SEO Frequently Asked Questions

QUESTION: Posted on 2/25/2004 12:03:20 PM
To Search Engine Expert-

My client was getting great top 10 hits for his Business Website(s).  Now he is way down on the list.  Could his competition be sabotaging him, perhaps sending in bogus information possibly saying that his web business is out of business??? How could we find out this information?

Thank You-

ANSWER: Posted on 2/25/2004
Hi Kelly:

Most of the search engines protect against competitors sabotaging other websites. If they didn't this would be a popular  method of getting rid of competition.

Whats does occur is major algorithm changes that cause huge fluctuations in ranking. The algorithm is what search engine use to determine what order to list the websites. They frequently make changes to this to improve their search results or stop common spam techniques from getting top rankings.

Google, Yahoo, MSN and Netscape are making some really big changes right now. This is what you are seeing. Overall you might have noticed a lot of the other websites listing under your websites keywords are also gone and some new ones are appearing.

There are a number of ways of getting the listing back but it usually means optimizing the website to meet the new algorithms more closely.