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....Then, today, I stumbled upon dozens of messages on this forum, saying that GoDaddy *MAY* be responsible for hosing Google rankings on hundreds of websites. It seems like GoDaddy customers are bailing out like rats on a sinking ship.
I feel sick!
As the owner of a small web development and marketing business, I have taken great pride in my high positioning on the major search engines. This is how I sell myself to potential clients. As luck would have it, today I searched for my key phrases on Google and poof! I'm gone. I'm hoping this is a result of my site being down for a week, and that it will come back shortly. Based upon things I've read here, however, I don't feel good about it.
If someone could share their observations on this matter when they have a few moments, I'd sure appreciate it.
Thanks to all.
Eric
As an aside, get a good web host, and make sure to keep an eye on things. I did something *really* stupid a few days ago. My main amateur site has gotten so popular, to my surprise, that I blew over the bandwidth limit with the host and it went offline. I spotted this just after it happened, and e-mailed the host to get it back online immediately, and I'd pay any cost. Fortunately the owner quickly spotted the e-mail, and was nice enough to give increase my bandwidth allowed a gig a month at no extra cost. The good news is that Googlebot apparently didn't come around at that time, or spotted from the 5xx error code likely this was a temporary problem. The Googlebots are back and grabbing content, so it looks OK. Heck, Googlebot grabbed my home page 3 times *today*, and this is actually not unusual. I used to be paranoid about all the Googlebot activity on my site. I've since concluded that this is just the way Google is, and likely not a worry.
It sucks.
Take a look to your keywords, may be they are included in the last antiSEO filter of Florida update.
GoogleGuy stopped short of saying this, but came as close as he reasonably could.
So, if Googlebot is crawling your site it should be ok. If, a week from now it is still nowhere to be seen, it may be time to bail out.
Kaled.
First thanks for your replies. It's nice to know other people feel my pain ;-)
FYI, here's a response I just received from GoDaddy Support
------- Cut Here -----
While there was an issue with Google during the first part of November, that issue has been resolved. The theory regarding gdform.php is new to us, and the likelihood that a php script would cause that is slim.
I think if you look at the last post on that thread, the date is November 9; over a month ago.
Are you currently experiencing issues with your rankings, or is this phenomenon passing?
Please let us know if we can help you in any other way.
Sincerely,
Eric C.
GoDaddy.com
Customer Service Representative
General Support: 480-505-8877
Billing: 480-505-8855
-------- End Cut -----
We'll see!
I have lost massive ranking for 3 out of 4 sites, the 3 were on GoDaddy and 1 on NetSol.
After reading everyword in everythread, I could find no reason why 3 out of 4 sites were dropped...except that they are on GoDaddy.
Now, I offer you the REASON. It is not what you think. Google is NOT biased towards GoDaddy. What has happened is that Google has flagged those three sites as being "mirror" sites becuase they are on the same host, with the same DNS!
I do not think that there is a connection.
1. Checked for duplicate content
2. Matched the 1st three parts of the I.P.
Now, they have extended the "duplication" to matches in:
3. Hosts
4. WHOIS info
since 1 & 2 have been overcome, they needed 3 & 4 to weed out "duplicates"
we already know that Google has been looking at removing "duplication". In the past they have:1. Checked for duplicate content
2. Matched the 1st three parts of the I.P.Now, they have extended the "duplication" to matches in:
3. Hosts
4. WHOIS infosince 1 & 2 have been overcome, they needed 3 & 4 to weed out "duplicates"
This sounds like the most likely answer. Tons of websites have been inflating their rankings with mirror/doorway sites. If this is true, I certainly can't blame google for weeding those out.
Kaled.
Whatever is causing problems, I do not think GoDaddy hosting hurts you any more than any other host.
I agree that hosting sites and interlinking them, on the same provider, is not a good idea for the long-term. Not if you want to have any benefit from the links.
On the other hand, I was recently reading a study that said that almost 70% of web sites are hosted on an IP address that has at least 50 (yes, that's fifty) other web sites on it. Wow! Makes you wonder if they just discount those links a bit, or if they're totally useless, given the likelihood that it will happen naturally in so many cases.
MQ
Yes, 70% of the web is on shared I.P., thus Google has not "banned" such sites, just reduced their worth...most people have complained about downgrading in Florida and not blacklisting.
Google has considered the DNS name and not just the I.P. , andb while webmasters can use different info in the whois dats, the nameserver info remains the same if they are with one host, even when the I.P.s are different.
In case you havent read this thread:
[webmasterworld.com...]
I think it is what you are after.
Paul
I have since gone in and changed all of my WHOIS info. But do you think this penalty will be permanent? Or could the penalty be released once the WHOIS info is different?
