Google Ranking Restored

This is a follow up post to my “Sudden Drop In Google Ranking post.

This morning, I checked the ranking of the website in question. To my surprise, the site had again ranked number 4 in the Google Search Engine Results. This was most definitely good news. In fact, all key phrases now ranked on page one of the Google SERPs.

I can only hope this persists. So, what did we do? Here is a short list:

– Noticed the website had dropped in Google ranking.
– Took a unique phrase from the website homepage and searched Google using quotes, “like this.”
– Found a direct copy of the website and discovered it had been “Proxy Hijacked.”
– Found IP address of website that Proxy Hijacked our website and blocked it using the .htaccess file.
– Submitted a “Reconsideration Request” to Google.

After about a week and a half, our website had regained its ranking in Google.

I read a long article about Proxy Hijacking and it mentioned that Google had fixed the problem. If this was the case with my friend’s website, this certainly isn’t true. While I can not be totally sure Proxy Hijacking caused this case of Google ranking loss, the facts seem to lead down this path.