Recently our CEO Pierre Zarokian was interviewed by DeliveryRank. Zarokian started out with a little background on Submit Express history and how it ranked at Top 3 for “search engine optimization” in the mid 2000’s. Zarokian advised: “Search presence is very important, but it’s also very important to have a Yelp listing and at least […]
Category Archives: SEO
Blog SEO Tips
By Pierre Zarokian I recently wrote an article for IMC Grupo titled 10 Blog SEO Tips. This article will provide some SEO tips whether you run a company blog or if you are a personal blogger. In summary here are the top tips: 1. If you are a personal blogger, use your own domain that […]
Google makes major changes to NOFOLLOW links
By Pierre Zarokian Last week, Google caused ripples in the SEO world after announcing that “nofollow” links would no longer be completely ignored by their ranking algorithm. Instead, the algorithms will treat the nofollow attribute more like a guideline than a hard and fast rule. Since this is the first major change to the nofollow […]
Positive Reviews can be Shared on Google My Business
Article by Pierre Zarokian. A few months ago Google My Business unveiled a new feature that helps business owners share positive customer reviews. The announcement was posted here. GMB will now automatically suggest 4 or 5-star reviews which can be shared as customer testimonials through Google Posts. Businesses that have a GMB profile will receive […]
5 Reasons to Use Google Analytics
Article Provided Herb Kimble. Google Analytics is the most popular website analytics tool, mainly because it is free and a Google product. In 2005 Google bought out another analytics platform called Urchin, renamed it to Google Analytics and made it free. At that time no one expected this and it was a huge welcome news. […]
Recent Changes to Google Instant Search
Article by Pierre Zarokian Several years ago, Google launched a new feature that would display the results of a search as you type them out. Dubbed “Google Instant” the company was delivering a new idea in real-time search. As of today, this feature is effectively removed from Google’s search engine. We’ve got the scoop, so […]
Danny Sullivan Takes New Job at Google
Danny Sullivan, the pioneering mind behind the website Search Engine Watch, and the accompanying Search Engine Strategies conference, has now been hired by Google. Danny sold the Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Strategies brands, and created another site called Search Engine Land. It was only a few weeks ago that Sullivan announced his retirement from SEO, so […]
Project Owl, and Google’s Attempt to Hit Fake News Where it Hurts
Google’s got a big problem, and it’s the same one that’s plaguing Facebook. How do you deal with fake news, when the truth is evolving in real time? A new update from the search engine, codenamed “Project Owl”, aims to try and curb the fake news epidemic. It’s also making some interesting changes to search, […]
Ripoff Report Removed from Google for Several Hours, What Happened?
Written by Pierre Zarokian
We stumbled across something quite amazing this morning: RipOffReport appeared to have been completely de-indexed by Google for several hours. We can confirm that at 11 AM pacific standard time, performing a search for “site:ripoffreport.com” or the Ripoff Report brand name returned no results. Although the site has since shown up in Google’s index, it’s interesting that the outage lasted as long as it did.
Another intriguing aspect of this story is that Google was listing a legal request from ChillingEffects.org on its search page. It’s possible that there was some kind of copyright infringement claim made against the company. It’s not immediately clear as to what the nature of that claim could be, but people try to sue the website all the time.
Was Ripoff Report caught doing something Google didn’t like? And if that’s true, what did Ripoff Report do to get back in Google’s good graces? At this point, the answer is unclear. It’s entirely possible that the site was de-indexed as a result of any one of a number of technical errors on the part of the webmaster. How many SEOs routinely deal with a problematic robots.txt file?
Why the website disappeared, and why it has remained de-indexed for couple of hours remains a mystery. I can speak from experience that a problem like this isn’t something a webmaster wants to put off for very long, so it’s likely Ripoff Report was doing everything in its power to get its listings back on Google, which would also explain why the company had no comment on the incident.
This brings back memories of an incident that took place in 2011. Some tech at Ripoff Report accidentally got Ripoffreport.com deindexed from Google using Google webmaster account. Google recognized that this was a potential mistake and reached out to Ripoff Report in order to confirm the problem. It was an important lesson for all of us on delegating ownership to our accounts.
Is this situation similar, or even the same? It’s hard to say at this point. We have no access to legal documents, and the de-indexing only lasted for a few hours. We have every reason to believe the removal was most likely caused by a technical problem with Ripoff Report’s backend.
Veteran Search Marketing Expert Pierre Zarokian to Speak at Pubcon
The world of reputation management is one that isn’t well-defined, and Yelp is one of the primary platforms that businesses are concerned with. Bad Yelp reviews, according to Harvard, have real impact on how consumers perceive a business. Pierre Zarokian, a veteran in the realm of search marketing and the CEO of Submit Express and […]