Google Hid My Blog! What can I do?

[trishacupra]

I do hope StatCounter isn't the issue, but here's why I mentioned it, in more detail.

The following is from
Google Webmaster Guidelines

If your site is perceived to contain hidden text and links that are deceptive in intent, your site may be removed from the Google index, and will not appear in search results pages. When evaluating your site to see if it includes hidden text or links, look for anything that's not easily viewable by visitors of your site. Are any text or links there solely for search engines rather than visitors?

Now, in the source code of Chris' WoW site, he has the following invisible link to StatCounter - which doesn't benefit his own site, just StatCounter's rank:

<a href="http://www.statcounter.com/" target="_blank"><img class="statcounter" src="http://c37.statcounter.com/3304285/0/e3bba782/1/" alt="web site analytic" ></a>

Now, that's what's supposed to show when Javascript is disabled in a browser, and that's how Google sees the site.

However, it seems to use an invisible image as the link to statcounter.com. When I turn off Javascript, I can't see a visible link to statcounter at all.

Now, I don't know if Google counts this as a hidden link or not. Personally, I'd err on the side of caution.

Here's a link to a discussion where someone think it does count as a hidden link:

Site not appearing in search results - Crawling, indexing, and ranking | Google Groups

Anyway, it's up to you. Maybe just waiting it out without changing anything will be all you need to do and your site will suddenly rise back up again. It's a gamble.

Maybe you can join some SEO forums and that Google group I linked to and ask around before you change it.

Has your site rank improved at all yet?

[chris.whiteley]

Thanks for everyone;s help so far. I still have not returned to ranking for my keywords. I will give it a few more days before I pull statcounter, I love looking at stats way to much!

I was trying to come up with some ideas as to why I could have been "de-ranked" and maybe these have something to do with it:

1. I recently changed my template
2. I added some Warcraft related vote for this site links

I figure that these may have something to do with it.

[trishacupra]

Hi Chris,

Since you're using Wordpress 2.5, why not try a Stats plugin? I've just started a new blog, and I just installed WordPress.com Stats. That's the first stats plugin I'm trying. It's very popular, so I'm hoping it's the only one I'll need to try. Fingers crossed.

Now, how did you change your theme? What did you change exactly? And maybe you should upgrade to WP 2.5.1 - the Automatic Upgrade plugin makes it really easy to do. Even if it doesn't help your ranking, it has a security fix.

And what 'vote for this site' links are you referring to? Do you think Google may be thinking the site/s you're linking to are a link farm?

[chris.whiteley]

I am not sure what happened.. I gave my latest post a Digg and a Stumble in hopes to help out my ranking. I don't know if it was that or my whining about losing my ranking, but I am back on the first page of Google.

I think I would like to work at Google just to see exactly goes on there

[trishacupra]

Glad that you're climbing back up.

[Shopping4Coupons]

Originally Posted by chris.whiteley

I think I would like to work at Google just to see exactly goes on there

I bet they pay better than Adsense

[Strongbow]

I had a similar thing happen to me with a site (wasnt a blog) think it is sorted now but im still none the wiser as to what in particular the problem was but going from the first page to page 80 odd is a sure fire indication that you may be unintentionally doing something which the G does not approve of.

[Auctionman]

Simple snadbox, don't worry it will reshow up..

[kirbybowl]

Hey, I had a similar problem happen recently...

I held a position for #1-3 on Google for one of my keywords (a Korean model's name) for a good 3 months for a particular post and then in the last two weeks it disappeared to around the 50th result (along with an incredible drop in traffic).

I was worried that it was because of my SEO techniques that might seem like spamming keywords...but checking today, I am now back on the first page (whew) after about two weeks but with a different post.

I think it's just luck sometimes...Google's indexing technique sometimes behaves funny

Best of luck to you!

[Maverick07]

Hey I'm wondering how you got your page to be such high google ranked. could you help me? thanks