“Since you have indicated that there are multiple positions available, I’d like to recommend my friends Sergey and Larry. Both of them are experienced search engine professionals and would be a great asset to your organization.”

LOL. This was hilarious man! I’d definitely respond something like that.

In the end it all comes down to democracy as someone else is now getting the traffic and could afford to hire more employees as a result.

Luckily it was the president of the company that had decided to allow such action imagine the poor web designer getting all the flak.

Poor Matt must get constantly barraged with this type of complaint, Google should simply give everyone a #1 placing for major keywords, problem solved. – LOL

Our site, which has 750,000 uniques/month, employs 135 people, has a partnership with Home Depot contributes to Consumer Reports and many other DIY authorities – was dis-included in the Google natural search results for 5 days due to an unintentional landing page plan which apparently ran afoul of Google’s guidelines. Result was to lose about $75,000 in sales.

Question: Why doesn’t Google provide a better mechanism to resolve these situations? Here was our experience:
1. The webmaster support forum was a complete waste of time. We posted a reasonable question and received three responses in two days, none of which were helpful at all.
2. The Webmaster Tools utility, also a waste of time. We could see a bit of information about crawl rate and stats, but there was no real way to interact with anyone at Google. We submitted a “reconsideration request” but the verbiage surrounding that request said it might take several weeks for any action – and we had no way of knowing whether any action would be taken, and/or whether we would know about any action or be able to respond to it.
3. Contact info: Non-existent. We tried our Adwords reps in Ann Arbor, they wrung their hands and said they pitied us but also said they were completely powerless to do anything. What? We spend 1.5 million a year. I know Google doesn’t believe it has to treat big customers differently from non-customers, but that policy has more in common with a monopolistic utility rather than a for-profit business. We weren’t asking for a miracle, just a speedy resolution.
4. Mismatch between the “crime” and the “punishment” – I can appreciate that Google receives a zillion whining complaints each day. However, the Google response in this instance was extreme, especially given the lack of recourse.

My thinking is that Google should have a “Whitelist” for larger, normally compliant websites. In this imagined scenario, when a whitelisted site does something to trigger a Google slap, the site is given the benefit of a doubt regarding its actions and have an opportunity to correct the problem before automatically being punished.

This is just one idea, I imagine there are many others. The general idea is something along the lines of “innocent until proven guilty.” That seems to work fairly well in our justice system for individuals, why not for websites?

Finally, our website is RepairClinic.com, I’m the president and the poor sap that recommended the landing page plan in the first place. My intent wasn’t to do anything “black hat” at all. Our index of products is nearly impossible to present to individuals because they never know their part number or exactly what they’re looking for. The landing pages were an attempt to help people find what they were looking for by using the search terms they are most likely to use. Our reps in Ann Arbor completely understand our particular situation and have seen similar efforts on our site and also deemed them innocuous. In addition, I spoke with a Google rep at SES a couple of years ago and explained our approach, he also thought it should not trigger a filter at Google.

I am not looking for a personal response. Our situation is now resolved. However, the experience was quite terrible. The hardest part was not knowing when or if the situation would be resolved, and what steps would be taken or need to be taken. We were left completely in the dark and the official Google response was so poor we ended up just being flat out angry at Google. That doesn’t seem like an approach consistent with “do no evil.”

I nofollow you!

LOL Matt. Let me write that down

PS Tell him you aren’t available, but refer him to the guy with the katrina website.

1.) Buy a wig
2.) Change your address
3.) Fix your resume
4.) Get a job with Yahoo for shitz and giggles

-AP

“If u search yahoo for the term: “shem*le” … omg! there is my picture at #1″

hahahah lol… i hope it doesn’t happen ….

How about replying, “I’ll run that by Larry, Sergey and Eric and get back with you.”

Also like what Adam wrote.