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Does Google Have Your Site Marked For Extinction?

• Copyright Titus Hoskins

The Google Panda & Penguin Updates have left havoc across the web and Google is not finished yet. The fallout has been so drastic in many cases, it has left many of those affected webmasters wondering: Does Google Have My Site Slated For Extinction?

Please Note - This article was written before Google Penguin hit! Find out more in this special report here: Web Marketing After Google Panda and Penguin

As a full-time online marketer I run numerous sites on the web, last year a few of them were hit by Google's ruthless Panda Updates. These updates are ongoing and can only lead one to believe that Google has marked certain "types" of sites as undesirable and have slated them to be removed from their index.

These "untouchable" sites could be too heavily into affiliate marketing, too SEO enabled, having too much duplicate content or being too outdated for Google's current tastes. In some cases, the content on these sites might be too broad-based and not just covering one narrow specific topic. Remember the original name for these algorithm changes was called the "Content Farm" update.

Regardless of what it is called, your site has triggered a penalty and Panda has sniffed it out and found it unworthy in the eyes of Google and has slated it for disposal. This can be a sudden removal, as many webmasters discovered last year, or it can be a more gradual downgrading or lowering of your major keywords until your site is no longer visible on the web - or at least in Google's index.

Needless to say, this can be a nerve-racking experience, especially if you have made the fatal mistake of depending only upon Google as your major source of traffic. You will be scrambling to fix the problem... many early high quality sites found using "sub-domains" to re-design their content pleased the Panda and regained the flow of previous search traffic from Google. This makes sense because once your content has been placed into a sub-domain, it is more narrowly focused and the search engines can more easily classify and index it.

Some sites have found removing 1000's of pages of low-quality content, fixed the problem as well. This can sometimes be a hit or miss operation, but if you're lucky, you end up removing the triggers that caught that nasty Panda's eye in the first place.

What is so insidious about these Panda Updates, unlike other major updates in the past, these algorithm changes by Google seems to be judging the quality of your WHOLE site, rather than an individual page on your site. This drastically changes the whole ball-game for small to mid-size sites who simply don't have the resources to make a complete overhaul of their site's design and/or their site's content.

Basically, by judging/ranking your whole site, Google is forcing many sites into oblivion. If they can't afford a complete overhaul of their sites, struggling webmasters and marketers are left with two options:

The first option is very simple and easy to do. It is an option taken by thousands of site owners and we will never know the exact number of Panda destroyed sites and businesses on the web. Sadly, for many marginal sites, just a slight lowering of their keyword rankings can result in a site becoming unprofitable.

The second option is somewhat more tricky for the simple reason Google has control of the most lucrative search engine traffic on the web. Where online organic search is concerned, you have to play Google's game or you don't play at all. Sure, you can optimize your site for the other search engines such as Bing, Yahoo, Facebook, Siri... but these engines simply don't have the numbers which Google can deliver.

Now, finding general traffic outside of Google is much easier to do. Links, videos, social networking, social media, partnerships... can definitely deliver or replace Google's search traffic. Promoting your site's brand in all the social networks and building up your followers/subscribers can definitely deliver the traffic without Google's help.

However, this traffic will not be as targeted or as lucrative as Google's search traffic. The main reason affected webmasters are so upset, this Google search traffic has become the lifeblood of their online business simply because it is so effective. Most webmasters and marketers want the traffic back, not replace it.

If they can't get it back, all is not lost, many marketers and site owners have learned to use "lead capture pages" to place these visitors into marketing funnels and reap the benefits down the line.

Over the long term, if your site remains Panda Challenged, it might actually be a good thing because you will be forced to diversify your traffic sources and not just depend upon Google for traffic. Besides, if enough affected webmasters follow the same route, Panda may just power up Google's competitors such as Bing, Yahoo, Siri, Facebook, Twitter... and make then much stronger.

Pandas, like clouds, do come with silver linings. Sorry, that's a little too mean spirited on my part. Think no evil. Think no evil.

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All opinions, views and conclusions in this article are solely those of the author - Titus Hoskins. Who is a full-time online marketer with numerous sites. You can simply Google his name to discover more about him.

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