WebSiteOwner's Hell: Google's Secondary Index

When I checked in Analytics last summer I was nicely surprised, our referrals from Google were up 300-400%!
Then came September and we somehow ended up in Google's Secondary Index, this means basically that you are banned from the main index, people won't find your site by keywords, only if you add site:www.urlofsite.com to the search query do you see your pages in the index...


Traffic from Google:


We're now at an all time low on the forums, 5x lower than before July 2008; Has anybody ever succeeded getting their site out of the secondary and back into the main index?

site URL: Madshrimps Forum Madness - Hardware News and Reviews

What kind of changes did you make just before and during the time of your traffic increase in July 2008 through September 2008?

FYI - You should upgrade to the latest version of vBSEO 3.2 + our sitemap.

You might consider creating a critique request as well, so we can give you some tips.

For the time being, anything you can tell us about changes you made at that time might be helpful in generating ideas about what happened.

Did you ad any sold links or join a cooperative link exchange network?

- What kind of changes did you make just before and during the time of your traffic increase in July 2008 through September 2008?
I upgraded to vBSEO 3.0; nothing more... go figure, site was ranked on 1st page for a whole lot of keywords
- Did you ad any sold links or join a cooperative link exchange network?
none in the last year; no sold links, no links exchange, only 100% related links

Strange. So you installed vBSEO and saw your big traffic increase, and then you slipped back down to normal levels.

Please submit your critique request and I'll take a close look.

I just checked a random thread on your site and i think i know why your site is banned. You have a Search Cloud on your threads. SE's can 99% threat that Search Cloud as keyword spamming and they can ban you. I am not sure what modification is that but i strongly suggest you to remove it.

Thread tags and Search Cloud are two different thing. Thread tags are user generated however search cloud is probably created by a script you are using.

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

Strange. So you installed vBSEO and saw your big traffic increase, and then you slipped back down to normal levels.

Thank you for your quick feedback Joe, much appreciated. I upgraded vBSEO to 3.0 did not do a fresh install, I did the upgrade keeping all URL rewriting rules, so that did not change at all.

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

Please submit your critique request and I'll take a close look.

where can I find this critique request you're referring too?

I just checked a random thread on your site and i think i know why your site is banned. You have a Search Cloud on your threads. SE's can 99% threat that Search Cloud as keyword spamming and they can ban you. I am not sure what modification is that but i strongly suggest you to remove it.

Thank you for your answer Mert; I'll do that; unfortunately I don't recall the exact date I added this modification; crap I think it was somewhere around May

Do you mind sharing which mod are you using for that ?

It doesnt matter the date you installed it , the important part is when SE2s discover that you are using a script to generate keywords on your site.

vB Google Search Cloud - SEO - vBulletin.org Forum

lol I found a reply of me in that thread; apparantly I installed the mod 07 Jul 2008; directly related to the huge traffic spike; so it did work excellently in "driving traffic to your site" but it's frowned upon by Google; although you are not exactly fake advertising, since the people who come to your site due so first by certain keywords, those keywords are than added, so they do arrive legally on the site; it's not like you're putting your own keywords in there.

Originally Posted by Mert Gökçeimam

I just checked a random thread on your site and i think i know why your site is banned..

thank you very much Mert, you were right; I removed the cloud yesterday, today newly indexed pages again appear in the main index !

I could have figured it out myself but was confused by the bump in traffic and then it went to almost same levels, but was declining still overall.

Glad i could help

Originally Posted by Mert Gökçeimam

I just checked a random thread on your site and i think i know why your site is banned. You have a Search Cloud on your threads. SE's can 99% threat that Search Cloud as keyword spamming and they can ban you. I am not sure what modification is that but i strongly suggest you to remove it.

Thread tags and Search Cloud are two different thing. Thread tags are user generated however search cloud is probably created by a script you are using.

search cloud WONT get you banned is just that creates duplicate content..

Originally Posted by jmke

thank you very much Mert, you were right; I removed the cloud yesterday, today newly indexed pages again appear in the main index !

I could have figured it out myself but was confused by the bump in traffic and then it went to almost same levels, but was declining still overall.

NO WAY..no matter what you change won't reflect in rankings and traffic in a matter of hours..you missing something or you are not being honest.

Originally Posted by AcostaAlex

NO WAY..no matter what you change won't reflect in rankings and traffic in a matter of hours..you missing something or you are not being honest.

forum is scanned by ~20 bots whole day long. Threads are added to index less than an hour after they are posted. I posted this at 18:28
Xigmatek slams Thor's Hammer on CPU Cooler Market - Madshrimps Forum Madness

www.madshrimps.be/vbulletin/f22/xigmatek-slams-thor-s-hammer-cpu-cooler-market-61307/ - 3 hours ago

it's now available in the index in google, ~3 hours later.

I don't see why I would lie or be dishonest about this??? nothing to be gained by claiming things which are not true

When I removed the search clould, I noticed that newly created threads were appearing in the index again, hours after the change. Now the google spider is gradually re-indexing the older threads and removing the search clouds which were cached there.

I'll do you one better, thread posted 20 minutes ago I find when I search in google

I have blogs indexed in minutes, not 3 hours..so what?
what has to do with suplemental index and traffic?
did you check if the new pages were indexed as fast as now with the tag cloud on the site? I bet they were!

my last reply in this thread as I don't see why you're being this aggressive.

I have blogs indexed in minutes, not 3 hours..so what?

NO WAY..no matter what you change won't reflect in rankings and traffic in a matter of hours..

Search cloud present until 4th Feb, searching any thread in forum in google did not make it show up. only when site:sitename was added. on 5th all new indexed threads and pages appear in google (without the need for site: ). Traffic is increasing steadily too. Google Analytics has this listed for referrers coming from Google:

February 10, 2009 - February 10, 2009
February 4, 2009 - February 4, 2009
% Change 228.41%

why would I make this up? I'll post back in a few weeks to check how things are going

Again, Thank you Mert Gökçeimam, you da man!