a few weeks ago i was on the first page of a google search. i was even in the 1st and 2nd spot. for portraits, baby and maternity i was #1 and 2...what happened? for wedding i came up about #5 or 6...but always on the 1st and 2nd page.

i googled my business name tonight, govinda jaya photography and all the other keywords i use. osp link exchange and a bunch of other photographers...most in different states some in my area and town come up with my name. my website does not show up at all. osp profile and my myspace show up...but not my website.

the only thing that has changed was being added to the osp link exchange a few weeks ago. has anyone else had this experience or have any advice?

any advice appreciated.

Just use this link to add yourself: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

This will tell their spider to find you. Their spiders constant crawl and it constantly changes daily. The will never release their magical secret formula on that determines their webpage ranking. I used to work in internet marketing and delt with page rankings daily. Some search sites will have a lot to do with how many pages link to you and so forth, but each engine is different and it's top secret engine stuff. It's just like the credit bureaus that will never release their secret rating system. They'll give you clues but really it's all anyones guess.

thanks...i just did it. it's just a bit strange that i was there 2 weeks ago and now i'm gone. my name comes up...to other peoples sites.

someone told me that the more sites that have links to your site the better. i am assuming they meant sites like this where you have your website address in your signature and people click on it? the whole search engine thingy boggles my mind constantly.

Check this out. I certainly hope it didn't happen to you. Google Hell. You didnt' happen to hire someone to optomize you're search ratings recently have you?

Its a game.

For a while I was #1 when people searched theKnot.

I checked my statcounter and found I had 15,000 unique visitors and over 100K pageloads.

Then it ended.

For the period before your 'noted rankings' how long where you in Google? If not that long then you were an 'addition' and now you've been 'sandboxed' until Google decides if your site is going to stick around and be relevant. If you've been in google for a year or more, then there's cause to be concerned.

i have been in google for almost a year. my site went live in october 2006. i do have a new site with the same url...my new site has been live for 2 months and i just vanished from google within the last 2 weeks. the thing that really concerns me is that i don't even show up using my name. people in my town that don't even do maternity or baby photography are coming up and people from all other states pop up with my name and keywords. the osp link exchange also comes up. the only thing i can think of that has changed is being added to the link exchange.

thanks for the response everyone...if anyone else has any ideas...thanks.

We had the same thing happen to us. What happened to us is that somehow our google verify meta tag got lost. I went into the index page and fixed it and within 5 days we were right back where we had been. You'll have to use google webmaster tools to get your site verified.

thanks...i'll try that.