We made one change before Christmas and can confirm that the penalty had nothing to do with Everyclick being a search engine, or duplicate content issues, or links. In fact all the reasons which have been discussed here and elsewhere had no relevance to the penalty.

We’re now working on getting the rest of the site returned to decent positions in Google’s listings.

Really interesting post, thanks for making me connect the dots on something I’d kinda-subconsciously flagged but not got around to looking into!

Merry Christmas too!

Thanks for giving us a mention and sticking up for Everyclick here!

We’re still not completely sure why Everyclick.com was penalised in October. The site was listed first for ‘everyclick’ when suddenly it was kicked down to 63. It also listed right behind big charities’ own websites for ‘fundraise for…’ and now doesn’t. We’ve fixed a couple of possible points and submitted the site for reconsideration a few weeks ago, but no luck so far.

Some people have mentioned before they believe it is because Everyclick is a search engine, but our results are syndicated from Ask.com and we don’t believe we compete with Google in the same field. Everyclick is a fundraising platform, not only a specialised search engine any more.

We will keep investigating but I think that only Google really knows the answer to this one.

I can see why Google wants to protect itself from manipulation, but I think the everyclick example in particular is a step too far. I can’t see why they would not want them to be found for a search for their own name…

Maybe a googler will stop by eventually and let us know their thoughts.