Ecommerce site became "adult related" with no reason - what to do?

Half of our business lost with no reason! Help!

[donaldv]

Hello,

I noticed a few weeks a go a drop in number of visitors and also noticed that Google suddenly doesn't show any images from our site on Google image search. Today I turned "safeseach" to off and the images suddenly showed up again. I checked our statistics and saw that some half adult site is lining to us from some reason. I emailed him to remove our link but I don't know when and if they will do this. How can I contact Google to manually check our site and see that it is NOTHING but adult related? We are losing about HALF of our business due to this situation.

THANKS!

[Steph_R]

I have never heard of this issue before, so I am not sure exactly what would cause this. Scan your site for anything that might be considered "adult content" and if I were you, I would get rid of that content asap. Then, contact google - they *might* help.

[Steph_R]

You said "some half adult site is lining to us from some reason."

I would block that guy from accessing your site and the link will eventually go away.

[donaldv]

Thanks. I already asked from them to take down the link, which they did, and removed anything from our site which might be related. Where should I contact google for this? How long will it take them? Thanks

[Steph_R]

This link might help: [mattcutts.com...]

[Steph_R]

And your question "How long will it take them?"

That is the million dollar question -- G has all the power and in my experience, not motivated to help webmasters. So, you can wait forever, or if you get lucky they could respond in 3 days.

[glengara]

Any other adult sites coming up in a similar pages search?

[donaldv]

No. This did not effect our regular search position, just the image search. I can't fine our images unless I turn to off the "SafeSearch" option so we can assume it labels our images as adult related. This is a big problem for us. We will soon have to start firing people...

[cabbie]

Unfortunately this is a trick that competitors use to stop other sites getting ranked in default google images serps.

[donaldv]

This is just not fair, there must someone we can contact, no?

[Komodo_Tale]

I always shudder when people say they will have to lay-off employees because of Google. But then I ask if it is because of Google or because of a largely one-sided business plan? As long as Google is not slandering or libeling you or your business they are doing nothing wrong or unethical. Google is not a public utility yet you chose to depend on Google. Google did not choose to depend on you.

Some Things You Can Do

Sign-up for Google Sitemaps first then file your reinclusion request from Sitemaps. Be nice when you explain what has happened and stick to the technical facts. Keep in mind that Google's employees follow strict protocals and are limited in how they can respond. Also, a canned response does not mean that someone is not looking at your situation.

In your .htaccess create a "deny from" for the offenders host name and IP. If the link is from an program or bot this may make the scraper think you no longer exist.

If you have employees on the line you should probably invest in a PPC campaign and some other marketing channels to attract customers. This will not be free, but it could buy you time. Get the best PPC consultant you can find or afford because you need to maximize results fast.

I Hope You Get Through This
It appears that you are are too dependent on a single marketing channel. What would you do if Google went bankrupt and closed its doors tomorrow? You need to find new ways to penetrate the market and new avenues for sales. You need a new marketing plan.

Since you have asked us for advice you might want to ask your employees for advice too. They might have some good marketing ideas to help get your sales going.

[Komodo_Tale]

By the way, this is a tough situation and I do feel for you.

[donaldv]

Yes, they don't owe us anything, but if we do follow the rules... And as a monopoly (we could say they are a monopoly) they should have some kind of responsibility for the enforcement of their rules - at the minimum, no one should be able to use their own system to hurt competition.

[s_clay]

donaldv;

You may want to register your site with icra.org [icra.org] After your site is certified, place the meta tag on all applicable pages.

Good luck.

[edited by: tedster at 8:44 pm (utc) on June 7, 2006]
[edit reason] make link live [/edit]

[donaldv]

We got this from them now:

"Thank you for your note. We have passed your email on to our SafeSearch
team. We appreciate your taking the time to write to us.

Regards,
The Google Team"

Very nice of them!

[Lorel]

donaldv

It "supposedly" won't hurt you if an adult site links to your site. It is what You are linking to that can hurt your site. While waiting for Google, check all your outgoing links and make sure one of those sites hasn't been bought out by an adult site or turned into a FreeForAll Links site or anything that looks spammy, as this often happens.

[pageoneresults]

I checked our statistics and saw that some half adult site is linking to us from some reason.

That really wouldn't have any bearing on the loss of your traffic. If that were the case, the web would be a mess of adult sites linking to non-adult sites in an effort to cause the issues you are stating.

We are losing about HALF of our business due to this situation.

Your issue is not the inbound link. You may want to spend some time reading through the Google Forum here and see what others have been up against since the Big Daddy update which it appears you've been a victim of.

My initial questions would be...

1. How old is the site?
2. What ecommerce platform are you using?
3. Are you utilizing a URI rewrite?
4. Are you participating in link exchanges?

The list of questions could go on and on for pages and pages. A single link from an adult site is not going to cause you any harm.

[edited by: pageoneresults at 8:40 pm (utc) on June 7, 2006]

[Philosopher]

I believe the OP was referring to this affecting their listing in google images which is quite different than the regular index and indexing problems as of late.

[pageoneresults]

I believe the OP was referring to this affecting their listing in google images.

It really shouldn't affect them in any of the search categories.

Can you explain to us why image searches are important to you? Are you an ecommerce site selling images?

[Philosopher]

I've had a few clients that get fairly significant traffic from the Google image search. Not sure why people use that as a way to find products but hey...it seems to work for some.

As to the safesearch being affected by an adult site link, I can see why this might have an affect for images when it doesn't for the regular index (although I admit I have NO data to back that up).

[JudgeJeffries]

Not talking about images but I've had absolutely no problem converting a former porn and gambling site to a criminal lawyer referral site. It had a ton of inbounds from its adult days, high PR and was cheap. Ranks a lot better than I ever expected and still has most of the porn inbounds. Maybe lawyers, porn and crime are linked in Googles mind.

[donaldv]

Not only in their mind... :-)