My own brand name disappeared from google?

[Ouzan]

Hi,

about 20-30 hours ago my own brand name disappeared from google results (We redirected old domain to new one about a month ago)

My website is: www.websiteplanet.com

If you search for Website Planet in google you will not find our homepage any longer.
Not only that the brand name disappeared but we also dropped in rankings and lost about %50 of the organic traffic we had.

It's important for me to say that we have never done any sort of blackhat or even greyhat SEO, at all.

I could probably come up with many ideas of why it happened but maybe one of you mozzers already experienced this and could enlighten me.

Will really appreciate any kind of response/help.

Thanks.

[TomRayner]

With the greatest respect, if you want advice, you need to be completely transparent.  To say your website does not have any blackhat or even greyhat SEO is just not true.

Literally the first thing that stood out for me in your OpenSiteExplorer links were you website appearing on a site-wide blogrolls such as these: http://www.blogohblog.com/wordpress-theme-businezz/

Whether you built them or had any knowledge of them or not, you need to understand that if Google is seeing your website appear in site-wide blogrolls, all with the same exact match anchor text, surrounded by completely irrelevant website links to diet/workout sites that look so obviously a paid network - you site couldn't look any more blackhat.

Throw in some random blog comments and some .edu spam to boot and I am beginning to see why you may have been slapped by Google.

You've got some serious TOS violations here. If you've been employing a company to do your SEO for you, or any other company that has been working on your website, I'd suggest you contact them ASAP and demand an explanation.

[DougRoberts]

(Putting Tom's valid observations to one side for a moment)

Just because it's your brand names doesn't mean that anyone cares!

Think about this from Google (or the searcher's point of view) if people are searching for website planet, are they more likely to be searching for your site or a website about planets? Looking at the search results, I'd say that Google's best guess is that they're looking for something about planets!

What volume of people are going to be searching for your site by your brand name?

Having very generic terms as your "Brand Name" means that you'll need to work hard to establish your brand, your unique selling proposition, your values et. It's not what you think it means, it's what it means to everyone else.

The other option, of course, is to find a brand name that's unique or at least much more specific.

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[Ouzan]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.
I am compltely transparent and this blogohblog link isn't supposed to be sitewide and it is currently under investigation.

I don't think i've got any serious TOS violations here to be honest as this is probalby the only or one of the only greyhat links that we have.

I also don't think that we got slapped from google by any means it's just that something triggered google to semi-punish us.

I will however be happy to hear what is your suggestions.

Thanks for your time to write this valueable reply !

[Ouzan]

Hi Doug,

Thanks for your reply, I don't think that such term "Website Planet" actually mean anything and we used to be ranked #1.

I do however agree that maybe because the website/domain is new and we have a lot of links from partners on the term "WebsitePlanet or Website Planet" google might incorrectly think that we try to promote this "Keyword" and he doesn't realize that this is our brand name.

By the way there is no searches on this "Keyword".

[TomRayner]

"I am compltely transparent and this blogohblog link isn't supposed to be sitewide and it is currently under investigation.

I don't think i've got any serious TOS violations here to be honest as this is probalby the only or one of the only greyhat links that we have."

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree here.

http://www.blogperfume.com/ - Optimised anchor text in "friends" section, looks very much like a bought link, violates TOS

http://www.psdeluxe.com/ - Looks to be another bought link - violates TOS

http://ilearntechnology.com/ - Random anchor text heavy link at the bottom of the page, clearly out of place, probably bought, violates TOS

http://www.blogherald.com/2008/03/24/easiest-website-builder-ever/ - Low quality blog commenting

http://www.designknock.com/ - Blogroll link (actually separate from the blogroll, making it look even more suspicious). Likely bought, violates TOS

http://www.webstreamingsmania.com/ - Questionable article hub

http://jawbreaker.hardware-one.com/forum/read_msg.php?tid=368&forumid=feedback - Low quality forum signatures, looks to have been done for link diversity

http://news.jrn.msu.edu/onlineenvironments/2012/01/11/kates-experience-and-expectations/ - Edu comment spam

http://clubs.uci.edu/fada/?p=1674 - Edu comment spam

Do I need to go on?

Look, I'm not doing all this to be evil, come across as holier than thou or even to victimise you - but just by going through the first 2 pages of your OSE report I found these links which are either likely violations of the TOS or low quality.  If I can see that, there's a decent chance that Google has seen the same.

It's not to be cruel to you, but it's to bring about the magnitude of the potential problem. I know what the warning signals look like because I've worked with a number of sites that, upon auditing their link profile, have had similar links and have been penalised.  Whether you're aware of these links or not is not the point, all I wish to do is make you aware of the potential minefield you're in so you can start actioning on it and perhaps ask some serious questions to any SEO agency you might have worked with in the past.

[Ouzan]

Hi Tom,

Thanks again for your valuable reply, I appreciate it.

if you consider those 1 page links from extremely related & trusted websites as "Low quality" links then I don't know what a good link is.

However, those links you mentioned are links from partners we work with and none of them are sitewide, it doesn't violate TOS in any sort of way and those links are also bringing us relevant and converting traffic, regardless of SEO.

the blogohblog you first mentioned is indeed a terrible mistake and it's under investigation.

If you will check closely you will also see that we do not try to "push" any specific anchor our anchors are mostly general/related to the text anchors.

This edu link comment you gave is worthless, i have no idea who put it there but in no way it should harm our website.

Even with the blogperfume bug and the blogohblog mistake I honestly don't think we deserve any sort of slapping from google or our brand name to disappear so I think it is something else.