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Being dropped from Google can result in the quick death of a startup company, or lead to the laying off of employees in a well established company.
Take our company for example. We are one of the market leaders in our industry. We have never used SEO or spam techniques, but after 5 years in Google, we were suddenly dropped from the index.
This being dropped from the index, leads to a cascade effect on other search engines, as we were dropped from the Google web hosted results from Yahoo.
The end result, is a 25% drop in traffic despite being well diversified.
For our company, this means I have to layoff 2 people in our order fullfillment department.
Google must address issues, where well established companies, are suddenly dropped from the index for no apparent reason.
I have two employees who are laid off, and I can't tell them when they will be hired back on, as I have no mechanism to contact Google to get the problem fix.
I would gladly pay several hundred dollars to place a google support call, to get the problem fixed.
I pay for support calls to my ISP, the phone company and for payment gateway services.
When they mess up, I can get the problem resolve in a matter of hours or less.
Google must realize that their inaction on technical issues, and the inability to have problems rectified, is having an effect on the economy.
We need to have a pay for support service for Google.
No body should lose their job because Google made a technical mistake.
I believe my problems are due to 301 redirects (and they are 301's and not 302's).Despite people telling me that using 301's to point to a new domain is seamless, I am afraid that it didn't work for me.
My emphasis added
Conversely, if you changed a whole bunch of your pages URLs, then you weren't dropped, you just plain weren't found.
This is a really valuable lesson to n00bi webmasters: Don't change domain names if at all possible.
You also said you
.. have never used SEO or spam techniques
<EXTRA EXTRA>Professional SEO help saves Jobs, Ign tells</EXTRA EXTRA>
<edit>Typos and formating errors. ARRRGGHH</edit>
Whenever anyone's site gets dropped down it's a problem with Google. Who is responsible for the employees that got laid off because their boss hired them on the whims of something he knew he had no real control over? Whose "social responsibility" is that?
And Brett's post wasn't a flame, it was just the facts, the thread could've been closed after 2 posts. I'd be terse if I were Brett too, his forums are harder and harder to find real information on because there are two pages of belyaching instead of constructive ideas.
A Google trouble ticket doesn't solve your problems, and it doesn't make the decision to hire people irresponsibly any smarter. If the ranking comes back do they get hired again, until Google callously adjusts their rankings downward someday?
I have been dropped from Google. Everybody should be sometime, it makes it clear what thin ice your business is on relying on a free service that is constantly changing.
With 3 billion pages and hundreds of criteria, chances are a lot combinations could occur where sites drop "for no reason." Google is not responsible to maintain the same listings forever.
Either ride the free ride until it runs out and get the money you can, or diversify and run your business in reality.
Nevertheless, I am very grateful for Googleguy's presence on WW. You have to admire someone who volunteers their time to pay personal attention to individual concerns. Unfortunately, it's easy to confuse Google with GoogleGuy. And some new user -- frustrated with Google's erratic indexing -- will take it out on poor Googleguy, who tries to provide the kind of support that Ign and others are looking for.
And, hopefully on one perfect day, Google will find the cure for "normal variation".
There are a million controllable ways to make money on the Internet without Google. Depend on them if you wish. Tomorrow they could sell to Microsoft and everyone at Google retire, and Google serve MSN results forever. People here would want a class action lawsuit, or some kind of injunction to force the engineers to continue working and maintain their search results because their business can't survive without Google spoon feeding them steady traffic forever.
And Brett's post wasn't a flame, it was just the facts
No, it was complete speculation on his part, not facts. Ign later disproved all of Brett's "facts". But we all make mistakes, even I got too emotional before (my apologies, bcolflesh). We can just admit it and move on, and not cover it up (I suddenly smelled a vacuum)
But thank you for providing one real example of a site that was 99% Google-proof. You are truly qualified to talk about not putting eggs in one basket.
We want to retire the .ca in favor of the .com so we did a 301 redirect from the .ca to the .com
I hope this clarifies the whole 301 redirect issue.
Sounds like that the business that is 99% google proof is a wholesale B2B business, which I can understand. I believe a business dependency on Google depends on the business they are in.
Can Google complain here, when they have to sack 2 Adwords staff cuz the SEO's are just getting too crafty at achieving rankings and nabbing the clients budget which is
a) reducing Google's bottom line and
b) funding the wholesale cracking of their algorithm?
Not saying your doing SEO, Ign, but I thought I would throw in an opposing view.
<added>I have personally experienced Ign's situation almost verbatim with my own site when I was changing branding. And I really do sympathise.</added>
Also, the sincere help offered by GoogleGuy indicates that Google Corp is concerned with hic-ups in the system and is addressing them.
In addition I believe the new AdSense program's revenue sharing model will take the company to heights never before seen or imagined for an internet company. From what I've seen this vast influence and responsibility could not be in the hands of a finer group of people. IMO
Why ever?
In a highly competitive search, all the top results may be very very close in RATING -- say page rank 5.144002, 5.144001, 5.143988, etc. A very small change in the RATING evaluation code could EASILY mean a drastic RANKING for a site that has been "SERP'ed" differently than all the others.
And in this case, the site is SERP'ed differently than the others -- you mentioned it HADN'T been optimized. So, if some attribute that the SERP perps know how to code for, has had its importance increased, all the SERP'ed sites would take a tiny RATING increase, and the other site would take a gigantic step backwards in the RANKING.
There are various other scenarios in a competitive search, for a very small RATING change to cause a very large RANKING change. Hence, it's considered the "NORMAL" case.
In a highly competitive search, all the top results may be very very close in RATING -- say page rank 5.144002, 5.144001, 5.143988, etc. A very small change in the RATING evaluation code could EASILY mean a drastic RANKING for a site that has been "SERP'ed" differently than all the others.
Great point! It is a very fluid medium and with ongoing/rolling updates, subject to change more frequently than we have seen in the past. I am experiencing this myself and now I more closely monitor changes to the sites around me. Many sites now seem to require tuneups more often than a Ferrari.
I assume this is what is referred to as making a spam check request, because if I use the online form in Google, that is to report spam, not to find out if you already been blacklisted.
Am I right, or do I have something confused in performing a spam check.
Any small RATING change that puts this article at the top is a faulty change... and I think that this example is symptomatic of a faulty algorithm.
I would actually have to disagree with you here. This is a perspective issue.
If we were to change the story on CNN to being *about* a widget store that is in the news, the majority of searchers for "widget store" in that short time frame are probably looking for information on that news item.
Yes, Google does occasionally have what are actual irrelevant results mixed in, but in most cases the complaint is more that it is irrelevant to what the *specific* searcher wanted instead of being irrelevant to the actual search term.
Any change that google makes will bring up "faulty" results in some search or another. That's what happens with an automatic ranking system. It just sucks when it happens to you. Just report it to Google so they know about it, \then go about your business. The surfers that don't want the news article will just go on to the next resxult.
I've commented on this before. When the ogre is Microsoft everyone seems to understand that a powerful vender that exterts a huge marketing force has to act responsibly.
When the vendor is Google, people on this forum generally tend to be for unrestrained marketing power.
We regulate the concentration of large media companies in the radio and TV industries and to some extent in the print media. Several weeks ago I started a thread that asked if Google needed to be regulated.
This thread talks about the impact on a single company. Some thought has to be given to ensuring competition on the Internet. The concentration of economic power in three huge search engines where they are a law unto themselves gives them unrestrained marketing clout.
This may not be the most independent forum for this discussion since Yahoo and Google both are sponsoring forum activities.
if you wrote a business plan, and you put in there that you would be relying on google to send you traffic, and that would drive your business, and you were talking about natural SERPs, and not adwords (and budgeting for campaigns), an investment banker would laugh at you. laugh. out loud. as i have done.
these cry me a river threads are humorous. it's nice of GG to pop in and offer some guidance, but the responsibility for failure, when your business depends on someone else's, whom you have absolutely no say over. well, just think about it.
and, if you switched domains, added new pages, and weren't running adwords campaigns, then shame on you.
We regulate the concentration of large media companies in the radio and TV industries and to some extent in the print media.
Uh... how is that again? The print media is absolutely unfettered as far as ownership restrictions go. The only case where that isn't true is if a company wants to own both TV/radio stations and print media in the same broadcast markets. What exactly is the "problem" that regulation will solve? If, and I suspect this is where it's going, it involves positioning, you can go howl at the moon so far as the courts will care, and I would join them. It's called a free press. A free press only exists if you own one.
i read the first post, and brett's reply, and can't understand how this thread ballooned to so many pages.
I will tell you. The number of people who think they should get something for nothing has in no way diminished.
Not optimizing for Google, Yahoo!, or any other ONE search engine. Any business that relies on a single search engine's SERP "opinion" of them to produce sales is in dire need of a change in their online marketing plan.
And what *IS* optimizing a web site? It's optimizing the REACH (and overall presentation) of that web site and the recognition of your company's brand(s)... not ranking in the top ten of a Google search.
Google is an AWESOME source of traffic, but each business I run can easily survive through alternate avenues of promotion without ever being listed in the Google SERPs.
In most cases, revenue can pay for the full cost of development before the Google indexing even comes into effect - before any sign of a PageRank - before a single Yahoogle web result even appears.
If you're business suffers a loss so major that you have to fire two employees - just because your listing doesn't show up on Google for a month or so, hire a consultant to find the holes in your online strategy - it's most likely you are overlooking other aspects and angles as well.
I believe that every company needs to act in a responsible manner towards the entire chain of people whose lives it affects. The same should go for individuals too, if your actions impact on others then you should at the very least consider them.
As an example I am a company director, my primary responsilbilites are to my shareholders, followed by staff, then customers, then suppliers etc etc. Somewhere around #20 comes my responsibility to Google et al, they supply some nice free [and paid] traffic and we need to consider how our actions may affect them.
In the real world we have to "grade" the consequences of our actions, sometimes we just have to say "this is going to hurt some people but overall it will benifit our core aims".
I believe Google could be a better company if it brought webmasters higher up the chain of importance but to be frank they seem to have us at our natural level. I think from Googles end my business is about at the same prioity level to them as their business is to me.
From a webmaster perspective that situation is not ideal and I feel that is the same with Google. Would you like to be the guy to walk into a meeting and demand more resources for dealing with webmaster issues?
Google need to find a way for webmasters to get the support they need within a system that at the *very least* covers its costs.
I'd like to find a business that DIDNT rely on other businesses!
If I buy retail space in a mall and the surrounding -anchor- stores lose business and fail, I lose traffic and fail.
If I repair 'Blanko' cars, my business depends on 'Blanko' car sales and their reliability.
If i sell hot dogs outside widget stadium and the widget team stinks this year, my sales will stink with the dropping attendance.
etc.etc.
Of course complaining solves nothing :)
I don't think so. I have time and again reported sites with duplicate content showing in series for search results form several of their sites with the same content, I have reported pages with 1 pixel, <DIV> tags, pages with hidden text and so on. Month after month, those pages show up again. So, I don't think they have time to look at all spam reports. Naturally, Google has grown so big and there is no surprise - they probably have more email than they can handle now.
This thread clearly indicates that Google has much to address in terms of "greviences"
And what is free, isn't google supported by the infrastructure that our society has built. Sure they have cornered a part of the market, but it is because of the educational, technical, financial, legal, defence, etc. infrastructure that nations together as human societies have built. They are a part of us itself.
Having said that, it is not good to put your eggs in one basket. Diversify your sales channels.
My take on all of this is :
1. Gives extra weight to the role Internet marketing specifically search engine marketing plays in ones overall marketing strategy.
2. Diversification in marketing strategies is critical to business survival - at least in the long term.
3. Google is a major player that cannot be ignored.
OK .. so I have stated the obvious. So what?
Well, you need to do a yield management assessment of Google. If its as critical to your success as you would have us believe, then the amount of resources and strategic redundancy you need to build into this system needs to be bolstered. In other words, have plenty of additional levers to pull if your major "legs" go down.
Your staff might need to be retrained to specialize in search engine marketing ..... afterall they should see how crucial this is to their livelihood.
I am out like dat!
Your point highlights the need for risk assessment - what is the liklihood of an adverse event occurring and what is the impact if the event does occur.
Now, there are probably 4 billion websites indexed by Google. What is the liklihood of not being listed in the top 10 (adverse event). I would say very likely. Now assess the impact of not being listed in the top 10. That is really all this thread is about. Risk management.
Presumably, Google are paying taxes on their profits to support the infrastructure you talk about. Now you may argue about the level of taxation on private enterprise - perhaps Google (and other private enterprises) don't pay enough for the sophisticated public infrastructure that has allowed them to flourish; but Google has no particular responsibility to any website it chooses to list. It doesn't actually have to list any websites.
[edited by: merlin30 at 9:50 pm (utc) on Aug. 20, 2003]
I believe that every company needs to act in a responsible manner towards the entire chain of people whose lives it affects. The same should go for individuals too, if your actions impact on others then you should at the very least consider them.
......... my primary responsilbilites are to my shareholders, followed by staff, then customers, then suppliers etc etc. Somewhere around #20 comes my responsibility to Google et al....... I think from Googles end my business is about at the same prioity level to them as their business is to me.
