I could use a few expert opinions....

[SEO1]

Hi everyone

I picked up a client for seo consultation at the beginning of May 2005.

the client is:

http://www.drugdelivery.ca

History:

They have 100,000+ pages that they add to daily with 100 to 200 new pages of products and with their forums pages.

They had 10,000+ listings on google. They do not take any aggressive seo steps No link campaigns etc.

Saturday May 7th they pulled 100,000 pages off of shared hosting to dedicated and back online in about an hour.

On the 9th of May they lost all of thier google listings and looked for an SEO, and this is where I come in.

I had at thought at first the daily indexing bot would pick them up on the new server and start to return the pages back to the results.

After this did not happen in two weeks, I looked at the Cache date for May and found a lot of 14ths and from that figured for the site to return to the results, the monthly crawl googlebot would need to find them on the new server, and being as it seems the 7th was somewhere near when Googles monthly crawl started in May, the site missed the boat.. I mean bot, so to speak..

I have informed the client it would be mid June before he would see the pages returned to the index.

Since shortly after the move the daily indexing bot has been hitting the new server every few days and the hits associated with googlebot are increasing..

A site url search returns:

Results 1 - 10 of about 11,600 for "www.drugdelivery.ca". (0.10 seconds)

Two questions

1. I do not see google banning a site which hasn't touched the black hat side without first applying a filter or two for whatever infringment they might see.

Is there any convincing data that would show they are banned?

2. If they are banned why would the database return the 11,000+ pages with the url on them?? And why would googlebot continue to crawl them on the new server for three weeks if they were banned ??


Okay so technically it's three questions ;)

Thank you for your replies and help in advance!!

Clint

[glengara]

Rule no.1 - Never believe a client

*They do not take any aggressive seo steps No link campaigns etc.

Links from Y! - 11,200

*..they lost all of thier google listings and looked for an SEO*

I'd suspect looked for ANOTHER SEO would be closer to the truth ;-)

<added>

OK, had a quick look, linkage schemes aside, I'd say this site has been artificially inflated to rank for specific drugs, and location/pharmacy.

They do this through spurious pages to "SlackJaw Pharmacy" with links to different drug types, and other "Wherever Pharmacy" pages.

On the other hand, it could of course be a simple indexing problem with the new servers ;-)

[SEO1]

Hi Glengara

I cannot agree to the never believe a client statement as most have been honest only a few have spoke with a forked finger..

If the site had taken those steps to get themselves banned and found another SEO and did not tell him /her what had been done, they woud be tossing their money out the window, so from my view that is a win for me...I make money for them wasting my time..


Next if they were of the wish to get out from under a penalty, I am sure there would need to be more work involved from my end. I am not optimizing any pages or really doing anything but building a few high quality links and checking google.com and google.ca once daily for their return.

The client is paying me well for this bit of work I am doing as well, so it is doubtful they have done anything other than move servers.

And for what it's worth a decade of corporate investigation work interviewing and interrogating people for a living, and an even longer period of time online chatting and IMing, have enabled me to be able to tell pretty soon when the cowchips are flying..

Perhaps you could imply the great wisdom I have seen from you many times before, without casting doiubt on the client...I know we both would appreciate such.


Clint

[glengara]

Glad your rice-bowl is overflowing Clint, but for me the story and the site don't stack up.

But Hey!, if they do to a professional corporate investigator and people interrogator, who am I to quibble ;-)

Actally, I like to quibble...Whois isn't helpful, so I checked them out in IA, May 2004 is the first entry.
Assuming that's when they kicked off, it works out at about a constant 900+ links a month, and that with no linking campaigns, or SEO.

I would suggest SOMEONE is being economical with the truth....

[SEO1]

I don't do rice bowls the rice always gets in the way of chewing on the bowl


As far a link counts on Yahoo...did you look at the URLs when you did your research as from what I could see most of those links are their own internal links

I would kind of expect to find 10,000+ for a site with 100,000 pages

As for their link building they did high quality and relevant link building with a max of 200 per month.

With 100,000 pages 200 links would fall to .02% of the total page count and I am sure well under any filter applying line

But Ive been known to be wrong on occassion.

Clint

[glengara]

I hadn't got around to looking at their IBLs, it was the site itself that concerned me.

As mentioned elsewhere, I'm a great believer in the power of internal linking, I've found them both effective and safe with G.

Except that is when overly manipulated, most commonly through page number inflation, which is IMO probably the only occasion an internal linking structure can become a liability.

Here's a good example of what I'm on about:

h**p://www.drugdelivery.ca/pharmacy-resources-Beauty-8-216.aspx

Also noticed there seems to be sitewides to linkdelivery.com, odd thing is, neither Y! or G are crediting them.
I suspect the deeper one goes...

Hopefully some other members will take a look, and prove me wrong ;-)

[glengara]

Mistake must have been putting "expert opinion" in the thread title, the guys here are shy, retiring types, much too modest to presume to have an "expert opinion" ;-)

[DaveN]

1. I do not see google banning a site which hasn't touched the black hat side without first applying a filter or two for whatever infringment they might see.

you run an affiliate programs .... start there it's usally a good start imo

[glengara]

*which hasn't touched the black hat side*

That's actually an interesting point, what IS the black hat side these days?

Doug and the Boys will have you believe it's cloaking, but since most falls in G are to do with linkage, it strikes me, so must the Black Hat Side.

[mcanerin]

I'll admit I'm more inclined to believe that off-topic linking schemes intended to artificially influence link pop are often more deceitful than most cloaking. They certainly are not "votes" yet are deliberately organized to appear that they are (ballot stuffing).

After all, anchor text isn't on-page or visible to the visitor, either. Hmmmm... "anchor text is cloaking?" that would be a fun thread ;)

Back to the thread at hand, I'd say your problem is most likely links. I took over a site almost exactly like yours once and once I cleaned up the links (and some content) the site (pharmacy related area, as well) did very well.

Contrary to popular belief, sometimes you can increase your rankings by getting rid of certain links. Follow the 80/20 rule.

Ian

[glengara]

You sound like a Linksschemeist to me Ian, I'll sign you up ;-)

[Web Design Pros]

Hmm, the linking issue requires some investigation. It could be a links from a bad neighbourhood syndrome.

For fast reinclusion once you resolve the bad links think be sure to try the Google Sitemaps file as discussed here:
Google Sitemaps (http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050602-195224)

If you need help generating one sans python just let us know. Generating the url list for a big site like that could take a few hours though.