Google Has Wiped Me Out - Not Sure Why

by alfardo

Posted: 15 years ago 19 replies

INTERNET MARKETING

Hey there,

I have a niche site which had over 1000 indexed pages with google and yahoo. I ranked in the top 10 for over 20 related keywords to my niche. The site is on a domain that is over 12 months old. The site is pagerank 2.

The site was getting 500 hits per day average.

Then all of a sudden bang, traffic drops right off. I check site:mydomain.com in google and it comes back with no results. not one of my previous indexed pages is there.

I search my main keywords for which I was ranking very well first page and I'm no where to be seen not even in the top 100 infact my site doesn't show up at all.

Can any one shed any light on this, as you would expect I'm extremely worried as my related clickbank sales have gone from 2-3 per day to ZERO. a temporary thing do you think, what is the best way to find out how or why this happened and the best way to get it back and ranking.

Anyone who can offer any help I will be very very greatful

Thanks

Would this be

#google #ranking #wiped

actionplanbiz 15 years ago

I dont know but i was Looking at a Keyword Phrase that had 30,000 Competing Sites and checked again yesterday it dropped to 15,000 competing sites.

I wrote a couple articles for those keywords and im not sure if i should submit them yet.
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pheonix44 15 years ago

Please oh please tell me you had a list of prospects so you still have your income. Tell me you were not 100% dependent on Google.
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RockstarBen 15 years ago

I wish I had a pinpoint answer for you, but there are several things that could happen. If, for example, you have recently loaded a bunch of new content - it could be re-indexing... This may not apply, but if you have only recently begun to rank so well in Google (i.e. the last 90 days), you may just be playing the Google Dance - very common! If this is the case, you will be back in your ranks in a few days. In the meantime, whatever the cause, do the following:

1) Create some fresh blog content and make sure it gets indexed (Digg works for this)

2) Backlink - Get at least 20 backlinks for each keyword on PR 4+ sites

3) Rinse and repeat.

Also, check your site's privacy settings. If you are on WP, just check privacy settings. Stupidly simple, but I have seen this happen on accident. Not too long ago, that happened to me and I troubleshot it for days until I found out I had enabled privacy settings by mistake.

Hope this helps and sorry for your trouble - just keep at it!
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- alfardo 15 years ago
  
  Thanks for all the replies. I am still ranking in yahoo and Bing so getting some traffic. but the big G was my main source so it is hitting my income
  
  Yahoo site expolorer is showing over 1000 backlinks which is pretty much as it was before.
  
  I have just outsourced some web2.0 site creation and this is the only thing I can think of but not sure why they would take my site out of their listings for this. some of the web 2.0 sites are showing up when i search for my site just not my site itself.
  
  I will try login in to google webmaster tools I have a google account to see what I can find out. How else can you contact google.
  
  The site has been established for over 12 months it did a lot of moving about up and down the rankings but has been steadily growing over the last 3 months as I have spent more time on it. its real demoralising.
  
  Thanks
  
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Alican Yenidogan 15 years ago

I feel you.

Something similar happened to me with a domain I registered and started developing. After I created a few pages I waited for big G to index my pages but guess what... Nothing happened. So I checked from Internet Archive: Wayback Machine and realized that it was alive in 2003.. I realized that the old owner had done something that didn't suit G rules.

What you can do at this point is only one thing.

Log in to Google Webmaster tools (you need a google account as far as I know.) and verify your site. You'll be able to resubmit your site to google for reconsideration.

I've received an answer in 9 days and I'm back in Google. If you didn't do anything wrong, they will let you in!

Alican
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- radhika 15 years ago
  
  Have you submitted your sitemap.xml to Google, MSN and yahoo?
  
  If not do that and specify how often your pages will be updated.
  
  .
  
  Thanks
  
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alfardo 15 years ago

It is a WP blog and I have the google site map generator plugin which is set to update daily for posts.

I just checked google webmasters tools and the site is showing as verified.

I am about to submit a reconsideration for my site with google web
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TelegramSam

15 years ago

Never link directly from web 2.0 sites to your main money making site if there is any weird/black h a t seo stuff going on.

Always link first to very clean stable "buffer" sites. Then link from these to your main site.

This helps avoid google slaps of this magnitude.

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SurviveUnemployment

15 years ago

Originally Posted by TelegramSam

Never link directly from web 2.0 sites to your main money making site if there is an weird/BlueFart stuff going on.

Always link first to very clean stable "buffer" sites. Then link from these to your main site.

This helps avoid google slaps of this magnitude.

That's how I do it too. Let your visitors build your Web 2.0 links for you, and never EVER do anything sketchy like building a linkwheel around your main site. I do that stuff for my blahblah.wordpress.com blogs and my blahblah.blogspot.com blogs and I don't even link those to the sites I care about.

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bgmacaw 15 years ago

Originally Posted by TelegramSam

Never link directly from web 2.0 sites to your main money making site

Good idea. I'm going to go get my competitors slapped by doing this to their sites. :rolleyes::rolleyes:
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DogScout 15 years ago

Did you submit an unrealistic number of back-links in a short time? That is one thing they have been looking at more closely lately.

My understanding is they do not look at 2.0 properties that get large numbers of back-links quickly, (probably due to the more viral possibilities in that kind of environment), and that if you decide on doing a quick massive back-link campaign, to back-link to your YouTube or other 2.0 account that in turn links or is embedded in your site.

Mark
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Kevin Barnes 15 years ago

This has happened to me twice. Both time my site came back. I think Google is just tweaking somethings and it just happens to effect your site. It sucks... I know.
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DogScout 15 years ago

What he said: to buffer, then your site. Lol.
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alfardo 15 years ago

Hopefully my site will come back. Mostof my backlinks are built to so call hub sites and from them in to my main site. I have tried to protect my main site as much as possible. I haven't used any sort of blackhat backlink methods such as comment spamming of such like.

Just got to hope that google lets me back in and the money starts rolling again. In the mean time I will put effort in to some other sites.

Thanks for all the messages
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Oscar D 15 years ago

Dam that is scary

All I can suggest is do some backlinking and maybe a few article promotions via Ezine etc.

Hopefully that will help get the spiders onto your site again - do you regularly add new content - if not then try update and refresh the site with new updated content.

Hope that helps
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HomeComputerGames 15 years ago

Make sure your site hasn't been hacked in some way and that no one is able to use your email server for spamming from your domain.
If you have not done anything black hat then this may be at the root.

Have a URL we can look at?
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- SarahMcHarry 15 years ago
  
  I have detected something going on with Google within the last couple of weeks.
  
  I usually create 2-3 WP blogs per month to publicize new product launches. I can usually expect to get each blog indexed within 1-3 days and to be on page 1 of G. for the product name (or a variation thereof) within 1-7 days.
  
  But not lately. Even though I am doing everything that I have ever done before to make my new sites look clean, compliant and bot friendly, Google is ignoring them.
  
  I know sh*t happens but this divergence from previous behavior makes me think that the rules have changed. This may just be one of these temporary 'Google dances' or it may be something more permanent. I don't know.
  
  Sarah
  
  Thanks
  
  1 reply
  
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  Noktral LLC 15 years ago
  
  This happened to me once, and I was much like you; very dependent on Google. I begun to move on and find other ways of making income as well as other opportunities, and about two-three weeks after it happened, my site got re-indexed even higher than before. It's like every now and then Google takes a site out of its system to run a few checks on it Not sure if that's what's going on with yours, but it's possible.
  
  Either way it helps teach you not to keep all your eggs in one basket.
  
  Thanks
  
  1 reply
  
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  7_8_shortcuts 15 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Noktral LLC
  
  Either way it helps teach you not to keep all your eggs in one basket.
  
  Yes, that happened to me before too and was the reason I started to look into different directions and versatility (plus list building).
  
  Thanks
  
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