I think I've been Sandboxed--I need advice!

[mattyw]

I run a wedding website that has done well in Google for my major keywords almost since I created it a year and a half ago.

On the 17th of December, I stopped getting any referrals from Google, except for completely irrelevant keywords, such as "printed ribbon" which I don't have! The 16th was normal, but on the 17th it stopped, although my referrals from MSN and Yahoo have, if anything increased.

Further, I my link exchanges are relevant to the subject, and I do have content, which also did very well until the 17th, but is no longer listed.

My website is www.thinkwedding.com, and I would really appreciate it if someone could point the way to what I have done wrong.

Thanks,
M. A. Woodman

[cbp]

since I created it a year and a half ago.

You not sandboxed. The sandbox only applies to new domains/sites from around March of this year.

It just looks like you may rank poorly - what is the main keyword you are targeting.

CBP

[mattyw]

I'm sorry, I'm so upset about this, I used the wrong term. It would probably be more appropriate to say something like "blackballed" or "blacklisted," but I don't know why!

Because the subject of weddings is such a wide one, and we carry several different categories, there are several main keywords, depending on the page

blank wedding invitations
wedding invitation templates
wedding program templates
(the two top ones in Google--until now)
custom candy wrappers
custom wine labels
custom water bottle labels
Save the Date magnets
flower girls gifts
bridesmaids gifts
white umbrellas

You get the idea. I was near the top on all of them on December 16th and still am in MSN and Yahoo, but I don't even show up any more in Google as of the 17th--and it happened overnight!

M. A. Woodman
www.thinkwedding.com

[cbp]

Google had some sort of an algo tweak or something around mid Dec ---- appears you caught in that.

Numero uno way to rank well in Google is keyword(s) in anchor text of links - just make sure those words are in external and internal links to the relevant pages.

CBP

[jhilgeman]

A few other things you may want to think about:

1. I'm not sure if this still applies, but in the past, Google dinged you points if you had too many incoming links from blacklisted sites. For example, Free-For-All (FFA) link exchange sites are almost always blacklisted, and if they aren't, they usually don't have a good PR and don't matter much to your ranking. The potential for good is outweighed by the negative here.

2. The less code Googlebot has to wade through in order to get to your content, the better. You have about 6k of pure inline styles and font tags in your code that could safely and easily be eliminated by better usage of a style sheet. However, if you're using FrontPage to edit your code, there's a chance that you won't be able to avoid all the cruddy junk that FrontPage throws in there. See if you can get a hold of and use Dreamweaver if you need a specialized website editing program - it is a LOT cleaner than FrontPage. Maybe a BIT more technical, but well worth the time taken to learn it.

3. One of your Javascripts checks for valid e-mail addresses, and it checks for the .sex domain (which I've never seen). I don't know if Googlebot picks this up or not, but if it does, it may think you're trying to stuff unrelated keywords and ding you points. My recommendation would be to do away with e-mail validation, or at the very least, remove the .sex domain from the list. There's not a lot of people that screw this field up anymore. There are still SOME, but not many. If you can, move all your Javascript functions into an external Javascript library, too. It will clean up your code even more (by another 2k or so).

4. Make sure your Meta Keywords tag stays on one line.

5. Get rid of the "Add this to your bookmarks" link. They're not used very often, and it only takes up space. If you're not convinced, it's fairly easy to modify the Javascript so that you can track how many times someone's clicked on it.

6. On every page, make your logo link back to your homepage.

7. And finally, increase the amount of non-linked content on your page. Probably about half of your home page's text is inside links. Googlebot may think you're trying to trick it or that your site is just a bunch of links.

Hopefully these tips will help out. But before you make any of these changes (and between each one), always make a backup of your site. These are only general suggestions and there's always a chance that Google's algorithm has changed enough to make these suggestions invalid. (These are fairly safe suggestions, though)

- Jonathan

[freehits]

Originally Posted by jhilgeman

you had too many incoming links from blacklisted sites. - Jonathan

I had been under the impression that most viewed this as not likely due to the possbility of tampering with competing sites. Any form of penalty for inbound seems unlikely unless the host site links back showing a mutual intent of sorts. Otherwise all my competitors may have just got links on nastyrabbits.com.

Also, CBP had converted me to a sandbox believer in the ongoing discussion, and my recent experiences have enforced that fact. Any new evidence of this existing, boyond SEO campfire stories?

[scallihan]

Originally Posted by mattyw

I run a wedding website that has done well in Google for my major keywords almost since I created it a year and a half ago.

On the 17th of December, I stopped getting any referrals from Google, except for completely irrelevant keywords, such as "printed ribbon" which I don't have! The 16th was normal, but on the 17th it stopped, although my referrals from MSN and Yahoo have, if anything increased.

Further, I my link exchanges are relevant to the subject, and I do have content, which also did very well until the 17th, but is no longer listed.

My website is www.thinkwedding.com, and I would really appreciate it if someone could point the way to what I have done wrong.

Thanks,
M. A. Woodman

How about being honest and providing a link in your message to your other "Wedding" site -- I wasted a lot of time going through and critiquing your site only to discover you've also got a link at your site to a second wedding-oriented site, with virtually the same content, that you've created, at http://www.theweddingplace.com/ -- you've probably been caught by Google for presenting duplicate content. Is it just one of your sites that's been dinged by Google? The newest one? How many other "wedding" sites do you have online?

[mattyw]

Steve, I'm sorry, I totally forgot about the other wedding site. It has not been promoted--ever--and I rarely update. While it does have some matching content, its pages are way out of date, and I don't believe it could be considered a mirror site.

Initially, I had submitted it to Google, but it was never listed. Do think at this late date (it's about a year old) that the other site could be penalizing me?

Marilyn Woodman

[chesterdoodle]

Until mid December i owned the #1 spot (and rightly so at myrtle beach student rental but now the top two spots pont to dead pages - one of which is spammed past my hip waders. I have no idea what google did but they messed me up as well. check that search on google and look at the #1 result - hidden text gibberish and all.[/url]

[scallihan]

Originally Posted by mattyw

Steve, I'm sorry, I totally forgot about the other wedding site. It has not been promoted--ever--and I rarely update. While it does have some matching content, its pages are way out of date, and I don't believe it could be considered a mirror site.

Initially, I had submitted it to Google, but it was never listed. Do think at this late date (it's about a year old) that the other site could be penalizing me?

Marilyn Woodman

Dunno. When Google does apply a duplicate content penalty, they do it to the more recent site -- otherwise, anyone could copy your site and knock you out of Google. Do a search in this forum on "duplicate content" for more info.

[urknighterrent]

Hmmn. Page cannot be displayed?

Google does not penalize for incoming links, but if you are linking out to a spammer: that will get you dropped in a heartbeat.

Also, you can't possibly be chasing all those keywords. Not in Meta tags anyway. What are your PRIMARY keywords (the eight words in your index page title)?

[hitsusa]

Marilyn,

Many of the sites penalized in the most recent Google algorithm shift had high percentages of their incoming links all saying the same thing.

1- Vary your link text and description with every link exchange.

2 - Don't advertise with text links that all say the same thing.

3 - Don't list your site identically in every directory.

4 - Check your Google links at HotBot:

http://<a href="http://www.hotbot.co...ox&tab=web</a>

5 - Don't trade links with FFA sites -

Example: "20. Beam's Doorway - Free For All Links
Free for all links page for science fiction, fantasy, horror, art.
beamsdoorway.bizland.com/gffa.shtml - 17 KB "

6 - Get many more incoming links. Yahoo shows you with 374 and Google's partial view shows 54. You want your Yahoo number over 1,000 and Google partial view number over 350.

7 - Add a blog to your site (Movable Type is very good) or set one up free at Blogger.com. If internal (onsite blog), include links to current posts on every page. If external (offsite blog), include periodic links to relevant content at your site.

8 - Create a free myYahoo page and post the XML feed of your blog there. Google and Yahoo will spider every page of your site every day.

HTH

Cheers!

[Andy SEO]

For what it's worth I came across this blog which offers an explanation of what was also observed by many other webmasters with Google around Dec 17.

I don't know if this applies to your site but you'll find the full text here:

http://www.bradfallon.com/2004/12/st...p-warning.html

Andy Theekson
http://www.the-search-engine-optimizer.com

[activeco]

Originally Posted by chesterdoodle

myrtle beach student rental
...check that search on google and look at the #1 result - hidden text gibberish and all.[/url]

That's right:
<font size=.2 color="#ffffff">

Someone already pointed out that gg don't use algorithm for such simple tricks.
On the other side they do over-algo for some other stuff, including adsense. I start thinking they came to the point where even they don't know what's going on.

[mattyw]

I wanted to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for your work, time and extremely useful suggestions--I intend to implement all of them, and I'm in the process right now.

I also want to say that I have always considered criticism far more valuable than praise. Apparently, a lot of you took a lot of time on my site; at least, that's what my traffic analyzer says, and I of all people appreciate the time and trouble it takes, when you all have so much else on you plates.

Google did not completely drop me, but they might as well have, when I get an average of 8 to 10 referrals every day instead of the over 200 I'm used to. It's also interesting to note that my address is now thinkwedding.com instead of www.thinkwedding.com, and that I'm still #3 with one keyword, and one keyword only.

1. I have taken down the site I had actually almost forgotten about, that possibly after over a year Google might have construed as a mirror site, even through it's not identical. It is now a beginning Blog, and I'm working on its implementation and near-future newsfeed.

2. I have revamped the onsite links, and am continuing to do so. Some of you also sent private emails to let me know about broken links I wasn't aware of, despite daily maintenance and checking, and I can't tell you how grateful I am.

3. I am checking each and every one of my outbound links, and I think I have identified at least one so far as being possibly banned (although it may only be new).

4. I wasn't aware that inbound links were supposed to be different; I had in fact used the same listing for each but I will contact the other sites and change them--and thank you.

5. I haven't read the Blog article yet, but I'm on my way there now. Would you all like to know the ultimate results later?

Thanks,
Marilyn Woodman
webmaster, thinkwedding.com

[scallihan]

Originally Posted by mattyw

It's also interesting to note that my address is now thinkwedding.com instead of www.thinkwedding.com, and that I'm still #3 with one keyword, and one keyword only.

The issue here is that Google see's those as two separate addresses. Do a search on "http://thinkwedding.com" (with quotes) at Google and see what you get. I got 43 instances of that URL pointing to you from other pages, which would cause your page to be indexed under that URL. If it is showing up in Google, but http://www.thinkwedding.com isn't, then it is pretty clear that the latter is being filtered (since it has close to 20 times as many backlinks using it).

At the very least, you should get rid of the links between your two wedding sites and get rid of *any* duplicate content they may contain. Not sure you shouldn't nuke the old site entirely and implement a 301 redirect for the domain.

You should also look more closely at your current wedding site (that is apparently being filtered) -- you have a large amount of duplicate content in that site's pages, especially at the start of those pages. At least move the article lists from the top to the bottom of the pages -- right now, the Google bot is probably stopping before getting to any differentiating content and seeing your pages as being largely duplicates of each other.

Get rid of the anchor links to the middle of the subpages -- they do nothing but harm you in Google. Link directly to the pages themselves. That's because any PR being passed from your front page is being passed to "http://www.thinkwedding.com/Access-Bachelorette.htm#Bachelorette%20Party%20Gifts" and not to "http://www.thinkwedding.com/Access-Bachelorette.htm", for instance, which means any link back from that subpage probably isn't passing any PR back (since it isn't getting any).

"Bachelorette Party Gifts" is not a legal name token. The Google bot might not even be following that link. From the W3C's HTML 4.01 specification:

"ID and NAME tokens must begin with a letter ([A-Za-z]) and may be followed by any number of letters, digits ([0-9]), hyphens ("-"), underscores ("_"), colons (":"), and periods (".")." Spaces are not allowed.