Lost a lot of keyword ranking in Google from #1 to none?!

[DevelopAll]

Since I’ve added the counter to the www.DevelopAll.com I apparently have lost my top positions on google searches - over night - I was #1,2,3 for many key words for my industry -- ex: "offshore outsourcing solutions" I was #1 - or in the top 3 companies for "offshore outsourcing" ...+ many others

Can you please explain to me the effect of the counter had -- what would happen if I take it off the site - Please don't get me wrong - I really like the features - but I'd rather have the top positions- hopefully both --- if I already was taken off the top - can the removal of the counter get me back??? What other options do I have?

I have spent a lot of money and time to get to the top placements, but now I need to deal properly with it -- please advise if you had similar experiences - and what was the solution to the problem

I also have noticed similar problem in this post - but there was no answers ... http://forum.statcounter.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2709

My server was up and running and the only change that was done was the counter.

Please advise,

^D

[webado]

Well, there were answers but you probably didn't like them.

There's no reason why your adding the Statcounter code should affect in any way, shape or manner your ranking.

What would affect it is the fact that Google has recently reindexed the entire world and recalculated the rankings based on totally different criteria than previously. As a matter of fact there's a lot of speculation that those sites that appear to go out of the way to increase their rankings artificially are in fact being penalized by Google. Whatever is meant by artificial is left to speculation as well. It may be an overabundance of irrelevant back links, like from link farms, or an unnatural keyword density on the pages, or any hidden links, or too many redirects and so on. Of course you may also lose ranking if the site is not up and running or is too slow or buggy when the Google spiders go crawling it.

[Liz Y]

Just to add my 2 cents, I've been using StatCounter for at least six months, and in general my hits are going up. I've had the same experience as DevelopAll, and I'm positive it's not related to StatCounter. I'll be No. 1 on Google for "downloadable stock art" for 6 to 8 weeks at a time, and then whoosh, I'm back 8 pages or gone altogether. Worse yet, some strange or under construction sites are on page 1. Then, a few weeks later, I'm back up to No 1 again.

I think it's either random, or a sophisticated form of psychological torture designed to induce paranoia, as is the undefined term "over-optimization". :roll: OTOH, Yahoo has been much more consistent.

Who's fault is it?
I vote for Google and their notorious dance. How can we follow their rules if they don't lay them out for us in simple terms? Has going public gone to their collective heads?

[Gonzo]

Google is, indeed, a strange beast.

My pages go up and down the SERPS almost very week. Some pages rank well, some don't rank at all - for similar keywords ....

If anyone ever figures out exactly how Google works they will be spectalarly rich!

:)

[DevelopAll]

chrisooc, StatCounter Team Gonzo and especially Liz Y, - I thank you all for taking the time to reply to my "concern";

As you all realize - now days it is imminent for business to be rated/be presented high in the search engines - mainly because to achieve the desired results it takes less amounts of advertising capital.

There are many services that are benefiting surrounding this industry - lets not go to far - take for example Google Ads - on average it costs you about 50c a click - and with that you can still show your services on the top page plus within their network.

All of you have implied that google is the one that is the "guilty" one - I do agree to some extent - and I agree with Liz, that google need to show the rules of the game if theywant for us to comply - and not keep us in the dark, punishing for not reading their "mind".

Despite the popularity and growth of advertisement on the web - businesses strive with or without it - you can never substitute a phone call w. an online ad...

In either case - I'll investigate it further and share with my findings.

Thank you All again,
^D

[checkrankings]

can a invisible text counter affect your pagerank

[webado]

Invisible text counter? Never seen that one before. Invisible image yes. Text counter, yes - this allows you to style it. But no invisible text would be generatde. I don't see how it can be.

Did you actually generate such a thing?

The image counter, whether visiible or invisible, does not affect one way or another anything.

You are responsible for the styling of the text counter. If you use anything to render it invisible (same color font and background, or hidden behind some div), like all such tricks, it's possible Google may get wise to them. But it's not because it's a counter, just because it is hidden text, regardless of its source.

[webado]

Ok, the option to have an invisible text counter does not come up in the installation qizard.

But you can certainly set it yoru self afetr you generated it as visible and text.

You cna change the variable sc_invisible=0 to be sc_invisible=1 amd that will do it.

But what this results in is absolutely no text appearing anywhere - not even in the source code.

Google cannot even read javscript anyway. So your focus should be the counter as generated for the <noscript> portion, or for an html-only counter. That counter is not text, it can only be an image counter. You can specify it as invisible and nothing will be shown.