Ever get annoyed when a cold or the flu knocks you out of commission for a couple of days? Hitwise examined a site blacklisted by Google, and found that it’s still floundering 11 weeks after the fact.
(Photo Credit: HitWise)
Prior to January 26th, GoCompare ranked second for the term “car insurance,” and received almost 16 percent of the relevant traffic. Then, due to some odd inbound links, the blacklist came into play, and everything plunged until March 1st or so.
Things are a little better now, but Robin Goad found that the site is only “receiving 3.75% of traffic for the term for the latest 4 weeks, moving up to 7th place.” And it’s not moving very quickly.
Goad went on to note, “[I]t would have also incurred increased marketing costs in order to aid its recovery. . . . [W]hen the site was riding high before the ‘blacklisting’, it was well optimized and didn’t rely heavily on paid search for traffic from the term ‘car insurance’; but this situation changed once its organic ranking slipped. GoCompare’s paid search activity for the term shot up and, although this is now declining as the site’s organic ranking recovers, it is still well above the pre-‘blacklisting’ levels.”
Which brings us to the main (if not terribly insightful) point: Google’s blacklist is dangerous. Do everything possible to stay off it.
