Same whois and company. Google banned?

[borkboing]

I have a company that owns many domains particular and specific to the products being sold and many online stores specific to their products. These sites used to be listed prominently in Google for their keywords; now there are only giant corporations.

For example, I have a site that sells shirts. These shirt makers often make dresses too, so I have a site that sells sundresses.

I have thrown years of work and thousands of dollars into getting right with Google. Nothing has helped.

I recently saw an article that stated that my business model has been targeted specifically for exclusion from organic search. One company with multiple stores that share hosting, contact and whois information getting severely penalized.

If anyone knows about this, would you please confirm? It would explain much.

<snip>

I can't just sit back and watch my livelihood die for no good reason and have set up an experiment. I have a false identity for a new site wherein a fake name and real address provided to my domain registrar (new whois), a new dedicated IP for a new site with a new hosting company, and any company data will go behind an SSL certificate. If this gets traction in Google organic, I will let everyone know (but not specifics). I am appalled.

[edited by: goodroi at 11:44 am (utc) on Mar 26, 2014]
[edit reason] Let's avoid editorializing and focus on the SEO [/edit]

[goodroi]

Google has been known to go after website networks but that tends to be reserved for extreme cases. Google just does not the time to manually seek out & penalize billions of websites. Most of the filters & penalties are automated and I strongly suspect you are dealing with automated issues.

When people own multiple sites they tend to use the same SEO tactics on every site. If your SEO plan has a flaw, then all of your sites are flawed.

How have you done link development for so many similar websites?

I also wonder if you might have duplicate content issues. How have you generated quality content for so many similar websites and avoided duplicate content? If you are an affiliate this is an even bigger issue because there are hundreds of affiliates publishing the same merchant feed.

Google wants websites that provide significant and unique value. You need to ask yourself what do you provide that isn't found on 100 other competing websites. Unfortunately for many webmasters the answer is there is no competitive difference and that is an underlying issue contributing to their poor rankings.

[borkboing]

These are great questions, but I have addressed them all years ago. Tried to gain traction myself and when that failed, hired professionals with good track records.

Nothing has changed.

The one site I mentioned, the sundress site, has all kinds of sundresses. Long, short, Hawaiian, tea length, tropical, all white, all black... every variation you can think of. Every word is unique to the site and I have strictly avoided keyword stuffing. Have adhered to the white hat policies. Even my images are unique.

It is possible that my sites were manually selected, but I too believe it is an automated issue.

Is there any information to confirm that sites that share contact info, whois data and hosting info are google slapped?

[netmeg]

Not me, I have multiple sites and they are fine (not ecommerce though) I have a client with multiple ecommerce sites doing fine, but each one is targeted to a different country.

Personally I think you blew off goodroi's suggestions too quickly.

Let's turn it around. Why do you think your sites deserve to rank above the big sites? What are you doing that they are not? What have you done to establish your authority in the space, so that your brand in synonymous with your products? What's your unique value proposition?

[borkboing]

That is a great way of looking at this netmet, I will give it my best to answer.

The SEO tactics are pretty broad, I have delved into about every social media there is, have written articles and press releases. I have blogged, published, facebooked and more. I have had professionals look this over, and they cannot see what is wrong. The SEO work has been reverse engineered to the Enth degree already with corrective measures taken at length, so if it looks like I have been dismissive towards a suggestion, I apologize. Did not mean to do that.

My sites are specific to a given item or line of items in both depth and breadth. The larger sites offer these items as ancillary offerings; that is, their sites are not about the product lines in question.

What they are doing that I am not is being able to raise a large number of conversations without having to try. These companies sometimes date back a century.

My authority in the space comes from the completeness of the site, my social media efforts (both my own and others), the longevity of the store(s), and other factors. My url alone is a keyword, if that tells you anything.

My unique value proposition (I had to look the term up) is that my store provides a complete line of sundresses that meet the needs in quality and style of an adult buyer. There are a lot of cheapie items out there; these are not they.

[netmeg]

Well I haven't seen them, of course, but offhand from the way you describe them, I'd say that probably isn't enough. As my friend Sugarrae says, Google doesn't want to make sites popular, they want to rank popular sites. Ironically enough, the best way to make a site popular in Google may be to make it popular outside of Google.

The issues you are having with the large companies are the same that all small businesses have, online or brick and mortar. Many of our local stores and businesses gave up after the mall came in with all the big brand stores.

You have to find a way to really stand out. I mean *really* stand out. And clothing is a hard niche to crack.

[borkboing]

"Google doesn't want to make sites popular, they want to rank popular sites." That is excellent. And also excellent advice, to really stand out. I would share the urls, but I don't want to offend the admins or draw the wrong kind of people from the boards.

I do appreciate your sharing your experiences. I think the client who markets to different countries may have dodged a bullet, a bullet I am wondering if it is real or not. I would imagine that different countries have their own Google servers, so the sites would not be 'competing' with one another.

Does anyone out there have evidence for/against shared store data being Google slapped (given there are no duplicate content issues)?

[Planet13]

I don't think there is any solid "rule" that companies will be banned if they have several ecommerce sites registered under the same name.

I say this because in my niche, I am looking at a couple of those listing in the top 12 that have a few other sites (like four or five) registered to them, which are in a similar nature.

One group, for example, might be:

metallicwidgets.com
metallicgizmos.com
metallicdoodads.com
metallicbricabrac.com

you get the idea.

[bwnbwn]

Are the domains EMD's?

[Planet13]

@ bwnbwn:

i am not sure if you are referring to my example or that of the original poster, but in my example, they are partial match domains.

[bwnbwn]

No I was asking the OP if his websites were EMD's.

[borkboing]

By EMD, is that Exact Match Domain? A site whose URL matches its keyword? Yes, most of them are.