[newcomer]

Hello Everyone..

Many may have seen my posting here alot lately, as many of us are in the same situation and no idea what is going on with Google.

To refresh everyone,

My site was in the #3 to #6 position for all of my keywords on Google for over 3 years until 17 Dec. 2004. My site without warning went from the above position to #103 to #130 on Google and has been there since.

On Yahoo and MSN, and just about any search engine out there that does not use Google, I am still #1 to #4 for all my keywords.

Only on Google, was my site affected.

I update my site at least 1 to 2 times every week, as what we do, the people want tosee new information every week to help them decide what they want to do. This is in the tourism industry.

When searching on Google for any of my keywords, there are only 16,000 to 84,000 sites that come up for the keywords. Out of all those, there are only about 6 legit sites that do what we do. The rest are just joe blow trying to make a dollar for something they have nothing to do with, mirror sites, blatent spam sites, and tons of sites that have nothing to do with what you were searching for. All of course above my site.

There is not one site that offers all the information we do, and of course, there isnot one site that is up to date as ours.

There is not any sites out there duplicating my content. My site is up and running all the time, and has not been offline at all for to cause on any problems at Google. I have not other sites out there. There are no affiliate sites. My PR is at 3 now, but was at PR 4 until about 2 weeks ago.

From all I have looked at, there is no reason for my site to be kicked down by Google.

I am sure all this sounds familiar to many since 17 Dec. 2004.

This has been about 5 weeks now, and my site slowly is moving farther and farther down the index (103, 106, 110) etc.

Does anyone out there have any idea what is going on?

How many of you are in the same situation as I am?

I have personally e-mailed Google also about 6 times in 2 years about a person who has a site which is somewhat a legit site, but over the last 2 or 3 years, he has been making new sites offering the same thing as his first (mirror sites) trying to take the top spots on Google, and he keeps getting awarded by Google for a job well done. He now has 6 sites offering the same thing on 5 of them (2 mirror, 1 re-direct, and all are pretty much similar content with slight variations). All Google say's to me is that they may look into it. This has been going on now for at least 2 years and 6 e-mails to Google with complete details. All that Google keeps doing is awarding this person more top positions on Google, and then pushingmy site down from #3 and #6 to since 17 Dec. 2004 to #103 to #130.

I really hope that we can all put our ideas together to figure out how we can all get out of this hole on Google. It does not look like Google will admit that there is a poblem, and it sure looks like Google is just making things worst, not better.

Newcomer

[dazzlindonna]

Have you checked all of your outbound links to see if they are still linking to good sites? Recently, Google has banned quite a few sites, and if you are inadvertantly linking to one, that could be the problem. I'm in the process of doing the same thing, and yes, I had a site that was affected by the Dec. update and have not yet gotten it to return to its original rankings.

[Adrew]

dazzlindonna,

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

As I was reading your post, I thought to myself, "I've checked everything on my links page, I'm in good shape there. That couldn't be the problem." Then I clicked on the site in your sig, and started reading about the time consuming process of checking links manually. While reading that, it occurred to me I have another page on my site with outbound links.

BINGO!!! I found the following:

1 URL changed, no forwarding from old URL
4 URLs dead, no new site that I can find
1 URL going to 403 Forbidden!!!

I'd say that's likely to get Google ticked off at me. I can't believe I missed this, but it just goes to show sometimes when things go awry, go back to the basics and keep looking until you find the problem. If it weren't for your post, I wouldn't have thought of this!

I'll let you know if this gets me out of deep doo doo with Google, but at the very least it might have prevented an even worse problem down the road. THANKS AGAIN!

Drew

[dazzlindonna]

Well, I hope it does help, but remember, it may not be the actual problem at all. Just one of those things I'm considering as being the problem. Still...it never hurts to do these things.

[Mattk]

Originally Posted by Adrew

dazzlindonna,

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

As I was reading your post, I thought to myself, "I've checked everything on my links page, I'm in good shape there. That couldn't be the problem." Then I clicked on the site in your sig, and started reading about the time consuming process of checking links manually. While reading that, it occurred to me I have another page on my site with outbound links.

BINGO!!! I found the following:

1 URL changed, no forwarding from old URL
4 URLs dead, no new site that I can find
1 URL going to 403 Forbidden!!!

I'd say that's likely to get Google ticked off at me. I can't believe I missed this, but it just goes to show sometimes when things go awry, go back to the basics and keep looking until you find the problem. If it weren't for your post, I wouldn't have thought of this!

I'll let you know if this gets me out of deep doo doo with Google, but at the very least it might have prevented an even worse problem down the road. THANKS AGAIN!

Drew

I really do hope that was the problem but I doubt it, 5 dead links and 1 to a 403 wont get google ticked off, I think what dazzlindonna was suggesting you check that you are not linking to any so called "bad neighbourhoods" ie gambling,RX/med and adult sites. Linking to those kind of sites can get you banned or penalized in google.

Linking to dead sites is common and I really doubt google would ever ban/penalize you for that.

Kind Regards
Matthew

[ledfish]

Originally Posted by Mattk

II think what dazzlindonna was suggesting you check that you are not linking to any so called "bad neighbourhoods" ie gambling,RX/med and adult sites. Linking to those kind of sites can get you banned or penalized in google.

Kind Regards
Matthew

I would like to see one bit of proof that linking to adult sites can get you banned. I doubt linking to gambling, RX/med sites could get you banned either.

Sorry, but I have a real problem with those that spread untrue information trying to present it as though it were cast in stone. Google has never said that and to top it all off, they have never even defined bad neighborhoods. Now surely linking with banned sites is not a good idea and would be considered a bad neighborhood as well a link farms and FFA sites. But Adult sites are not universally considered anymore of a bad neighborhood than real estate or travel sites.

[Tony B]

Originally Posted by Mattk

I think what dazzlindonna was suggesting you check that you are not linking to any so called "bad neighbourhoods" ie gambling,RX/med and adult sites. Linking to those kind of sites can get you banned or penalized in google.

What a very, very strange notion. Adult, gambling etc sites aren't by definition 'bad neighbourhoods' and linking to them certainly WON'T get you penalised as such. A 'bad' site has little to do with the subject matter and everything to do with the optimisation and linking methods the site itself uses.

I both link to and receive some very nice ratings boosts from some of the sites you consider 'bad' so have half a clue on the subject matter ;)

[Tony B]

Originally Posted by ledfish

I would like to see one bit of proof that linking to adult sites can get you banned. I doubt linking to gambling, RX/med sites could get you banned either.

Sorry, but I have a real problem with those that spread untrue rumors.

Damn you beat me to it

[ledfish]

Originally Posted by Tony B

What a very, very strange notion. Adult, gambling etc sites aren't by definition 'bad neighbourhoods' and linking to them certainly WON'T get you penalised as such. A 'bad' site has little to do with the subject matter and everything to do with the optimisation and linking methods the site itself uses.

I both link to and receive some very nice ratings boosts from some of the sites you consider 'bad' so have half a clue on the subject matter ;)

Tony, wanna trade links ? LOL

[Tony B]

Originally Posted by ledfish

Tony, wanna trade links ? LOL

But recip links are dead surely! Trading links will just move us both further down the listings???

HUGE ;)

[christophera]

Originally Posted by newcomer

I have personally e-mailed Google also about 6 times in 2 years about a person who has a site which is somewhat a legit site, but over the last 2 or 3 years, he has been making new sites offering the same thing as his first (mirror sites) trying to take the top spots on Google, and he keeps getting awarded by Google for a job well done.

Take the hint... google doesn't care, they would just delete your email as - another - webmaster complaining because someone else ranks higher than them.

But take the second hint as well... the research you have done on your competitor has given you a roadmap to success. Can't beat them? Mimic them!

[leedslad73]

Newcomer drop me an PM with your URL - I'm having EXACTLY the same problem as you, and I too have several tourism sites, we should work together, to see if we can beat this!

[Sweat]

Originally Posted by dazzlindonna

Have you checked all of your outbound links to see if they are still linking to good sites?

This does not have a material impact on improving the rankings. I've gone through every link by hand and removed all of the dead one's, but have not seen a material impact.

This said, my site has moved up slightly since getting its butt kicked by the Goog. Shortened title tags seem to be a helper, but I really can't put my finger on why some key pages have held their rank and others have been sent into Google's deep space.

I'm continuing to try new things and see what works. I just altered my style sheet to resize the header tags. (Not being a programmer, I'm pretty proud of myself for this one ). I'm now in the process of incorporating H1 and H2 tags in lieu of the H3 and H4 tags that I have been using. I'm also adding alt tags to my site's logo image, being sure to customize the tag for each individual page.

I have no idea if this will help or not, but since what I was doing up until mid-Dec no longer works, I need to make sure my SEO is as good as possible.

On a side note, my sites PR went from 7 to 6 and I continue to rank behind non-relevant sites.

[dazzlindonna]

sweat, i wasn't just talking about removing dead links (although that's always a good thing to do), but checking all the live links carefully to be sure you are not linking to a bad neighborhood. it may have been a good neighborhood in the past, but perhaps has recently been declared bad. google recently banned a lot of sites, so what once was good may now be bad.

[Adrew]

Well, perhaps I am grasping at straws here, thinking that the dead links have somehow hurt my site. At any rate, they are gone/updated now, so that one page is improved over what it was.

I know my site better than anyone else, and I know what other sites/pages are out there on similar subjects, and my site does have unique information that just isn't provided elsewhere. I also know I've done absolutely nothing that I know of that could cause me indexing problems with Google. It just doesn't make sense to me that my site would take a nosedive the way it did, along with lots of other sites, the majority of which dropped in mid-December.

At any rate, perhaps this wasn't the problem with my site, and it won't make any difference, but at least I'm now looking at my site more closely. I'm certain someone will figure out what changed, and there is still the possibility that it isn't anything we've done, it's just a problem Google is having. I also wonder if my site could have been down when Google tried to crawl it prior to the December update. I know my host was having some upline network problems in October and November, and they've increased redundancy since that time to make sure it won't happen again. I have lots of URLs showing on Google instead of page titles/descriptions, and according to Google that means the page didn't get crawled completely.

I'm waiting for the next big update to see if things straighten out on their own. The way my traffic dipped in mid-December, it won't be hard to see the spike occur, if it does.

Drew