I�ve Been Punk�d by the Google Bot – Post #3

On Saturday, I ran a quick check of some of my keywords for my JillianEntertainment.com website. I use this site to sell a wholesale dvd list to internet retailers.

I was shocked to find out that 4 of my high traffic keywords had disappeared from the first page of search results. These words didn't just drop in rankings, they had disappeared from the search results completely. The first thing that came to mind was I must have done something wrong. Could I be guilty of some black hat seo penalty that I'm not even aware of?

I felt a little better after reading a blog post by Brent Hodgson. He mentioned this type of disappearance was not out of the ordinary and assured his blog readers that things would return to normal in a few days. Lucky for me Brent, the other Brent, was right.

Today, everything is back to normal. I actually moved up a position on one of the keywords and all the others have settled into their previous positions.

Over the last few days, I danced with the Google Bot and lived to tell the story. If you are in similar situation, don't panic. If you haven't used black hat techniques to trick search engines into giving your site higher rankings, you probably don't have anything to worry about. Don't start making changes to your site right away. I'd wait at least 3 - 4 days before being concerned there was something more than the Google dance going on.

Good Luck,

Brent Crouch

Posted by: Brent Crouch on 30 Apr, 2007No Comments »