I’m still tracking! Here’s a mini-update, 14 days after the domain migration….
1. Search Engine rankings continue to fluctuate in MSN, Yahoo! & Google; SEs are still ranking both thekarchergroup.com & tkg.com
2. Google is still only indexing 20-some pages of tkg.com (up by only a handful in the last 4 days)
3. Traffic to the site is holding steady; Google continues to supply the majority of SE traffic
4. Yahoo! is now indexing 487 tkg.com pages; up from 125 on day 6 (8 days ago)
5. Google Webmaster Tools is now reporting that Google is indexing the site (5 days after the site was already being indexed by Google)
The numbers below represent our Search Engine rankings today vs the benchmark rankings we took before the site migration. A few things to note about these numbers:
1. MSN, Yahoo! & Google are still ranking both thekarchergroup.com & tkg.com; the numbers below represent only the tkg.com rankings
2. A handful of phrases are ranking solely because of my previous Search Engine Rankings Benchmark post - these will eventually go away and rankings will settle based on where actual content is within tkg.com and not just because the phrase was mentioned within a post
| Phrase |
Google Benchmark |
Current
Google |
MSN
Benchmark |
Current
MSN |
Yahoo! Benchmark |
Current Yahoo! |
| akron seo |
2 & 3 |
9 |
5 & 6 |
|
10 |
9 |
| akron seo seminar |
1 & 2 |
1 & 2 |
1 & 2 |
1 & 2 |
1 & 2 |
1 |
| akron web hosting |
8 |
|
8 & 9 |
21 & 22 |
3 |
19 |
| akron web marketing |
4 |
|
6 & 7 |
5 |
2 & 3 |
2 |
| canton ohio web design |
6 & 7 |
8 |
19 |
29 |
1 |
5 |
| canton search marketing |
1 & 2 |
|
1 & 2 |
1 & 2 |
4 |
14 |
| canton seo |
1 & 2 |
3 |
6 & 7 |
13 & 14 |
1 |
3 |
| canton server colocation |
10 |
6 |
N/A |
10 |
13 |
|
| canton web hosting |
2 & 3 |
|
15 & 16 |
22 & 23 |
5 & 6 |
13 |
| catholic web design |
10 |
|
15 |
12 |
17 |
|
| cleveland seo seminar |
4 & 5 |
7 & 8 |
1 & 2 |
6 & 7 |
5 & 6 |
13 |
| cleveland web hosting |
4 |
|
26 |
|
5 |
|
| columbus seo |
7 |
|
8 |
17 |
19 |
|
| columbus seo seminar |
1 |
2 & 3 |
4 & 5 |
4 & 5 |
1 |
1 & 2 |
| cruise company seo |
3 |
|
1 & 2 |
1 & 2 |
49 |
1 |
| healthcare industry seo |
1 |
|
1 |
1 |
1 |
3 |
| manufacturer web design |
8 |
|
1 & 2 |
1 & 2 |
17 |
|
| medical office website design |
10 |
|
N/A |
|
N/A |
|
| ohio search engine optimization |
10 |
|
3 |
|
27 |
|
| ohio seo |
9 |
|
5 |
|
10 |
17 |
| ohio seo seminar |
3 & 4 |
8 |
1 & 2 |
1 & 2 |
2 |
6 |
| rv dealer website design |
4 |
|
3 |
|
N/A |
|
| search engine optimization seminar |
1 |
6 |
1 |
|
19 |
16 |
| search engine seminar |
5 |
22 |
1 & 2 |
5 |
7 |
6 |
| seo case studies |
8 |
5 |
4 |
10 |
N/A |
|
| seo rfp |
8 |
4 |
1 |
4 |
6 |
8 |
| seo rfp template |
5 |
19 & 20 |
6 |
6 & 7 |
2 |
4 |
| seo seminar |
3 |
9 |
2 & 3 |
3 |
7 |
15 |
| stark county website design |
1 & 2 |
|
N/A |
9 |
11 |
11 |
| travel industry seo |
5 |
|
7 |
12 |
N/A |
|
It’s been nearly 2 weeks since we migrated to TKG.com and I’m seeing that things are starting to “shake out”…
Link Popularity Trends…
| Link Popularity |
www.thekarchergroup.com
(before the switch) |
www.tkg.com
(12 days after migration) |
| Google |
113 |
0 |
| Yahoo! |
2,204 |
438 |
| MSN |
299 |
126 |
Search Engine Saturation Trends…
| Search Engine Saturation |
www.thekarchergroup.com
(before the switch) |
www.tkg.com
(12 days after migration) |
| Google |
425 |
27 |
| Yahoo! |
856 |
439 |
| MSN |
2,820 |
307 |
Search Engine Ranking Trends…
The SEs are still ranking both tkg.com & thekarchergroup.com - I’ll get this data up tomorrow
It’s day 10 and roughly 12 hours since tkg.com was removed from the blacklist…
Google is now indexing tkg.com (GWT must be delayed) - currently, Google is seeing 15 tkg.com pages - what a sign of relief. It’s not over yet…Google still has about 400 more pages to index, has to stop ranking thekarchergroup.com and *fingers crossed*, bring our site back to ranking well for some of our top referring & converting phrases…for now, I’m relieved! 
I logged into tkg.com’s Google Webmaster Tools account this morning and found that we’re still not showing up…
Last night around 6:30pm we were informed that our domain was being removed from the ws.surbl.org blacklist…
So now what? We watch Google to see if being removed from the blacklist gets tkg.com back in Google.
If you think your site has been banned, complete the following search in Google using your domain instead of ‘tkg.com’ [site:www.tkg.com] - if you see the image below, your site might be banned.
Have a brand new domain? - relax, it’s going to take a bit of time.
If your domain isn’t brand new, make sure that your site is only implementing ethical SEO techniques and that your entire site adheres to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
Once you’re sure your site meets the guidelines, be prepared to plead your case to Google in the form of a reconsideration request. Follow the instructions & include your contact information. Below is what we sent to Google:
Thank you in advance for taking the time to review this reconsideration request.
The Karcher Group just recently purchased www.tkg.com and after utilizing Google Webmaster Tools (sitemap, robots.txt, etc) and still not being indexed by Google after 1 week, we did some investigating and found that the domain we just bought (www.tkg.com) has been blacklisted for being mentioned within spam emails (SURBLs).
I can assure you that The Karcher Group (formerly www.thekarchergroup.com) does not participate in any email spamming schemes and adheres to all of Google’s guidelines. www.tkg.com does not violate any of Google’s quality guidelines and will always abide by Google’s quality guidelines in the future.
We appreciate that Google takes spam seriously and thank you for reviewing our reconsideration request.
Jennifer Geh
jen@tkg.com
The Karcher Group
5590 Lauby Road Suite 8
North Canton, Ohio 44720
330-493-6141
Now…we wait and see if Google reacts
So…if your domain is being crawled by Googlebot, there aren’t any red flags coming up in Google Webmaster Tools and your domain still isn’t showing up in Google’s search results - your site might be banned!
Well whatta ya know? Investigation by our fabulous IT team last night found that our newly purchased domain (not to be confused with our IP address) was previously blacklisted and still on the list! Apparently, www.tkg.com was being referenced/linked in the body of spam emails.
So now what?
The blacklist our new domain is on is manually maintained, so we’re following protocol & hoping with Dustin’s charm that this is resolved before the end of the week.
Now we need to get back in Google’s good graces so they stop ignoring tkg.com. Next: Google’s Reconsideration Request
Corey & I have been brainstorming this afternoon about how to get Google to index the new domain.
What we know so far…
1. Via AW Stats, we know that Googlebot has been to www.tkg.com numerous times over the last few days
2. Via Google Webmaster Tools, we know that the robots.txt was downloaded at 10am this morning (day 6)
3. Google rankings are dropping off
4. Via GMT, we know that the sitemap was downloaded late yesterday afternoon
We’re stepping up our strategy and getting more aggressive, so we’re going to add tkg.com links to sites that we know are crawled often (DMOZ, Craigslist, eBay, etc)
- DMOZ is out of the question - we’ve tried updating our listing twice over the last 9 months with no reaction/response/update
- Craigslist - they have ‘nofollow’ links, but we don’t care about passing popularity at this point, just getting Google to the site; we posted some of our SEO job postings
- eBay - I wasn’t a fan of this idea at first because this doesn’t really apply to our industry (ie: we’re not ecommerce); I had a chat with our SEO team and we decided to go for it! So you can now purchase your very own TKG polo shirt on eBay
