Google - Thank you, you probably just put us out of business

redlion · #1 (**permalink**) 10-18-2005, 08:24 AM

Thanks to Googles tinkerings we have completely vanished from the searches. Take a look at this.....

(the first number is our current rank, the second our previous and the third the variation)

Google (United Kingdom) cardiosport 24 6 -18
Google (United Kingdom) garmin forerunner 0 12 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) garmin forerunner 0 13 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) gps watch 0 9 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) heart rate monitor watch 0 22 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) nike heart rate monitors 0 3 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) nike heart rate monitors 0 4 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) nike sport watches 11 1 -10
Google (United Kingdom) nike triax 0 17 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) nike triax 0 18 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) nike watch 0 10 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) pulse monitor 0 19 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) pulse monitor 0 27 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) sports watches 27 11 -16
Google (United Kingdom) timex bodylink 0 13 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) timex bodylink 0 14 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) timex data recorder 0 2 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) timex data recorder 0 3 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) timex heart rate monitor 0 17 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) timex heart rate monitor 0 18 No ranking
1 to 20 of 23 items

Whyo whyo why? Our site is not that bad is it? What did we do wrong?

Any advice anyone?

David
www.redlionsports.co.uk

**ctabuk** · #2 (**permalink**) 10-18-2005, 08:34 AM

Check to see if the new listings are media related? Just an idea I'm working on

redlion · #3 (**permalink**) 10-18-2005, 08:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ctabuk

Check to see if the new listings are media related? Just an idea I'm working on

I'm sorry, what do you mean?

**ctabuk** · #4 (**permalink**) 10-18-2005, 08:44 AM

Search terms coming from News Features - example yesterday I was top on G for Social Homebuy, I've gone from the listings but have been replaced be a combination of Newspaper Articles and Directory listings.

April98 · #5 (**permalink**) 10-18-2005, 09:12 AM

I'm already planning to spew out a few articles because I know the articles will rank well. Since they are always linked to my site, hopefully they'll help.

This is about all I know to do, short of buying adwords. I have 3 tiny adwords campaigns and I am not going to increase them because of this update. Boycotting that!

nerdbyte · #6 (**permalink**) 10-18-2005, 10:17 AM

Quote:

Google - Thank you, you probably just put us out of business

How many times must I stress enough - stop relying on search engines to bring customers to your business! Search engines should be just one of the methods to promote, not the only method. I don't see Google at fault. Come up with different methods to promote your business, stop relying soley on search engines for promotion, keep up with their changing technology and the dependancy will decrease. And you'll survive a lot better.

Search engines weren't created for us (the webmasters), they were created for the end user. Once people realize this, we'll get listed better.

qbania · #7 (**permalink**) 10-18-2005, 12:16 PM

OK and what do casino/poker/sportsbetting webmasters do then? we can't do PPC as noone accepts it. I've spent 12 hrs a day for 10 months adding quality content, choosing good linkpartners (carefuly checking their sites as well), had great rankings for over 25 keywords that I track, now after this update, my keywords are in position 50 or higher.

qbania · #8 (**permalink**) 10-18-2005, 12:17 PM

Nerdbyte:

OK and what do casino/poker/sportsbetting webmasters do then? we can't do PPC as noone accepts it. I've spent 12 hrs a day for 10 months adding quality content, choosing good linkpartners (carefuly checking their sites as well), had great rankings for over 25 keywords that I track, now after this update, my keywords are in position 50 or higher.

nerdbyte · #9 (**permalink**) 10-18-2005, 01:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by qbania

Nerdbyte:

OK and what do casino/poker/sportsbetting webmasters do then? we can't do PPC as noone accepts it. I've spent 12 hrs a day for 10 months adding quality content, choosing good linkpartners (carefuly checking their sites as well), had great rankings for over 25 keywords that I track, now after this update, my keywords are in position 50 or higher.

Combine offline/online promotion with the realization that there are millions more people doing the exact same as you listed above. What you're listing is highly concentrating solely on search engines. These tactics aren't secret anymore.

cbp · #10 (**permalink**) 10-18-2005, 05:26 PM

Sorry to throw 'salt on the wound', but anyone who has a business model that is dependent on a free ranking and free listing from Google, should get out of business.

CBP

aaron2005 · #11 (**permalink**) 10-18-2005, 11:16 PM

I do not see anything wrong with relying on google for 100% of you business sales as long as you can handle the ups and downs. The downs is a great time to re-think what you are doing and what you have to offer your customers. If you have dollar signs in you eyes you will fail every time. It's the nature of sin and Google is learning the difference between an honest site and a dishonest site.

If you follow what all these so called seo "experts" say to do you are screwed, they really do not even have a clue I believe. I have a good site I made for a neighbor to help her sell her "dog gift baskets" by Xmas time. I did all the things people say to do including reciprocal link trading and the site has been sandboxed for a year. Did Google do this? The answer is no, I got greedy and tried to game the system so the site is suffering from the stupid assed belief that obtaining backlinks when you are in the sandbox will jet you to the top when you are not. It will jet you right back into hell but I take full responsibility for my infraction, what are you doing wrong?

nerdbyte · #12 (**permalink**) 10-19-2005, 02:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aaron2005

It will jet you right back into hell but I take full responsibility for my infraction, what are you doing wrong?

At least you learned from it. Most people don't.

qbania · #13 (**permalink**) 10-19-2005, 05:16 PM

Who said anything about relying on google for 100% of my business? We have great results on MSN for all our network of sites, decent for most on yahoo, except for one site, and decent for google, except for this one site in question now. Man you people jump to conclusions. I was merely asking the ? what can we do if PPC is not an option. You responed with OFFLINE marketing. Ok since gambling is pretty much a taboo subject offline in 42 of the 50 stats, any other brilliant suggestions?

qbania · #14 (**permalink**) 10-19-2005, 05:19 PM

Who said anything about relying on google for 100% of my business? We have great results on MSN for all our network of sites, decent for most on yahoo, except for one site, and decent for google, except for this one site in question now. Man you people jump to conclusions. I was merely asking the ? what can we do if PPC is not an option. You responed with OFFLINE marketing. Ok since gambling is pretty much a taboo subject offline in 42 of the 50 states, any other brilliant suggestions?

nerdbyte · #15 (**permalink**) 10-19-2005, 06:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by qbania

Who said anything about relying on google for 100% of my business? We have great results on MSN for all our network of sites, decent for most on yahoo, except for one site, and decent for google, except for this one site in question now. Man you people jump to conclusions. I was merely asking the ? what can we do if PPC is not an option. You responed with OFFLINE marketing. Ok since gambling is pretty much a taboo subject offline in 42 of the 50 states, any other brilliant suggestions?

Erm...MSN and yahoo are search engines too....

Anyways, I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were stating that your site was a gambling website. It really depends on what the content/services are.

You need to figure out what makes your website unique from the other gambling sites and focus on telling people about that. Or brainstorm on how you can make it unique.

Another suggestion is to bring in some type of "advertiser friendly" product/service that you can use to market online/offline.

You have a ton of options. Best advice I can give is to think backwards; find a "advertiser friendly" product/service that you can market THEN worry about search engines.

nuttymarketer · #16 (**permalink**) 10-24-2005, 12:28 AM

Dear Redlion,

Does your site still having good ranking in MSN, Yahoo etc. Google may have change their Algo

But I see you are still index. have you updated your site last time and what was the volume of last update. I have seen site getting banned or drop in PR when they do large update( bigger than their earlier size.) as they take it as Spam.

Arvind Kumar

ADAM Web Design · #17 (**permalink**) 10-24-2005, 11:29 AM

Occam's Razor: the most likely explanation is often the simplest.

And this one happens to be stunningly simple.

redlion: some of your links contain what appear to be user session hashes (which is DEATH to any SEO campaign), definitely contain IP addresses (which I've never seen before, but I'd put in the same class as user session hashes), and an "affl" querystring which Google may well be interpreting as "affiliate marketing" (and sites that do this traditionally don't get much love from The Goog). There are exceptions to this (e.g. Amazon) but for the most part, this holds true.

If you need to use session variables to process information (which for the most part, you shouldn't), use them the way they were originally intended. Store the session variable on your user's machine and read it from there, instead of putting it into a querystring. The same logic goes with the IP address. If you can read it, you can read it and use it any time you want.

You may also be hurt by the TradeDoubler banner (the most useless concept in online marketing) on the bottom of the page.

And all of this leads to my ultimate point:

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...ports.co.uk%2F

You've got a buttload of validation errors happening, most of which relate to the stuff I already mentioned above.

kgun · #18 (**permalink**) 10-24-2005, 12:21 PM

Sorry to throw 'salt on the wound', but anyone who has a business model that is dependent on a free ranking and free listing from Google, should get out of business.

In theory I agree with you, but I am sure there are some SEO experts out there that make a good living of good placement in the SERP's.

They may even have a bot that confuses GoogelBot.

Back to your page:
1. I disagree with our description tag. You list KW's there.
2. The KW tag could be better.
3. The balance between text and graphical elements could be better. Do you have a good / unique story related to one ore more KW?

aaron2005 · #19 (**permalink**) 10-24-2005, 12:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by redlion

Thanks to Googles tinkerings we have completely vanished from the searches. Take a look at this.....

(the first number is our current rank, the second our previous and the third the variation)

Google (United Kingdom) cardiosport 24 6 -18
Google (United Kingdom) garmin forerunner 0 12 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) garmin forerunner 0 13 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) gps watch 0 9 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) heart rate monitor watch 0 22 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) nike heart rate monitors 0 3 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) nike heart rate monitors 0 4 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) nike sport watches 11 1 -10
Google (United Kingdom) nike triax 0 17 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) nike triax 0 18 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) nike watch 0 10 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) pulse monitor 0 19 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) pulse monitor 0 27 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) sports watches 27 11 -16
Google (United Kingdom) timex bodylink 0 13 No ranking
Google (United Kingdom) timex bodylink 0 14 No ra