FlowerPetal.Com Pt3

Back on September 16^th, I reported that FlowerPetal.com had recently mounted a strong SEO campaign in an effort to rank for premium key-phrases; most notably: “flowers.” In that regard, I noted that FlowerPetal.com was bouncing between 4^th & 10^th on the first page, and I expressed the thought that Google was probably suspicious of their sudden presence for reasons laid out in my baloney detector article on artificial link-votes.

A few days later, on September 20^th, I followed up with a post that documented FlowerPetal.com edging out ftd.com for the 3^rd spot [see image to the right]

While the techies over at FlowerPetal.com headquarters where probably getting all excited about all the orders that were being printed in their printer, I again noted that their ranking was probably going to be only temporary.

Well, fast forward about 5 weeks, and FlowerPetal.com is nowhere to be found in Google for the keyword “flowers.” And when I mean nowhere to be found, I mean they do not rank for that term in Google’s first 1000 results. 

Just imagine for a moment, FlowerPetal.com went from ranking 3^rd for a phrase that is typed over 50,000 times a day, to oblivion. Ouch!!

In an effort to compensate for that loss, FlowerPetal.com has since focused on ranking for more low-key phrases like “funeral flowers” for which they currently bounce between 5th & 10th. 

In an effort to stay below Google's radar for that term, and not make the mistake of getting link-votes from non-relavent websites like before, they've taken their funeral oriented page and have cast link-votes from funeral related web-pages toward it as we see in an image to the right from a site that presents funeral songs.

While that method may prove itself as a strong tactal move for that particular key-phrase, FlowerPetal.com has taken too many risks on other key-phrases. It wouldn't suprise me if FlowerPetal.com incures a fatal Google penalty of the magnitude that rosesnationwide.com was hit with a couple of years back.