What happens when your website catches “Google Ick”?
August 31, 2006 – 2:23 pmIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I bet this seems like a strange question, but I have a reason for asking it. I’m now convinced that your domain can catch a disease that it never recovers from, at least as far as Google traffic is concerned. No matter how hard you might try and tweak it to recover, in the end you’ll succumb to the problem.
I’ve had 4 websites afflicted with “Google Ick”, and although they get better for awhile, they always underperform websites that don’t have the trouble. They always sport a ton of “Supplemental” resorts, and they seem to operate under some sort of penalty. It’s a frustrating thing to have your domain afflicted with, and in the end you do need Google traffic, so what to do?
I decided to start some new domains to combat the trouble. Lo and behold, I’ve been able to grow traffic a lot faster on the new domains, anyway, so it makes me thing it’s better to chuck it and move on. And this is sort of sad, because I have a 10 year old domain which caught the ick on 9/22/2005 and had a major relapse on 6/27/2005. At this point, I can’t wait for my old reliable domain to come back. When you miss entire months of the year, it sets you back so far you have to make a decision.
Have you ever had a website catch the “ick”?
If you enjoyed this post, subscribe to the Sootle RSS feed!.
11 Responses to “What happens when your website catches “Google Ick”?”
So whats this ick about, I don’t quite understand it.
By TechZ on Sep 1, 2006
Have you ever seen a website that has all “Supplemental Results” when you check the site command in Google?
That’s partly it. That, plus the site won’t rank for any keywords. I have 4 websites languishing in this state and I haven’t been able to bring them out.
By Darren McLaughlin on Sep 1, 2006
I don’t quite understand, hopefully I will never see it on my site.
By Dale on Sep 1, 2006
Aha, I get it now, so what do you suggest we do to prevent getting “ick’d”, besides starting new domains.
By TechZ on Sep 2, 2006
Alright, I think this topic is worth going into more depth about. Avoiding the “ick” is probably one of the most important things. I’ll try and post up some more cohesive thoughts, because if you guys haven’t got the ick yet, you don’t want it!
By Darren McLaughlin on Sep 2, 2006
Excellent, I really want to avoid the ick now, so eagerly await your next blog about it
By TechZ on Sep 2, 2006
I’ve had this same thing happen on several of my own sites. I haven’t yet been able to put my finger on what causes it - though I’d really like to know…. sure seems like a waste to throw away an old, solid domain that should be successful.
By Leroy Brown on Sep 17, 2006
Leroy, one of the first things to look for is:
1) Make sure that your 404 pages actually return a 404 and not a 200.
2) Click on the links and see what comes up. Follow them in from the search engine.
If the pages aren’t really there, you can use the Google remove tool to get rid of them.
By Darren McLaughlin on Sep 20, 2006