "normal" in a day or two. Has anyone heard of anything like this happening since the major algorithm rewrite?

 

If it does not all return to normal then you´d help your own case here by giving the url. If anything stands out as being glaringly anti-seo friendly, you´ll soon hear about it.

Hope it works out for you.

 

If you go through the boards, you will see google has gone through a major change for a lot of sites over the last few days.

I experienced a similar drop for a site that has had top 10 rankings for a long time. A bunch of spammy looking junk sites have taken over the rankings.

There is nothing you should do until you know the change is permanent. Going from #1 to #400 has happened before, and I sure it will happen again. That's google- bless their souls.

 

premiermassagechairs.com and .massage-chairs.com are the two sites that have taken the biggest hit. The former has been #1 for the keywords "shiatsu massage chairs" for months and in now 80+. The later was #6 for "massage chair" and is now 189 the former was 12 for this term and is now 319.