The lesson here is don't rely on rankings in any search engine, algos get tweaked constantly.
As to adwords, yes it is a good marketing tool, which like any tool needs to be used wisely.
In this forum members discuss how to get the most out of it.
In the Google News forum you can learn how to get back your free rankings.
This is nothing more than a weird coincidence that Adwords happened to contact you a few weeks earlier.
You will want to check out the Webmaster Guidelines and see if there is anything you possibly could have done that would have led to a removal or reduction in the serps. Even when there are no changes made to a site for months or even years, it can trigger a spam filter with a new alogorythm change.
I am sure it was on purpose because we all kknow that the revenue has got to gleem over the next 1-6 months
sites go up and down every day, it has nothing to do with Adwords.
to be honest I am surprised that they called you, however I have heard of outbound telesales staff in certain sectors being taregeted by Adwords.
Shak
That site was already being advertised, so I was suprised. I told them it was already in their ad list, and then they offered to manage and run the account for me.
I started getting suspicious and asking a few questions about how G worked and some ins and outs of the system. After receiving answers that many people here could have answered with a lot more authority, I think they got the idea I was onto them and suddenly they hung up.
After checking the caller ID, they were listed as blocked - unlisted, and G comes up as Google - out of area on my caller ID.
"This is nothing more than a weird coincidence that Adwords happened to contact you a few weeks earlier. "
Jenstar, Can you say that with certainty? if so how are you sure? I did actually get all of our clients thrown off for real 18 months ago and now I am 100% sure that we are working within the rules.
I would advise any members who get a call from some one pretending to be from Google, to get their name and number and cross reference it with Google, or simplere still, if the person says "Hi, my name is John from Google, London office" I would suggest you get their surname and call the london office to verify.
as to your listings etc etc, well that could be possible for a # of reasons, and I doubt the adwords, had ANYTHING to do with it.
Shak
I have employees that are counting on leads to make their living...
.... then maybe you should be looking to speak to someone at a search engine other than Google.
There are many companies that will try to pass off as other companies. As Shak said get a number, call them back after confirming they are who they say they are.
I am still not 100% sure what seems to be the issue here, so please guide me if I am wrong.
1, I accept that listings can go up aswell as down.
2, I accept Google "may" have called promoting their adwords product.
3, I do NOT accept that you are being held to ransom, and also do NOT accept that it was a deliberate move by Google to drop your natural listings.
Shak
I can see dropping 10 or 20 positions on a few words, but to not show up in the top 1-2000 on over 50 keyword phrases? That just seems unlikely. We do not pull tricks on google, we provide good content that took a year to write and tweak. Again, we have other sites that target some of the same words that are written the same way (with different useful and very educational content) and they are still there.
Is there any way that our competition can hurt us by spaming or posting duplicate text somewhere?
[edited by: beck at 6:50 pm (utc) on Feb. 3, 2004]
Again, we have other sites that target some of the same words that are written the same way and are still there.
Ding, dong!
did I really need to hear that? I thought we were here to help eachother.
I didn't intend for that to be unhelpful.
You are in the same boat as many of us are. We have more than one site and even though each site stands on it's own and is aimed at different markets they are some areas where the content is similar as it covers common ground.
Google appears to be using a duplicate content filter (algo?) to restrict these sites. In our case the main site is doing better than ever while two other sites have disappeared for some searches.
My sugeestion is to make sure that the other sites have content that is not worded the same and check your cross linking. If you have interlinked the sites this could be adding to the problem.
As this is the AdWords forum I will also say that I do not believe the search results and the AdWords are connected. It is far more likely your site is missing due to the above.
