Banished to the Google Underworld

It seems funny that just after I wrote about the Ten Commandments of Search, I stumbled across a Forbes article called "Condemned to Google Hell" that examines the often confusing issue of Google's supplemental index. The article includes interviews with several businesses that have found themselves banished to the supplemental results and also features a few quotes from some well known search marketers.

Andy Greenburg writes:

For businesses that have found themselves tossed into the supplemental index, it's frustrating experience. Google remains tight lipped about what exactly causes a site to be placed there and it's even more tight lipped about how a web site can get back out.

That said, the very fact that it exists as a possibility underscores the very important message that you simply cannot run an online business that relies too heavily on Google. (Or any single source of traffic for that matter.) While Google isn't going to go away any time soon, the fact remains that all it takes is an indexing error and your site could vanish for days, weeks, even months.

Could you stay in business if you lost all of your organic Google traffic?

This is why it's essential that you not only work on diversifying your traffic source (links, links and more links) but that you also make sure you have marketing campaigns ready to go if the need arises. Building a quality opt-in email list and learning enough about pay-per-click to turn a positive ROI are two methods that can go a long way toward providing you with some insurance against a potential search snafu.