Google giveth then taketh away, on a bad tip.

Wow.

That’s really all I could say. I woke up to see our page-1, position-5 for “conference call” on google.com knocked back to position… 53 ??? WTF !?

update: Just got off the horn with Alex. He says he had nothing to do with our drop in positioning, I believe him.

I was dumbfounded. I check positioning for all my projects daily. From the moment I wake until I lay my head down. All I could think was ” What SOB is #$%^ing with my positioning?”. There is no possible way that we could have fallen that far back overnight organically.

After a considerable amount of research and some investigation based on other historic evidence, it looks to me like someone has reported lypp.com to Google as being in violation of Google’s guidelines. That’s the only thing I can come up with.

To this I say BULL SH**T!!!

Before I engage in any SEO strategy for any property I test the theory on my own properties first and I am very careful to take Google’s guidelines into consideration before doing so.

The sad thing about all of this is that I have a hunch where it came from, and if I am right it’s pathetic, to say the least. About a week and a half ago, I engaged in a conversation with Alex Cory of FreeConference fame, in the comment threads at SMSTextNews.com after an article that Ewan had posted in response to the Lypp Outlook plugin news.

The thread started with Alex on his opinion on how freeconference.com deserves as much consideration, if not more than Lypp. Well, I had something to say about that.

Our penalization by Google happened during the time Alex and I were engaged in some interesting conversation in those threads. Seems a wee bit curious if you ask me.

That’s not all. Today I get back from a meeting just to find that Sipthat.com (yes, this blog) had fallen from page 1 on google.ca for keyword “conference call” as well. This time, it’s nowhere to be found for that keyword. I can’t believe that Google’s system is that messed.

What’s next, you ask? We are in the process of appealing to Google. There is no reason for this penalization of lypp.com as we are NOT in violation of ANY Google guidelines. Likelihood of success? Good question, ask me again in a couple of weeks. I have read mixed reviews on Google’s site reconsideration process. “Guilty until proven innocent”, comes to mind.

The question is, what the hell is wrong with Google’s processes if someone can simply report you as a wrong-doer and no real person actually checks to make sure it’s factual and real ? Does that mean I can just go around a randomly mess with a site’s SEO? Is there no review process?

So what have I learned. If you have a new SEO strategy that you know is sure to land you on page 1 of a competitive keyword, protect yourself… well. Someone is surely going to take a shot at you.

Lesson learned. The next campaign I create will include some extra armor.