Paused adwords and disappeared from google

[imageonline]

Can anyone explain why this has happened. Site is a few months old and had got to around page 6 on google search, for no obvious reason it disappeared and came back after 4 days on page 19. It had worked up again to page 9, then I tried adwords for 2 weeks, paused it and site disappeared again. One week later and I cannot find it on the first 40 pages. Also when you type in the name to google seach (stardust evening bags)you should be on page 1. I am, but only for different pages and not the home page. Some of my keywords still show up on page 1 and 2 but it is a mystery to me why the site seems to take a holiday.
Do you reckon it is to do with adwords pause?

[OldWelshGuy]

It is a co-incidence, as you say, it had done this prior to you using adwrds. Google have categorically stated there is no direct link between individual paid and organic results.

[FireFleur]

Could be, I have noticed a few effects of Adwords, trying to work out the logic behind it though, hmm there could be a reason that makes sense.

PM me if you like I will explain my theory.

[OldWelshGuy]

Also explain why senior Google directors would risk going to jail for lying under oath, as they WERE under oath when they stated that as fact.

Ok times have changed, maybe, but seeing as the FTC stated that there MUST be clear demarkation between paid and natural results, I would suggest that any 'theory' about a link is somewhat wide of the mark :(

[FireFleur]

Post your cites to those claims if you could OldWleshGuy, the devil is often in the detail :)

[OldWelshGuy]

I have no intention of digging through to find out citations (sorry don't have time to do it). The statement was made during a trial, which I believe was the Bob Massa trial, not absolutely sure. Although It has been stated many times on and off the record. the question was are you catergorically stating that natural listing are unaffected by the use of paid listings, and that there is no relationship between the both in the ranking algorithm. (I am paraphrasing, but that was the gyst) :)

Sorry about that, but no time to go hunting :(.

[FireFleur]

Well no worries, so just unsubstantiated claims then :)

[JustOneUK]

Well no worries, so just unsubstantiated claims then :)
Post your own theory if you like - I need a laugh.

[FireFleur]

PM me if you like justone - I can do special ed :)

The point is google is free to make a lot of associations with the data that it takes in. A direct correlation between ads and the search engine positioning maybe something they don't do, but there could be an indirect correlation.

[JustOneUK]

Are your thoughts a secret?
Just post them here.

Adwords has nothing to do with SERPs. Anything else you have to say about it will just be pie in the sky opinion... I'm all ears :)

[FireFleur]

Adwords has nothing to do with SERPs. Anything else you have to say about it will just be pie in the sky opinion... I'm all ears :)

Of course Adwords relate to search engine position, they are at the top of the page.

What I think you were trying to say, is that they don't relate to what we term as organic search engine results. And there I have noticed a correlation.

If you want to PM me about, as I keep saying, then do so, I only bite jerks :)

[JustOneUK]

Of course Adwords relate to search engine position, they are at the top of the page.

If I had £1 for everytime I'd heard that I'd be rich.

If you read the original post it pertains to SERPs and the fact that someone feels they have been penalised in the SERPs for pausing an adwords campaign.

I've asked you to post your conclusions in this thread, I'm not interested in PM's. I think is peculiar for you to request that someone substantiate their claim when you can't do it yourself. :|

[GBMaps]

If your website happened to be 'down' when the google bot was on there, that could be a reason why it put you way down the list.

[FireFleur]

@ justoneuk

Well now, hot air seems to be blowing from your direction.

Adwords are part of a search engine results page, and you will find them at the top.

http://www.google.com/search?q=dvd

That is a search results page, and those top three are from Adwords.

So, your point is?

Fully aware of what the OP asked, and my response was to say that I had noticed this as well. Then we get someone claiming it is impossible, and giving reasons that they cannot be bothered to cite source for.

Then we have you jumping in, asking me about my theory and demanding it be published in this thread, well no is the answer, if you want to discuss it further you can PM me. I cannot be any fairer than that.

p.s. you come over really arrogant,, there is not a law against it, but hey just so you know.

[JustOneUK]

p.s. you come over really arrogant,, there is not a law against it, but hey just so you know.
Thanks, I'm aware of that :)

You're confusing Adwords with SERPs, it's a common mistake.

[FireFleur]

Oh well, at least you are aware.

Confused moi, very rarely, let's see what google has to say about their own software:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

Donwload the PDF and you will see they title it organic search results.

You made a mistake, take it on the chin, stop trying to squirm your way out :)

The adword sections is a paid for search engine results section, as soon as that penny drops you will realise why you have to be careful with the distinction.

And you will also see an interesting comment at the bottom of page 1 as well, pertinent to this 'discussion', that can be construed in a number of ways, hence the devil is in the details.

[JustOneUK]

Oh well, at least you are aware.

Confused moi, very rarely, let's see what google has to say about their own software:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

Donwload the PDF and you will see they title it organic search results.

You made a mistake, take it on the chin, stop trying to squirm your way out :)

The adword sections is a paid for search engine results section, as soon as that penny drops you will realise why you have to be careful with the distinction.

And you will also see an interesting comment at the bottom of page 1 as well, pertinent to this 'discussion', that can be construed in a number of ways, hence the devil is in the details.
Yep, whatever you say...
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34428&query=adwords+ranking&topic=&type= :rolleyes:

[FireFleur]

Well if you read that you will see they are making the claim there is not direct correlation, i.e. if you pay for an ad they don't change your position just because you paid.

I think that is understood, what they are saying is they won't just rank a page higher because it has adwords or adsense on it.

But, adwords and adsense effect the information to be found on pages, so an indirect correlation can exist, that could influence organic search engine results.

And don't think that page takes you off the hook about claiming that adwords cannot be at the top of a search results page, if anything it uses Google Search Results and Adwords to make the disctinction between the two, and states ads appear at the top.

[JustOneUK]

Sorry but you really have no idea what you are talking about, did you actually READ the original post?

If I were you I would forget about complex arguments regarding search engines, SERPs and adwords and go sort out the broken link in your UKBF user profile, fix the invalid certificate on your website's contact page (which is issued to Google.com) and get some unique keyword content into your h1 tags :)

Have a great day.

James.

[FireFleur]

Well don't remember asking you for a site review, and your comments are wrong, making it up as you go along :)

I am not going to comment on your site, suffice to say Glass house and stones spring to mind :)

You have a good day James, though conversing with you has been quite unpleasant.

[OldWelshGuy]

Well no worries, so just unsubstantiated claims then :)
Just the same as yours you mean :) http://www.commercialalert.org/PDFs/ftcresponse.pdf (http://www.commercialalert.org/PDFs/ftcresponse.pdf) have a read through that if you like, it is stated in there that paid listings and organic listings MUSt be unlinked (directly).

Now back to the debate. You appear to have changed your mind, either that or possibly not read the important bits in the OP & My reply, so here they are.


OP WROTE
Site is a few months old and had got to around page 6 on google search, for no obvious reason it disappeared and came back after 4 days on page 19.....>snip
then I tried adwords for 2 weeks, paused it and site disappeared again



My reply
Google have categorically stated there is no direct link between individual paid and organic results

You appear to be challenging my reply, but at the same time agreeing with me )potentially).

The devil is in the detail (as you say), but the FTC & The UK advertising Standards authority have in the past sought assurance from Search engines that people can not use money as a tool to appear in the natural listings. http://www.out-law.com/page-4628 Old I know but I can't be rsed to look any firther, in order to debate with someone who will not post their own detail.

So what do I think?

I think that google is using behaviour of individuals in their ranking algo, along with their analytics, and the masses of other data they have that give them industry benchmarks. Paid advertising can of course, increase traffic to a site, but the DIRECT relationship is between the traffic and the algorithm, not the ad campaign and the algo. Who knows, but either way, if there is a direct relationship, then it could fall foul of the advertising laws.

One last thing though. whenever there is an algorithm change, forums are flooded with people who complain their rankings have disappeared. HOW can that be? because surely the same amount of people should be complaining that their rankings IMPORVED (as for every page that drops, others MUSt move up to take their place!

For every person who claims their site suffered from using adwords, there are people claiming their site improved as a result, it is called co-incidence. So I have told you my theory, how about you tell me yours, on the forum for all to see, (as it should be).

[FireFleur]

Oh tag teaming :)

It is interesting how this started, our posts crossed in the posting.

I didn't see your post before I replied to the OP, I just noticed a similar effect that using adwords appeared to influence the search results, and pausing them caused a drop in rankings.

I won't explain the theory too deeply, but it is indirect correlation, the ads create information, and that information can be crawled.

I was genuinely interested in the quotes you claimed, but I also know that google are fairly careful with their claims, so I did want to see the original source of your claims, because just like chinese whispers the information changes depending upon someone else's interpretation.

You fobbed off giving cites, so you are just making unsubstantiated claims.

I realise that some people might just accept that, but frankly you directed them at me, and the post I made, and I wanted to see the original source.

I am not interested in the known fact that Google doesn't just add a weight to the algorithm if adwords or adsense is used, but I am interested if they claim it will never under any circumstance have any effect on the organic rankings, because that is not true.

What I was willing to do was chat with the OP about their setup and compare setups on adwords, which I assumed they didn't want to do on an open forum.

[FireFleur]

I am going to assume you want to have a proper discussion, looks like James has gone.

Yes, there is a lot of chaos in the Google ranking system, it effectively is a spider that keeps a tally and things are often in flux, so you can never be 100% sure why something happened.

And, it does look like activity is being used in many different ways. I wasn't actually driving at having more traffic from adwords helps rankings, but you are right, that could be an effect of adwords, so drop them, reduce traffic, and reduce organic ranking.

But come on this statement:

>>> Also explain why senior Google directors would risk going to jail for lying under oath, as they WERE under oath when they stated that as fact.

Is just asking for a cite :)

But, as I say our posts crossed, I was replying to the OP, but I can see how you may have thought I was replying to you OldWelshGuy. I was actually looking at logs to see if there was a correlation as I was composing the post.

[OldWelshGuy]

No problem, these things happen. Not tag teaming though LOL.

I seem to recall it was Craig Silverstein who was questioned under oath, I am not sure if it was during Bob Massas case, or if it was later during the FTC inquiry into misleading advertising. It didn't really apply to Google, although they were also called into court. It was mainly aimed at the PFP stuff that was going on at the time.

I think it would be really naive now for people to think that social behaviour doesn't play ANY part in the algorithm, as it appears the popular get more popular by being popular. kinda like celebs being famous for being famous ???

[JustOneUK]

I am going to assume you want to have a proper discussion, looks like James has gone.
.
Which part of this is it that you don't understand?
Google's (1) advertising programs are independent of our search results. Search results display on the left side of our results page; ads appear on the right and in the colored box at the top. (2) Participation in an advertising program doesn't positively or negatively affect inclusion or ranking in the Google search results. Inclusion and ranking are free services; (3) we don't accept payment to expedite inclusion or improve a site's ranking for particular keywords
To make it easier I have added some numbers so that you can SEE the 3 important sentences.
I have paused several adwords campaigns without disappearing out of the SERPs so in answer to the original poster.. NO, Pausing your adwords campaign has not caused your site to drop in the SERPs

regards
James.

[JustOneUK]

Here's another from Google...
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=40916&query=natural+search+affect&topic=&type=f&onClick=

Which contains the line..
Please note that your participation in AdWords won't affect the ranking or inclusion of your site in the Google search index.

Like I said.. your conclusions are pie in the sky.

[FireFleur]

Well it is not just traffic, it is content.

Adsense drives that content to pages, and other spiders pick it up, when they dump their results to a page, google picks that up, the ad has effectively been laundered, so Google doesn't use it directly but can be influenced.

And there are other scenarios, which is why I wanted to chat to the OP, see if they had anything similar setup.

You can take Occam's razor approach to what happened, and in all likelihood the simplest explanation was a global reindex at about the same time, sure some people will have turned off adwords just at that moment.

But, when it happens to a couple of people, you have to wonder if there is more of correlation. And as systems gets larger they tend to have an effect on each other, traffic and content aside, the actual processes can inter relate in quite odd ways.

-- edit

oh he is back - the above was for OldWelshGuy

James the discussion is about indirect correlation, we have all agreed that you cannot 'pay' your way into organic search results using adwords or adsense, it is only in your imagination that you think I believe that. You got confused when I corrected you about the position on the google search engine result page, adwords are at the top, but not in organic results. Now go off and fix the open proxy on your little php site.

[OldWelshGuy]

Let's try and keep it professional for the benefit of everyone reading this thread who may be in the same position. (myself included in that request for professionalism)

FF, we are on dangerous ground here now, as we are potentially likely to expose gray hat techniques like the spidering of serps that are indexed atc.. I see your point though.

Google don't spider their own URL's, or any content on other urls included within their own code (their own ads). But I see maybe where you are coming from, in that an AW advertiser advertising on the content network can get link benefit from scraped? content. I know there are a few PPC systems out there that are used to get backlinks.

[FireFleur]

Well the thing to remember is the web is not all about search engines, though if you do SEO you start to think that way :)

There are many projects out there that use website information, a fairly benign usage is website montages, and of course there are some of the more interesting projects that look at how people feel at a given moment, and all that information is potentially indexable, and all of them are scrapers.

So, the legitimacy is debatable in some circumstances and would have to be viewed in context.

Often I will see a referrer come in from some place that makes little sense, and will have a look and it turns out to be an adword in final render form.

They don't seem to persist though, and that could be because of Google, or just the information is transient by design.

[GBMaps]

I hope you don't mind me coming into this thread but I have a query that's along the same lines as the thread is going..

Does google have a seperate spider that comes around when it is working out the quality score etc. for keywords in newly setup campaign?

I notice that if I set up a campaign with say 300 keyphrases, each one pointing to a different url, about an hour after making the campaign live - all the urls used within my campaign get spidered by 'a' google bot. It happens each time I do it(3 times in the last week or so)?

Cheers
Andrew

[FireFleur]

Google has a lot of different bots, and the database is distributed.

So, who knows the allocation may change and there is probably some criteria.

Unless Google opensource their code, most of it is speculation, and of course they can change and hone their algorithm all the time.

If one IP is connecting to do it, perhaps google has determined that IP is best to do it in relation to your server, but it could be different programs.

What is probably happening, is a page is linked thru to your new pages, that is on a high index rate and you are seeing the effect happen as it walks the links.

[GBMaps]

The thing is, the pages are created specifically for the adwords campaign to get a good quality score and have no inbound links other that the ones that come from the campaign itself.

I may set up a simple page somewhere else and have a link to it on the landing pages, monitor the stats on that page and see if the bot is getting as far as the 'simple' page. In theory it shouldn't get that far, if adwords is only interested in the landing page. If it does get that far, then it may be doing something else..?

[FireFleur]

Oh I see.

Yes, there are other correlations, no direct is you don't pay for the placing.

But, of course if you use google tools, google visits and the argument could be it is more efficient to combine the visits :)

See that is why I was after the cite, there is too much crossover in their systems from a system viewpoint, from a direct weight and purchase they can keep it distinct, but the actual systems need to use existing content to make judgements.

So, it all inter relates really, but they will claim it doesn't directly, and by what most of us would understand as direct it doesn't. They won't just rank you higher for an ad, but you may end up higher because of the ad.