Hi everyone. I have a website where I sell pet food. I have for a long time had my site show on the 2 page of Google, once it was even on the first page for a few days (for my main search term: flint river ranch). Anyway, it has been this way for about 8 months. Also, around last September Yahoo put me in it's number one spot, and msn, on the first or second page. Things were good. I was continueing to link to other sites that requested (and I checked them out first, for endless link pages, and never link to casinos and the like). Suddenly google bumped me to page 7. Yahoo drop me to page 2. MSN has been kindest, I am still in the 4-5th spot on page 1. In the last couple of days google has suddenly dropped me so far I can't even find my site! Even if I put something that is unique to my site into the search, and google has too stretch to make something else work, I doesn't pop up. What have I done?! I must have a bad link or something, I can't figure out what it is. I have learned alot obout linking and search engine ranking but, dang it, that's not what I do! I know about animals and animal nutrition, I'm not an expert on search engines. Can anyone here lead me in the right direction? I don't know what to do. Welcome southerngurl First of all don't worry, Google has not dropped your site. I have checked for its existence using other tools and it still exist and is ranked around #64-#66 for keyword 'flint river ranch'. One way to check if your site still exist in Google is to search using your URL like so http://www.google.com/search?q=http%3A% ... ets.com%2F and if Google still has a cached version of your site then it exists.There has been a lot of activity at Google in the last few days where some sites have seen a massive jump in rankings and others have fallen. Maybe your site has been affected by this.Have you changed anything on the home page recently that you suspect may have affected things?Thanks for the reply. After looking around on the internet a bit, I can see I am not alone. I haven't really changed anything, other than breaking up my links page into categories. My links page was getting kind of long. There was one change on my homepage, there was a resources link at the bottom of the page, with the links to each link category below it, but that has all been removed now. My home page is the same as before now. I wish google let you know what you did wrong... I hope they restore my site. More than that I wish yahoo would put me back, but I suppose someone else should get a chance. These kinds of things are scary though, what about those who rely on their website as a living? Mine is just on the side, and I sell a consumable product, so people typically come back on their own after they find my site and purchase. I was mainly afraid I had done something terrible to my site.I think your site has been a victim of the recent shake up but don't worry just yet because no one knows for sure if it will stay like this. That's the frustrating (fun?) thing about working to please the search engines, they are unpredictable to the extreme.Looking through the links that point to your site I see that your site is listed in little or no directories. Getting listed in directories is a great way of increasing your website's search engine ranking. I recommend looking into getting listed in a few particularily DMOZ and Yahoo Directory. Do a few searches for info about directories in this forum of read my article about directories on my site (see my signature).If google really hate you they would have taken you PR away....the google toolbar would show a gray bar...not even a PR0One quick comment on your title tag....I would move it up in the code and add Pet Food to the very beginning....something like this
et Food - Flint River Ranch All Natural pet foodSounds minor but it will help.Thanks for the help.I have submitted to dmoz, but they never added to me. I submitted twice, once about a year ago, and once about 4 months ago. Followed all their rules and everything, read them carefully. Well.. I use frontpage, so I don't know that I can move the title tag up. I know I need to get rid of it (frontpage).NEVER resubmit your request to DMOZ ...When you submit again it overwrites any previous request and your site move down the queue.You are allowed to request a site status after 30 days and you will learn if your your site has been submitted successfully. You can then check each 6 months after that until your site is reviewed.It can take up to two years to get your site reviewed ... after your last submission. DO NOT RESUBMIT "I use frontpage, so I don't know that I can move the title tag up. I know I need to get rid of it (frontpage)."I use it too....it works ok for me....I usually stay in the html view since most of my pages are scripted and don't show in the preview or page views.......Frontpage also likes to clean up the code....which it always screws up....I can't figure out how to disable that feature.Do a search for AlleyCode ....it's a html, cfm, php, etc....editor it works really well and won't mess up any of the frontpage code.....Knowing that you use frontpage...was it intentional that your code has a huge blank area at the top?Right click your page and choose view source...if your using IE....and you'll see what I mean.As far as DMOZ, at the bottom of each category, there is a date when it was last updated. If it has been quite alot of time, your site porbably will not be added for awhile. This is the nly time I might recommend submitting to a different category that is still a good place for your site.The Yahoo Directory is a great directory to get some good PR. You could also have that same directory listing added to the free results in Yahoo. Expensive, but it is one of the mandatory things I do for each one of my clients.For the recent Google problem...http://www.ozzu.com/other-google-information-and-resources/huge-thing-happening-t39456.html
et Food - Flint River Ranch All Natural pet foodSounds minor but it will help.Thanks for the help.I have submitted to dmoz, but they never added to me. I submitted twice, once about a year ago, and once about 4 months ago. Followed all their rules and everything, read them carefully. Well.. I use frontpage, so I don't know that I can move the title tag up. I know I need to get rid of it (frontpage).NEVER resubmit your request to DMOZ ...When you submit again it overwrites any previous request and your site move down the queue.You are allowed to request a site status after 30 days and you will learn if your your site has been submitted successfully. You can then check each 6 months after that until your site is reviewed.It can take up to two years to get your site reviewed ... after your last submission. DO NOT RESUBMIT "I use frontpage, so I don't know that I can move the title tag up. I know I need to get rid of it (frontpage)."I use it too....it works ok for me....I usually stay in the html view since most of my pages are scripted and don't show in the preview or page views.......Frontpage also likes to clean up the code....which it always screws up....I can't figure out how to disable that feature.Do a search for AlleyCode ....it's a html, cfm, php, etc....editor it works really well and won't mess up any of the frontpage code.....Knowing that you use frontpage...was it intentional that your code has a huge blank area at the top?Right click your page and choose view source...if your using IE....and you'll see what I mean.As far as DMOZ, at the bottom of each category, there is a date when it was last updated. If it has been quite alot of time, your site porbably will not be added for awhile. This is the nly time I might recommend submitting to a different category that is still a good place for your site.The Yahoo Directory is a great directory to get some good PR. You could also have that same directory listing added to the free results in Yahoo. Expensive, but it is one of the mandatory things I do for each one of my clients.For the recent Google problem...http://www.ozzu.com/other-google-information-and-resources/huge-thing-happening-t39456.html