OK - I'm freaking out!

[JeremyHFSykes]

I finished setting up my website pretty much the other day I registered and verified it with Google, etc. I did a Google search and put the three main words in my website name. I typed in separately, not together. I hit return and BANG! the first thing it returned was my website. number one. I did it on another computer in the house as well. BANG! number one. This morning I did the same thing - NOTHING? Did it on another computer - NOTHING! What happened?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Was it me playing with Google settings or something? Google analytic? Google AdSense? Ning? Did I mess up a setting - was I smoking crack yesterday and just don't remember? Please help!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Jeremy I know it's scary, but it can be totally normal for sites to disappear, as I'm sure others have told you. Sites can go in and out of the rankings for no apparent reason. It does not mean you did anything wrong. Also sites can be sandboxed for awhile when they are new.

Best thing to do is NOT go crazy changing a bunch of things to try to get your rankings back. If you know you've done something that's against Google's rules, change it. But otherwise just continue to do white hat link building and everything like normal and eventually it should come back. Could be a day or a couple months.

Life as a webmaster can be like a rollercoaster, with Google giving the wildest of rides. It's hard at 1st, but eventually you come to realize the ups and downs just come with the territory and you have to just learn to ride it out.

 

[JeremyHFSykes]

Thanks

Thanks, I am not going to feel better til it comes back but I REALLY appreciate your reassurance!

 

[libertygadget]

Linda is spot on here Jeremy,
Websites bounce around constantly in the SERPs. We see this quite frequently with clients that we have. We have a pretty extensive back office that keeps everything up to date and you should see some of the graphs of our clients rankings in the various search engines (minus MSN). They are at one time position 1 or 2 and at other times 5 or 6. These can be attributed to new links being found for competitors sites and sometimes changes that took place on your site, or their site. Just keep with it and remember SEO is long term not a short term solution.

 

[JeremyHFSykes]

Thanks you guys!

As you can probably assume, I still had a hard time relaxing. But just as you said, it's back. it is returning as number 1 again.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Yea! Happy for you Jeremy. Hang on it could still be a bumpy ride,
but being back on the upswing always feels good.

 

[kenpachi]

New sites are kind of thrown around all other the place. Sometimes Google gives you a little 2 week honeymoon, and ranks you number one for a lot of different keywords, then takes it all away. I think it is called "Google dance" or something like that.

 

[Linda Buquet]

I think it is called "Google dance" or something like that.

It can feel like Google torture!

 

[JeremyHFSykes]

We will see -

I am still number one (or was a couple days ago). That may be a bit unreasonable to expect but for now it is a start. I am so new to this I don't understand my google analytics. It looks like only one person ever visited the site. that can't be true when I have 57 +/- members already. A buddy tod me that it looks like google is only picking up the frontpage and none of the content? That has to be my next problem to fix. my site is a "NING" site but I pay them to let me use my owned URL. GoDaddy is bouncing my traffic to my ning site but my GoDaddy hosted site is actually empty. Thaat may have something to do with it I guess.