Nosedive.

One of our sites took a major nosedive on Google a couple of weeks ago. For months, we were riding high on the coveted first page of results for our top search terms. Then literally overnight, Google dropped us down to page 65, better known as Google hell. The chances of a business being seen on the web when about #650 out of 440,000 results are about as likely as being seen on a billboard on a closed road in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

So we panicked for a while, not having any idea why this might have happened. And we spent hours on Google’s site, studying the webmaster guidelines we thought we knew so well. And we asked about this on a forum set up just for these kinds of questions and monitored by Googlers themselves. And we wrote Google and requested reconsideration, basically asking them to rethink their decision since we did not think we had done something to warrant such an action.

And in the end, just a few days ago, our site was reinstated on page one.

To be honest, we never did learn exactly what had happened. And there are no guarantees that we will not be in violation again one day. Google’s aim is to provide a quality product to its customers, namely search results which are reliable. They have a right and an obligation to have some guidelines regarding sites they index.

We suspect that the problem was related to a previous site using our domain name that had some problems of its own, and that once this was pointed out, Google did reconsider. But we may never know.

Nevertheless, we learned a few things by this experience and that is always a plus. You can’t stand still in this business which moves at a speed appropriate for the world wide web.