When I got back from the NARPM Scottsdale conference, I noticed something very odd. Rentals.com had included code in their site that was telling Google and all the other search engines to go away and not index their content!
I thought this was very strange. Did they do this on purpose?? Was it a simple mistake or perhaps corporate sabotage?
I watched them sink in the rankings until they were all but absent from the major search engines!!! Then finally, after almost 2 weeks, this huge mistake was fixed this morning. It took me 30 seconds to find out that they had two meta tags, one that welcomed the search engine spiders and one that told them to go away. Why did it take them 12 days to figure it out!? I guess you could say…with competition like this…..ha!
Other competitors contacted me asking me what was up with the Rentals.com site, as well.
As you can see, even now Rentals.com does not rank at all for any market – I love it! But, in a week or so they will regain their positions.
So, I have to ask — Rentals.com–if you are out there — was this done on purpose or was this a mistake?
Any future mistakes, by the way, are welcome and highly encouraged!
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5 users responded in this post
Lesson learned. This is not the same as print.
Those are the kinds of mistakes that you DO NOT make.
Rentals.com has still suffered alot of positioning in the Jacksonville market.
I think it has been 5 days since the fix and they are still not ranking well. I am pretty sure in less than a week they will be close to their spot from before.
Or perhaps Google has had enough of rentals.com with telling them to go away and also their link buying practices and decided to keep them at the bottom of the rankings! ha
[...] past month Rentals.com took a huge hit in traffic from their mistake – almost to 2nd [...]
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