Not Ranked But Doing Well

[dvduval]

I'm curious if some of you have managed to have successful sites (lots of traffic, etc.) without being ranked well (or at all) on Google. I have a couple of sites that are doing pretty well despite low ranking on Google.
1) This first one is a private industry forum with many pages that are private and therefore not indexed by google, yet maintains a growing membership.
2) The second one is doing really well because it has somewhat of a following among a small but dedicated group that has mostly heard about it because of a couple of other sites that are well ranked.

I'd love to hear about your sites that are successful without Google.

[Cutter]

Many of my sites do great on Yahoo and MSN, but get little traffic from Google; overall, Google still sends me the most traffic.

[thebillionaire]

Seans doing good, his PR is zero but gets alot of visitors prob 40k plus a day

[dvduval]

The reason I bring this up is it is becoming increasingly important to find ways for a site to survive through at least the first year without worrying about Google. I'll bet most of have been bitten by the sandbox, and spent a year trying to deal with it, and I'm guessing some of you came up with some interesting methods to "stay alive".

[Cutter]

Its kind of a paradox because some of the SEO techniques that help you do great in Yahoo & MSN also penalize you on Google (such as repeating your keyword phrase too many times on a page.)