Sudden Google Ranking Drop – Proxy Hijack

Do you remember my article from yesterday about the sudden drop in Google search ranking for my friend’s website? Well, I just can’t stop thinking about it.

From what I have been reading, it seems as though my conclusion may be correct. At least I am hoping it is. If I ever conclude anything semi-concrete while thinking about Google, it’s a good day for me.

Ok, I found this very helpful and thorough website that pretty much described the exact problem my friend is having. It’s titled “Google Proxy Hijacking” and tells the whole story.

Here is what struck me as I think about this some more.

– My friend’s website has been live since 2004.
– The site seemed to be in the Google sandbox for the entire 4 years.
– For his most competitive keywords, he was ranking past page 20 on Google.
– About two months ago, he made some changes to the homepage copy as well as an HTML overhaul.
– About a month after that, the site ranked number 3 for his most competitive keywords.
– The site ranked on page 1 of Google for about a month.
– The site now sits at page 25 for its most competitive keywords.

Here is my theory. I think the website has been proxy hijacked for a number of years. This is what caused the poor rankings for such a long time. When the homepage text and HTML changes were made about 2 months ago, Google visited the site and found it unique. Google ranked the site well, due to this new unique content. During the month, Google noticed the proxy website was now a duplicate of my friend’s website once again and dropped the website’s ranking.

Does that make sense? From what I read on the website I linked to, it does.

Here are the similarities with what we are experiencing and what the author wrote on the other website:

– My friend’s website has never been banned.
– We did a quoted Google search for supposedly unique content on my friend’s website and a proxy website showed in the search results.
– The proxy URL looked like this: proxysite.com/cgi-bin/pxy/nph-pxy.pl/000010A/http/www.friendssite.com/
– The proxy site was an exact duplicate of my friend’s website.

Now, I am not sure if this is what caused my friends ranking to drop, but all the factors are there. The keywords we are talking about are very competitive, but the fact that his site showed so well in the search results for a month shows me that the potential is there.

I would appreciate your thoughts on this.