How Many Legitimate Business Did Google Kill?

[arius]

This has happened to me before, and is happening at a different online business again. For no apparent reason Google is penalizing our site:Testcountry.com. It must be a penalty since the site gets ample traffic from other search engines (Ask almost twice as Google Organic traffic , that should give you an idea), but there is definitely something.

There are couple very uncompetitive keywords the SERP is high, but for anything valuable it is 10+ pages later. Site is old, full of content, no black (even light gray) SEO. We just can not figure out.

In the office we are trying to figure out what should we do. This is so unfair that Google with the might and power that it gets from the millions of visitors (not to mention $billions in market cap) does not provide any means to small and medium size businesses and webmaster to communicate. After all they are supposedly the no-do evil, good guys but what are we going to do?

*Close the business (free)
*send legal papers to Google to ask give us an answer, ($10k)
*send creative and interesting presents to Google search team elite in Googleplex and beg for help and hope to get on somebody important's good side ($2k),
*give a national magazine ad and ask an answer ($25k)
*nothing (probably the most expensive one)

What would you do? If you are sure your site is penalized but can not get an answer to know what it is. We feel like a 1 year old that can not speak but do not understand why mommy & daddy is mad?

[tamecrow]

My only nugget of advice on this matter involves eggs and baskets.

[subhzash]

Originally Posted by arius

This has happened to me before, and is happening at a different online business again. For no apparent reason Google is penalizing our site:Testcountry.com. It must be a penalty since the site gets ample traffic from other search engines (Ask almost twice as Google Organic traffic , that should give you an idea), but there is definitely something.

There are couple very uncompetitive keywords the SERP is high, but for anything valuable it is 10+ pages later. Site is old, full of content, no black (even light gray) SEO. We just can not figure out.

In the office we are trying to figure out what should we do. This is so unfair that Google with the might and power that it gets from the millions of visitors (not to mention $billions in market cap) does not provide any means to small and medium size businesses and webmaster to communicate. After all they are supposedly the no-do evil, good guys but what are we going to do?

*Close the business (free)
*send legal papers to Google to ask give us an answer, ($10k)
*send creative and interesting presents to Google search team elite in Googleplex and beg for help and hope to get on somebody important's good side ($2k),
*give a national magazine ad and ask an answer ($25k)
*nothing (probably the most expensive one)

What would you do? If you are sure your site is penalized but can not get an answer to know what it is. We feel like a 1 year old that can not speak but do not understand why mommy & daddy is mad?

Hi,

How can you say that Google has penalized on your site

As google showing Page rank of 4 and Indexed more than 4000 pages also it shows more than 200 back links

Give me the reason why do you consider your site got penalized??



Regards
Subhzash

[PunkyLZ]

I agree...could you give us an idea on why you think your site has been penalized. I've taken a look at the code and do not see anything obvious that you have done to "Anger the Gods".

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by arius

This has happened to me before, and is happening at a different online business again. For no apparent reason Google is penalizing our site:Testcountry.com. It must be a penalty since the site gets ample traffic from other search engines (Ask almost twice as Google Organic traffic , that should give you an idea), but there is definitely something.

There are couple very uncompetitive keywords the SERP is high, but for anything valuable it is 10+ pages later. Site is old, full of content, no black (even light gray) SEO. We just can not figure out.

In the office we are trying to figure out what should we do. This is so unfair that Google with the might and power that it gets from the millions of visitors (not to mention $billions in market cap) does not provide any means to small and medium size businesses and webmaster to communicate. After all they are supposedly the no-do evil, good guys but what are we going to do?

*Close the business (free)
*send legal papers to Google to ask give us an answer, ($10k)
*send creative and interesting presents to Google search team elite in Googleplex and beg for help and hope to get on somebody important's good side ($2k),
*give a national magazine ad and ask an answer ($25k)
*nothing (probably the most expensive one)

What would you do? If you are sure your site is penalized but can not get an answer to know what it is. We feel like a 1 year old that can not speak but do not understand why mommy & daddy is mad?

I do see why you *feel* you are penalized, as you can't get high SERPs for your most coveted KWs. However, I would not even consider blaming Google. Google doesn't owe you anything and legal papers are a total waste or your time and money. So is bribery and the ad concept.

All your answers are, frankly, unreasonable, I think.

The answer is, in the same situation, I would reassess my SEO and figure out what I am doing wrong. If you need some help with that, why not post a request in the Site Review forum.

I do see room for improvement for your on-site SEO:

• For example, you use of h1 tags more than once on the home page and for words that are not targeted terms. Rather, use it once for your headline that has your most relevant keywords.

• You do not seem to link to your home page from sub pages with the target terms in anchor text. Maybe I am missing where you do that, but I would do it from every page.

• You also have a huge amount of code for your Shop by Cat links. I would recommend moving that off page as well, that is calling it from another file, if possible. Perhaps that is throwing off the keyword density of your page. Have you looked at what Google webmaster tools tells you about what it sees? Both in terms of content, and other information.

• Are you sure about your keyword targets? For example, I had a look at searched terms, and I didn't find 'home testing kits' to be a searched term. I did see *home drug testing kits* to be a searched term ... and I also see that it is a highly competitive term ... so you may have a lot to do to compete with other sites.

Of course, there may be something you are doing that Google doesn't like ... do you have any paid links? Or are you linking to questionable neighborhoods?

In any case, my advice: stop blaming Google and work on your site.

Cheers, MJ

[crankydave]

Hmmmmmm...

What is the purpose behind this?

testcountry.com/index.asp

Dave

[arius]

Thanks for all great responses. Let me start from bottom to top:

crankydave: Hmmmmmm... What is the purpose behind this? testcountry.com/index.asp

Nothing really the old page design I guess the old root stayed up still. Most of those links should go to the regular navigation

[I]mjtaylor:stop blaming Google and work on your site.[I].

My point here is, the Internet is made of end users (our dear visitors) and online businesses, webmaster and individuals providing service/content/some utility those end users. Google has been the key to bring those two together and they are being paid very handsomely for that. But when you become the US Postal Service of the Internet (broad analogy, sorry could not find anything else), there comes responsibility with it. You have to provide all stake holders (and yes, we webmasters, site owners are stake holders) means to explain why they are being penalized in the process.

I am not saying there is things we can change and improve on our site to make it more SEO friendly that is a whole different subject (and will take those points you put in there very seriously, thanks). My point is the site is penalized for SERP somehow. Site is PR4, thousands of indexed pages, and does well in Yahoo, MSN & Ask but there is something that Google does not like about our site (nothing else explains why we have more Ask organic traffic than Google organic traffic, and does not explain why we are 113th on the top related keywords we have). What I am saying is they need to have an avenue for sites that have these type of concerns and problems to get help from them to figure what is wrong, why they are penalized. A simple customer service matter.

After all as much as we benefit from Google bringing free traffic to our sites, Google benefit having us provide good result pages, service to the end user searching for things. If we did not exist, they did not exist. So a simple way of addressing the penalty/ban process (not the ones where you submit an email and never get an answer or have some to talk to, but real customer service type help I am talking about). We might be doing something wrong, how can we know what. Maybe we just got the site, maybe Google just implemented something, maybe this maybe that. It is not like there are guidelines.

This is what I am simply trying to say. Being in this unique position, Google has responsibility, thats what I am saying. Like how Mama Bell did, First Monopoly Oil companies did etc...

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by arius

Thanks for all great responses. Let me start from bottom to top:

crankydave: Hmmmmmm... What is the purpose behind this? testcountry.com/index.asp

Nothing really the old page design I guess the old root stayed up still. Most of those links should go to the regular navigation

You don't think that serving up 2 different homepages might cause a problem?

You don't think that serving up 2 sites, one on the .com and another very similar on the /index.asp might be causing problems?

Dave

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by arius

[i]mjtaylor:stop blaming Google and work on your site.[i].

My point here is, the Internet is made of end users (our dear visitors) and online businesses, webmaster and individuals providing service/content/some utility those end users. Google has been the key to bring those two together and they are being paid very handsomely for that. But when you become the US Postal Service of the Internet (broad analogy, sorry could not find anything else), there comes responsibility with it. You have to provide all stake holders (and yes, we webmasters, site owners are stake holders) means to explain why they are being penalized in the process.

I am not saying there is things we can change and improve on our site to make it more SEO friendly that is a whole different subject (and will take those points you put in there very seriously, thanks). My point is the site is penalized for SERP somehow. Site is PR4, thousands of indexed pages, and does well in Yahoo, MSN & Ask but there is something that Google does not like about our site (nothing else explains why we have more Ask organic traffic than Google organic traffic, and does not explain why we are 113th on the top related keywords we have). What I am saying is they need to have an avenue for sites that have these type of concerns and problems to get help from them to figure what is wrong, why they are penalized. A simple customer service matter.

After all as much as we benefit from Google bringing free traffic to our sites, Google benefit having us provide good result pages, service to the end user searching for things. If we did not exist, they did not exist. So a simple way of addressing the penalty/ban process (not the ones where you submit an email and never get an answer or have some to talk to, but real customer service type help I am talking about). We might be doing something wrong, how can we know what. Maybe we just got the site, maybe Google just implemented something, maybe this maybe that. It is not like there are guidelines.

This is what I am simply trying to say. Being in this unique position, Google has responsibility, thats what I am saying. Like how Mama Bell did, First Monopoly Oil companies did etc...

Making your site more SEO friendly is not a whole other subject. It is *the* only pertinent subject here, IMO. And CrankyDave may well have hit upon your problem ...

To the rest: Google is not a monopoly. Period. Like the USPS, which has FedEx and UPS as competitors, Google has Yahoo and MSN, and a slew of other competitors.

Google has no responsibility except to its shareholders. To that end, Google has a responsibility to serve its market well, that is to return the most relevant results so that people will continue to make it the most popular search portal and businesses will want to continue to advertise on it. And thus, to provide a dividend to shareholders. That's their job. Figuring out how to place a website is the site owner's responsibility.

Google has provided you with the means to put your business at the top, but it is *your* job to figure out what that formula is, and not Google's responsibility to hold your hand or make it easy for you.

Actually, they *do* make it easy for you ... you can always buy Adwords and be at the top ... but the organic SERPs are the website owner's problem.

MJ

[craigmn3]

What you do if google penalizes you, you fight back. Tame crow had the best suggestion.....have several baskets.

Google sets the rules and monitors the game. Play the game within the rules.....but perhaps not in the guidelines.

For instance Googles rules say it will punish sites with duplicate content it also ranks only one site if they are from the same severs. The purpose of these rules are put there in place to keep one entity from loading up the top ten.


Googles Intention is to keep things "fair" for quality listings

Now there are things you can do to violate the philosophy that google laid down without breaking the individual rules they have created to promote that philosophy. Doing so will get you ahead without breaking the rules.

If you're in a fight....fight back, or curl up in a ball and whine. It's your choice

[goodhelp]

Google's algorithm(s) differ from Ask and all the others in significant ways. One is in the high value the Big G places on anchor text in links. Links between pages of the same site, and when inbound from other sites.

Now you know why you perceive a "penalty" when it's just how they do what they do. By the way, if you want to spend the time to read their various patent explanations, you'd already know this.

If a search engine had to explain itself to all site owners/webmasters, that's all it would be doing! Get a grip. Just make the recommended changes in this thread and see for yourself how much more improved your rankings will be. I promise!

--Greg "Mr Goodhelp"

[The Founder]

Look... understood you are pissed... but how many legitimate businesses did they create as well?

Google is Disruptive ... massively disruptive

Now regarding your issue at hand.

You rank for title tag here... and variations of it.

I would honestly look at an SEO firm to clear this up with proper keyword research and proper copy.

[jestep]

Originally Posted by arius

My point here is, the Internet is made of end users (our dear visitors) and online businesses, webmaster and individuals providing service/content/some utility those end users. Google has been the key to bring those two together and they are being paid very handsomely for that. But when you become the US Postal Service of the Internet (broad analogy, sorry could not find anything else), there comes responsibility with it. You have to provide all stake holders (and yes, we webmasters, site owners are stake holders) means to explain why they are being penalized in the process.

After all as much as we benefit from Google bringing free traffic to our sites, Google benefit having us provide good result pages, service to the end user searching for things. If we did not exist, they did not exist. So a simple way of addressing the penalty/ban process (not the ones where you submit an email and never get an answer or have some to talk to, but real customer service type help I am talking about). We might be doing something wrong, how can we know what. Maybe we just got the site, maybe Google just implemented something, maybe this maybe that. It is not like there are guidelines.

This is what I am simply trying to say. Being in this unique position, Google has responsibility, that's what I am saying. Like how Mama Bell did, First Monopoly Oil companies did etc...

I can sympathise with your situation, but I have to disagree with you. Google is not the internet, and they do not have an obligation to anyone to rank or not rank their website. Their only obligation is to the searchers that use google, the companies that advertise with them, and their shareholders.

Their system is algorithmically driven, and it is extremely rare for a website to be hand penalized. It's not like someone at google saw your site, and killed it. There are a multitude of filters that are designed to keep google's search results as relevant as possible. Sometimes legitimate websites get caught in these, but these sites usually get out of them with time. Simple things like duplicate content can kill a website's ranking by itself.

My advice is to invest time into determining why you may not be ranking in google and adjust your plans accordingly. Try sending google an informal letter. I've seen them confirm penalties before. Sign up for google webmaster tools, and see if they find something wrong with your site.

If you run a legitimate business, using legitimate tactics to market, it is simple a matter of mathematics to get your site ranking. There is no amount of pressure that you can put on google that will make them do anything for you. Historically, the more pressure and press you aim against them, the less likely you are to get what you want from them. They have quite literally, endless pockets, and endless resources. It would be a waste of time and money to do as you suggested.

[weslinda]

Wow...why does everyone think Google Owes Them Something? I don't see how Google is penalizing you.

Explain how they are penalizing you. What are the penalties and issues you are seeing? Just that you aren't getting enough traffic from them?

First, I'm not sure how Google is penalizing you. I tried a few search terms and your products come up first on the page under Google Products. So they can't hate you that much.

I can say that your onpage optimization is weak at best and definately needs work. Also, you could work on improving things like your blog, and other content / information you're including.

Don't hate Google because they aren't making you #1. If you think Google owes you something, or is the reason you're in business, you need to choose answer 1 in your survey and close up shop.

[jonathannelson]

Originally Posted by crankydave

You don't think that serving up 2 different homepages might cause a problem?

You don't think that serving up 2 sites, one on the .com and another very similar on the /index.asp might be causing problems?

Dave

Home Drug Testing Kits, Pregnancy Test Kits - in only a few minutes i found several spammy sitemap pages like this.

this is a big problem and google will have issues determining what is what, if not deciding that it's seeing duplicate content in some way shape or form.

additionally you're serving up two different homepages:

1. Drug Tests & Urine Drug Testing Kits & HIV Home Tests & Tests for AIDS at Test Country
2. Home Testing Kits & Home Hair Drug Test Kits or Urine Drug Testing San Diego

Question: When was the redesign launched? If so, did any of your previous URL's change in the process?

Quick Advice:

1. choose either non-www or www and 301 permanent one of them to the other. my advice is to take a look at what address the majority of people are linking back to you and then decide...are they linking back to your domain with the www or non-www.
2. do not 'over optimize' the website.
3. avoid duplicate content
4. do not write copywriting simply for the bots
5. evaluate the value of existing content on product pages. is there any?

Always remind yourself that Google has over 200 key algorithmic differentiators that separate it from is competitors. If you feel any doubt about something being wrong....it probably is. Don't optimize for the bot. Instead, using SEO best practices, make sure the users experience is a great one and they will come back and share it with their friends.

this is about all i can answer with having only 5 minutes to write

[incrediblehelp]

Well I wouldn't select either of the choices. I would fix whatever I did wrong and ask for a re-inclusion request.

[Andilinks]

What Google does is harm continuity and faith. They could do better.

Google does kill businesses with its reckless behavior. They owe nothing to the people whose businesses, lives, marriages etc. have been ruined.

In this sense they carry a disease to the body of data that is our civilization.

For many years I believed in Google and was an avid apologist and fan. I thought that those who complained just must have done something wrong and deserved what they got...

No, don't put all your eggs in one basket and if you have any sense you will put no eggs in the basket labeled Google, it is just a matter of time before they are smashed.

End of rant.

[crankydave]

Finally...

Home Testing Kits & Home Hair Drug Test Kits or Urine Drug Testing San Diego

You don't think that this is only text Google sees on your page is causing problems?

You've got a lot of work to do.

Dave

[arius]

Dave, Index.asp is a great point. Thanks. That could be it...

Once again, my point with starting this thread was not trying to figure out what I did wrong (which actually I am thanks to your great comments) but on a higher level express my frastruation with Google's lack of customer service to all of us: site owners, biz owners, webmasters. Yes they have the tools and online accounts but why can not we call a number and ask why am I being penalized from your search engine and they say because you forgot your index.asp as a second home page. And I go yes, thank you. Will fix it.

I think assuming that Google has only responsibility to its Shareholders and nobody else, is the same mentality that says: Ok if Enron steals from its shareholders its bad, but if Enron gauges the price for consumers, or tries to trick small business to make more money it is ok.

Anyway, too much philosophy I guess. But again here is my question again.

How many legitimate online businesses you think Google killed in the past because those businesses did not know where to ask the question "why I am being penalized"? and Dave said "look at your index.asp".

[weslinda]

Any business, and I mean any business that is soley based off of Google and is dependent on Google for income is a poor business idea. If Google can kill your business with a simple algorithm update, then you need a new business to be in.

I wonder what companies that failed did before there was a Google to blame? Think anyone complained that the Yellow Pages didn't send them enough customers?

Seriously...lets stop giving away tens of thousands of dollars in free advice to those that simply want to rant.

[weslinda]

I think Google has killed exactly 0 legitimate businesses because those businesses didn't know to ask why they are being penalized. Does that answer your question?

I think that anyone with a business that is dependent on another entity to succeed should have done their homework on that entity instead of getting blindsided because they did something the other entity may not like.

Google has killed 0 legitimate businesses.

[weslinda]

There are how many domains in the world? How many people should Google employ to answer calls from those 100 Million Business owners want to grip that their company isn't ranked higher than another company in Google's search results. How much should they spend? If you had it your way, Google should set up a complaint line so you can gripe that you aren't the worlds largest testing supplies company.

Come on, lets get real.

[lpoulsen]

Face it: You are in a commodity business. I looked at your site, then decided that if I were looking for a site like this, I would be searching for "home drug test kits". There are dozens and dozens of sites selling essentially similar products. You are not being "penalized"; you are just drowning in the crowd.

When you are selling specialty products, and your product line is somewhat unique, you can benefit greatly from the ability of search engines to lead those who are searching for your products to you.

When you are in a commodity business, you cannot *expect* this to work for you with any reliability. You *may* get lucky. When you do, rejoice and make hay. If not, you may need to actively find customers: Advertising is a time-honored tradition.

[crankydave]

I'll post it down here instead of editing my post...

Specifically, look at how google sees your "nav links" in the cache I linked above. You're penalizing yourself.

Dave

[weslinda]

How about links on pages like this that look like paid links...

West Coast Swing Resources Research

that's something Google will penalize you for...if you are buying links in bad neighborhoods

[Dan Grossman]

Originally Posted by weslinda

I think Google has killed exactly 0 legitimate businesses because those businesses didn't know to ask why they are being penalized. Does that answer your question?

I think that anyone with a business that is dependent on another entity to succeed should have done their homework on that entity instead of getting blindsided because they did something the other entity may not like.

Google has killed 0 legitimate businesses.

Google doesn't just kill legitimate businesses, it kills entire industries of them at a time. It spends hundreds of millions to billions of dollars buying up companies in commercial industries just to start giving away what they bought for free (Urchin? FeedBurner? JotSpot? There are so many!). Suddenly all the commercial competition, that was prividing business value at reasonable fees, has to compete with someone giving it away FREE and paying for it with an entirely different business.

Yes, Google does kill legitimate businesses.

[ami_iss]

Suggestions:
1. Use free Web site analysis tool or paid version of IBP or Webceo (not all that expensive) and check how you stack up against competition. Those things really do help.
2. Check that there is no code on your pages that is causing the Google spider to stop crawling the page. That really does happen and and can mess you up. IBP will show you this for example. You may have google stopping code that can be read by other spiders, accounting for better placement in other search engines.
3. Google Webmaster Central provides hints. It shows you what it sees on your pages, and that can be pretty strange sometimes.
4. Use a CMS that creates meaningful filenames rather than ID numbers. Brief urls with keywords are optimum.
5. First word on upper left of page should be the keyword, and last word on the page as well.
6. Multiple links on multiple pages to portal pages with the keyword in the hyperlink. You do this on the main page at the bottom.
7. img alt= labels with keywords.
8. You need more incoming links to individual product and portal pages from sites with high google rank.
9. Make sure you are listed in relevant free directories - especially dmoz - for main site and main categories. If you have something that is wikipedia worthy - get it in there in appropriate pages. If not, make some wikipedia-worthy pages with general info and then use them as external links in wikipedia.
10 - Order of tags in header must be <HEAD> <TITLE>,DESCRIPTION, Keywords, everything else
11 - One (1) keyword in title at most if possible.
12- Remember that it is easy to be #1 page for things like sexonomy or zfurticon, because there are few pages. The important keywords you want to be first for already have millions of pages, and you are competing with them. Look at your competition. Do they have more inbound links? Better page design?
13- Duplicate Web sites are at least pointless and may be harmful. Start a site community portal, weblog or forum that has related materials with links to your commercial site, preferably inline in the articles - eg - article on radon that links to radon testing.
14- TEXT links with keyword from every portal page back to main page of portal and with site title back to main page of site. Google can't read images.
15 If you use H1, H2, make sure that the highest one has highest concentration of keyword, and that concentration goes down for H2, H3 etc.

[weslinda]

Really? Lets use Analytics as your example since you want to make this point Dan. Hmmm...Webtrends seems to be doing okay, how about OneStat? How are they doing, oh, look, they've got 75,000 customers.

How about other items, lets look at office applications, is Microsoft out of business yet?

Come on...lets start using real world examples of real issues. Just because a basic service like analytics is free doesn't mean every company will get the information they need from Google.

Share with me which companies have died? Tell me how they would not have died without Google doing what they do?

[weslinda]

Wait...how about Omniture...they have an analytics group...wow, showing record revenues in the last reported quarter. Guess Google isn't killing off the competition.

[weslinda]

Is W3 counter dead? That business folding?

[weslinda]

ami_iss: why would you give out such a list of knowledge? first, they didn't ask for the knowledge and second, knowledge is value and power, don't just give it away to anyone...

Look at the whole Jason Calacanis episode to understand that some people just want the free advice Open Challenge to Jason Calacanis

[moonviper]

I have to agree with most of the others in this forum. (in fact, the first reply sums it up best) If you're putting all your eggs in one basket, that's just wrong.

Google (as all the other search engines) has an basic code which determines which is the most relevant of the literally millions of other sites to list first for a given search.

If it was a search for the term "red" and your site was pretty red, but kinda pink at the same time, would you complain if the code served up a site that was a little more red than yours? How about your competition, which, of course feels that their sites are just as relevant, if not more relevant than your own?

Google owes us nothing. As far as customer service, you gotta think who their customers really are. There are two groups that I would consider Google's customers

1. Paying clients. Those who have paid to be listed in the sponsored results
2. General public. They have a responsibility to see that the results they serve are "pretty darn good"

Keep in mind that when Bill Clinton became president, there were just 8 .com websites on the internet, now there are over 90 million .coms on the internet. Which is the most relevant? Might it change from time to time? My advice is to start your own affiliate program, which would (if done properly) help your SEO linking campaign, as well as give you another "basket" for your marketing. Amazon.com became as large as they did because of an affiliate program, and I'll virtually guarantee you that there is no one sitting in the office constantly monitoring where each of their millions of pages is located in Google, Yahoo, or any of the other search engines.

How about writing articles and placing them around the internet. This would also help your search engine rankings and give you thousands of other "doorways" into your site.

By taking the time to look at some of your other promotional options, you just might find that you can surpass your traffic from Google, and even increase your sales!

That's my two cents.

[bj]

You post on this forum blaming google . . . and don't even take the opportunity to create a signature file for this forum that contains a link back to your site using GREAT linktext containing your chosen keyphrase.

Yeah, you have some work to do. First is to stop whining and learn what you're supposed to be doing. Second is to do it.

And I think that canonical problem that crankydave pointed out could be one of the most important fixes.

[nelsonez]

I love this phrase: " For no apparent reason Google is penalizing our site Testcountry.com."

What I find even more amusing is the title of the thread, "How Many Legitimate Business Did Google Kill?" Again playing the victim and the blame game will NOT get your site back into good rankings on Google. There is a reason why your site fell and you just have to be very honest with yourselve and/or find an expert that can help you figure out what the problem is. Spending $10 on some SEO advice versus $1000 dollars will obviously get you two different long lasting results.

I see it said all the time and the company always thinks they are some victim of some terribly random tragedy. Here is my opinion .... I have not seen one single website that was knocked out of the Google "natural" rankings for no apparent reason. Not a single one. There is always a reason and you just have to figure it out. 99 times out of a 100 we will find that there is a glaring reason such as link-farms, cloaking methods, poor code, or keyword stuffing. Sadly these things don't just happen accidentally in the code of a companies website. Someone purposely tried to game the system and maybe they get away with it for 2-3 years but eventually Google figures it out and then penalizes you. We have clients complain to us about competitor websites that are using some of these methods and they are achieving higher rankings than our client's website. But we always have to explain that at some point these competitors will get caught and will drop like stones from the rankings. If you truely are a legitimate company and you expect to be around for many years you can't afford to try and game the system.


With all this said, when I do the following search "Home Testing Kits" in Google your site comes up #2. So clearly you are in the Google index and you have not been blacklisted. I guess I am not sure what your complaint is about?


I do see duplicated content on your site along with other sites which also may explain some of your problems.

You also have comment tags stuffed with keywords and a number of other SE penalties in the code of your site but nothing obviously to get you significant penalities. There are clearly things that can be improved upon though.

My advice is a nutshell is your problems in Google are NOT random.

[ron angel]

Originally Posted by arius

This has happened to me before, and is happening at a different online business again. For no apparent reason Google is penalizing our site:Testcountry.com. It must be a penalty since the site gets ample traffic from other search engines (Ask almost twice as Google Organic traffic , that should give you an idea), but there is definitely something.

There are couple very uncompetitive keywords the SERP is high, but for anything valuable it is 10+ pages later. Site is old, full of content, no black (even light gray) SEO. We just can not figure out.

In the office we are trying to figure out what should we do. This is so unfair that Google with the might and power that it gets from the millions of visitors (not to mention $billions in market cap) does not provide any means to small and medium size businesses and webmaster to communicate. After all they are supposedly the no-do evil, good guys but what are we going to do?

*Close the business (free)
*send legal papers to Google to ask give us an answer, ($10k)
*send creative and interesting presents to Google search team elite in Googleplex and beg for help and hope to get on somebody important's good side ($2k),
*give a national magazine ad and ask an answer ($25k)
*nothing (probably the most expensive one)

What would you do? If you are sure your site is penalized but can not get an answer to know what it is. We feel like a 1 year old that can not speak but do not understand why mommy & daddy is mad?

I could not find a sitemap It might be a good Idea to include one
Google Sitemap Generator - Free Site Map Builder, XML Sitemaps, Easy
This helps google bot index your pages properly.
It is simple things like this & removing pages from your site
which cause these sort of problems.

You have forgotten another option get somebody to throw a custard pie in bill gates face with you site name on it,may work or go very wrong... either way the publicity worldwide would be fantastic! ( for Americans reading this it is a JOKE I would not condone this sort of action) I sometimes see this sort of thing from a scriptwriters point of view.

[weslinda]

BJ, links on here are nofollow.

[weslinda]

Ron...realize...they aren't concerned with fixing the problem, they are concerned with complaining and trying to rant that Google is killing them. They want to cry and whine and let someone else take responsibility for the issues they caused.

I simply love people that want to rant and rave because they don't have business clue number one.

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by arius

Dave, Index.asp is a great point. Thanks. That could be it...

Once again, my point with starting this thread was not trying to figure out what I did wrong (which actually I am thanks to your great comments) but on a higher level express my frastruation with Google's lack of customer service to all of us: site owners, biz owners, webmasters. Yes they have the tools and online accounts but why can not we call a number and ask why am I being penalized from your search engine and they say because you forgot your index.asp as a second home page. And I go yes, thank you. Will fix it.

I think assuming that Google has only responsibility to its Shareholders and nobody else, is the same mentality that says: Ok if Enron steals from its shareholders its bad, but if Enron gauges the price for consumers, or tries to trick small business to make more money it is ok.

Well, I hear ya, but this is not logical. This analogy supposes that Google's attitude toward webmasters is illegal or unethical in the ways the Enron examples are. And it is not.

Webmasters are not Google customers (unless they are buying Adwords, but that's not the topic here) so we don't deserve "customer service." That's for paying customers. If I were Google, I would care #1 about searchers, #2 about my paying advertisers and then, maybe, webmasters who are targeting organic SERPs.

I'm sorry to seem contentious, but perhaps if you can see that your statements about Google may not be logical and therefore not true, it might help you shift your point of view and place your focus on what you can change.

Originally Posted by arius

Anyway, too much philosophy I guess. But again here is my question again.

How many legitimate online businesses you think Google killed in the past because those businesses did not know where to ask the question "why I am being penalized"? and Dave said "look at your index.asp".

Philosophy. Glad you opened *that* basket. Let me try a little here. I understand how you might feel, I really do, but staying any place near "blaming" keeps you in the victim role and that means you don't have the power to fix your problem because you continue to see it as outside yourself. In any part of life, as long as I am stuck in my problem being someone else's fault I won't be able to see how *I* can fix it.

Focusing on Google as the Bad Guy won't get you anywhere but where you are now. Does Google "kill" businesses?... perhaps but as the Founder says:

Originally Posted by The Founder

... but how many legitimate businesses did they create as well?

Originally Posted by weslinda

Wow...why does everyone think Google Owes Them Something? I don't see how Google is penalizing you.

Explain how they are penalizing you. What are the penalties and issues you are seeing? Just that you aren't getting enough traffic from them?

First, I'm not sure how Google is penalizing you. I tried a few search terms and your products come up first on the page under Google Products. So they can't hate you that much.

I can say that your onpage optimization is weak at best and definately needs work. Also, you could work on improving things like your blog, and other content / information you're including.

Don't hate Google because they aren't making you #1. If you think Google owes you something, or is the reason you're in business, you need to choose answer 1 in your survey and close up shop.

Great post!

MJ

[tkershaw]

"A simple customer service matter."

First of all to be a customer you have to be buying something, since you want free placement you are getting what you paid for. Maybe they could offer a 900 number for advice...

Tony.

[weslinda]

Wait...you mean...that even though I'm not paying a penny to Google, and they have brought me thousands of dollars in sales...for nothing...I don't have the right to complain that this months sales from them is $5k versus last months $10k. But they're putting me out of business with that type of change.

You must be kidding, of course I have a right to complain.

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by weslinda

BJ, links on here are nofollow.

I am not so sure about that ... this is what I see in Source Code for my sig:

<a href="http://www.cyber-key.com" target="_blank">SEO Web Design by Cyber Key</a> Search Smart Design® <a href="http://www.cyber-key.com/seo-copywriting.html" target="_blank">SEO Copywriter</a> &amp; Traveling <a href="http://vacationgypsy.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Vacation Gypsy</a>
I see a lot of nofollow tags on other links within the page, but not on our signature links. And I find links from WPW in Webmaster Tools as backlinks ...

But unless the links are blocked some other way, they are of some value. Not much, as this page is not likely to get PR ...

Correct me if I am wrong ...

[webwoman]

My question, is: Was your site at a high ranking before and is now getting a low ranking? That wasn't clear to me. If it wasn't high before, then I suggest you follow all of the suggestions of all of our amazing members. If it was and it is low now, then you are experiencing something different...a change in the algorithm. Google doesn't have the time to go after individual sites, unless they are doing something illegal and even then, that is very rare.

As many responders have pointed out, the first thing to recognize is that Google is one of many search engines and quite frankly anyone who focuses their entire internet marketing plan on where they can get in Google won't last long. There are so many amazing, creative ways to get more traffic than you could dream of getting from any search engine, no matter how large.

It seems clear to me that you have some serious misunderstandings about how the internet works. I am going to recommend a book to you that I recommend to all my students and clients: Meatball Sundae by Seth Godin. Reading that should give you a much clearer understanding of how the internet works and what you may be missing in your marketing. It isn't a long book, but make sure you read it with a highlighter and a pen. You will want to highlight and write in the margins.

Also, you might want to read a great article by Chris Anderson entitled: The Long Tail. You can get a free pdf about this at ChangeThis :: The Long Tail.

At any rate, I hope this helps, and I want to thank all the participators in all the Web World forums. What an amazing resource. I seldom post, but I love all of the discussions. I always learn something new here.

[weslinda]

I standeth correctedeth. I swear when I looked earlier they were nofollow. Interesting development.

[weslinda]

Anyone noticing silence from the Google hater? I bet that he simply did this to create some love for his own site. Gotta love the people causing issues so they can get a few more visitors to their great drug testing web site.

[deepsand]

The Poll, entitled "What would you if your site is penalized by Google & you don't know why?," is seriously flawed, in that it exludes all possible actions not listed as choices.

[RegDCP]

I took a quick look and I would consider the site "spammy" & "keyword stuffed"

Do you really need to repeat TestCountry 19 times?
"Drug" 51 times?

Even though Google "does not use" the keyword meta tag I would still redo it as it too might be considered spammy.

Just judging from the mainpage the site needs proper SEO

Reg

[weslinda]

Reg...he wasn't looking for improvement of his site, he wanted to know how he should go about complaining to Google that they weren't treating him nice enough. He isn't interested in improving his site, just complaining that the free traffic isn't enough for his taste.

[crankydave]

You've made your position quite clear weslinda. Members are able to read what you have posted as well as decide for themselves what was intended.

Dave

[arius]

It is not like I am trying to not learn, or care how to improve. So again Dave, THANK YOU. Your input will be well used ...

[Andilinks]

Google's treacherous secrecy forces honest business people to abandon their primary interests, ignore their customers and become SEOs, or worse yet become a victim of the legions of practitioners who pretend to know what makes Google tick. I don't expect this sentiment will make me very popular around here. The very existence of this thread testifies to the dismal way Google communicates with honest businesses that want to have profitable web sites.