Site disappeared from google, But I have no idea why - help!
 

Hi,

My site is only a few weeks old, and one of our articles had been holding the number 1 slot on google for over a week, but yesterday, it disappeared completely from google, under the search terms that it was number 1 with (it is still there with other search terms, although they have to be quite specific).

So, I have had a search for what may have happened, and I have come up with a few possibilities, but I'm not sure how to remedy them, so I could do with some guidance please :)

Spammy links? I'm not entirely sure what this means exactly, but I havent been posting links everywhere.

Duplicate pages? - The only duplicate things on my forums are some guides that reside in their own specific forum, and then are linked to from a general guides forum. Could this be it?

Hidden text? - I haven't put any there, and no-one else has access, so can we rule that out?

I use the DCSEO linkback plugin, and I was getting hundreds of linkbacks from all over the place, including google.** urls that I never even knew existed.

Some of the linkbacks included some spurious search engines, and I ok'ed them once and then blocked the rest - could this be it?

Also, a lot of people have been linking to my forums from other genuine sites and forums, so could google have interpreted this as spamming?

And one last question. On my google account, it says that my site is included in the index, and I cant see any indication of anything wrong.

Any help would be appreciated :)

Thanks

Dave.

SEO or not, your site is crawled by google from time to time, not only once... and if a page is more interesting in keywords than the article you're talking about, his ranking may change or even vanish...

SEO actually does not help your site a single bit relatively to ranking on google... it help navigation, nothing more...

Welcome to the world of SEO.

Honestly google does alot of changes and alot of random factors that no one in the public knows. You did the best you can but sometimes some things just get moved.

I wouldn't panick just yet. Give it a few days. I've had this happen loads of times, especially when launching a new site.

You've confused me. SEO only helps navigation??

I saw that behavior on mine the first weeks!
But I don't worry, I keep working to get in the top ;)

Ok, navigation: browsing, crawling... it helps the search engines to find the right content of your page...

that does not mean your content is of any value...

That's all part of the practise of SEO. If you SEO your site, you concentrate on factors that WILL improve your SERPS, that includes creating good content. It's no good SEO'ing by way of creating good navigation and internal link structure, only to direct Google to pages full of useless content.

Preciously. Content is king.

Have a blog, and one article is ranked #8 below a very large internet site it's about. Didn't do any SEO, heck zero keywords at the time and the blog was half done (not even the archives or Feedburner was setup). But the Goggle bot came by after a Technorati ping on a hot topic, and it rose past the top 10. Got 1000 uniques out of it, as well (not bad at doing nothing).

So that showed me 3 things.

1. Keywords really don't matter with Google.
2. Site design didn't matter (good markup does though...XHTML Strict!!).
3. Content is all that it cared about.

So now blogging on those concepts, and getting excellent results. :)

If you had had the google webmaster console up and running, and you get blacklisted, they normally tell you why in there :)

I don't dispute that content is extremely important. It's very unlikely you're going to rank well for an article full of repeat keywords. However, that doesn't mean that keywords don't matter. Hitting #8 without SEO in mind might be great for you, but why aren't you hitting #1 if your content is so good? Also, you have to consider your competition. If you have little competition for a particular keyword, then it's easy to rank well. It becomes a lot harder when you're targeting highly competitive keywords and not bearing SEO in mind.

Thanks for all the replies everyone :)

We have suddenly appeared back at the top again, well, number two, to be exact, which has baffled me completely!

So, was I correct to prune the search engine results from the refbacks, or isn't that what they would call spammy? It was search engines such as comcast, AOL, and some I've never heard of. Is it best to leave this kind of thing out?

P.S. Yep, Dean, it didn't mention anything in the console, but now I know, I will keep an eye on it in future :)

Thanks :)

Because the site in question is one of the top 10 in the world, and very talked about. #8 is very, very, very good considering that, and without any fuss, either. :)

Made my competition madder than hell, especially when I topped them at Technorati, too. hehehe.

It's hard to comment not knowing what content and sites you're referring to. Nonetheless, it doesn't mean careful consideration of specific keywords has no effect on SERPS. :)

So......next time don't assume that because someone's site isn't #1 on some search engine, it's due to it not being SEOed. There's other factors, like breath of content (40 articles vs 40,000) and site age that no SEO can hurry up page rankings.

1 writer vs 2,000,000 writers, #8 is very good!

google changes it's algorithm all the time ;)
this is Very normal.

Chris, I was disputing your original statement that keywords really don't matter with Google. Whether you realise it or not, keywords do play an important role.

It certainly wasn't the refbacks causing it IMO. There's no chance that by removing content, that it would remove any penalty you may have within 24hours. Google doesn't work that fast. What is more likely is the algorithms were being changed, or you were using a different datacenter on your two searches. I was searching for something at work yesterday on a keyword, and found what I wanted. I came home, and searched again and it was giving me different results :)

Btw you shouldn't get search engine results in the refbacks, and if you do it's probably from a non-standard search engine, which you should add to the blacklist :) I will be adding regex support to my mod soon, so that'll make it a lot easier for me to ban every google domain, and any other search engines I can think of :)

Go to any SEO forum, and ask the question yourself.

You'll find that keywords aren't as important, as a good site description, for example.

I didn't even include ANY meta tags. But it did get ranked, purely on subject title (oooooh, it was sweet!) and content. That showed me with evidence, not ideas, Google doesn't take keywords as serious as folks want to claim.

What's ironic, I was critical of one of Google's parent sites. That's true irony it got listed and shot up "above the fold" by Google before even it's rival Yahoo could (MSN was the first to pick it off Technorati, though)!

Thanks Dean!

It is a weird one, I had a couple of other people double check for me and we had definitely gone (at least, to everyone that tried, and the traffic had halfed), however, now, we seem to have come back with a vengeance because we are much higher up the ranking, using less specific search terms.

Yep, I was also seeing my link posted in what appeared to be several German retail sites, in their "be the first to review this product" type area, so probably best to block those in case google see it as spamming?

Anyway, thanks for the help :)

Dave.

Do you honestly believe I would question your argument without any experience or evidence? I think you're misinterpreting what I'm trying to say. I'm not inferring that you should fill your META tags with keywords, one after the other; same with content. But Google will not find any relevance in your site if you don't make any reference to the keywords you want people to find you for. There is no question that there are many factors involved in SERPS, but you are dismissing something of substantial significance. :)

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...%21#post859672

Check the date as well.

When I say I don't do any SEO, it means n-o-t-h-i-n-g. But it still gets indexed, and not at the bottom of the list, either. :p

I never said not doing any SEO will NOT get you indexed. Of course you will get indexed, but all search engine spiders depend on keywords to find your site, as do search engine users. If haven't targeted specific keywords and your content makes no reference to keywords people are searching for then your site will not be found.

You contradict yourself when you say, "Keywords really don't matter with Google" and "Content is all that it cared about". What in your content allows Google to find you if there are no references to the keywords people search you for?

Regarding your post on vbulletin.com, you are talking about 87 search results which is nothing. I've achieved #1 for myself and many clients for keywords that return upwards of 200 million results. This hasn't been achieved with keyword targeting alone, but it has played a vital part.

Actually, no. I had spiders on my sites before I even had a chance to setup shop.

30 years of Illustration work, and knowing what layouts can provoke the intended reactions. ;)

Content, content, content!

Point is, I did absolutely nothing to get indexed. 87, is pretty darn good. Even got page rank of #2 in the process.

You're trying very hard to justify SEO, but as my case proves, you can get your site indexed, ranked and have visitors over it all -- without putting one keyword in a metatag (or any SEO tomfoolery tricks).

That's because your URL was discovered (unless you submitted manually), therefore Google and other search engines are inclined to index it.

Just because you don't have any content on your site does not mean you will not be indexed. To give you just one example of this; one of the websites I registered for my business is merely a "coming soon..." image, yet it is indexed and ranked at #1 out of 400 sites. The site has remained like that for about 2 years, the only content (just one keyword - my business name) being in the form of a title and domain name. It certainly has nothing to do with content, because there is none. If I made no reference to the keyword through domain name, title or otherwise, I'd be indexed, but I wouldn't be found for this keyword at all.

If you had said 30 years building business around SERPs, then you would have a credible argument. For several years I've experimented, researched and built businesses that have depended on above the fold rankings to be successful.

I'm not trying to justify SEO. I already know carefully researched and planned SEO works whether you choose to accept it does or not. I was merely interested in how you've come to the conclusion that keywords don't count. All you have managed to highlight is that you can achieve a decent rank in all of 87 without SEO or keyword targeting.
Try targeting any competitive keyword using your technique and see how successful you are.

The question is, how many do you want?

Read that thread -- I did nothing. I was just setting up the server, and tweaking vBulletin and got swamped by Yahoo. Think it was 4 to 6hrs from the time I first installed vB.

My sites always have content (which is how it's indexed and crawled without keywords).

Yeah, site age has a main factor in it with Google (for now). I get more hits from a website I let sit for a year, than the active blog I post upon now (even though it has the traffic).

It used to be Yahoo indexed everything, where now it's Google (for blogs, they sure like Technorati!).

I picked a domain name, that at the time, didn't know it was an actual game term (heck, the same with my other domain name -- just learned the initials is a common term too). Just went through the Merriam-Webster's dictionary looking up words to describe my site, and merged two together. Only after it was indexed did I learn it's day-to-day meaning, and last time I checked, was #1 (even above the creator's site).

Not selling that domain even for $25k.

SEO is a scam, Mark. Much like those credit repair businesses. No amount of meta whatever will substitute for pure content. Put lipstick on a pig, it's still going to be a pig. SEO is about marketer marketing themselves, and hiding the choice data for themselves to justify their existence (or to sell books and services). That's how that business operates.

When it's about money, you know darn well you're not going to give out the real goods. If that was so, 300,000,000 Americans today will be billionaires.

Yes you are, since there's $$$$ involved. Otherwise, this topic would've long been over. ;)

The point you made was that you used no keywords, yet you still got indexed. Just because you haven't "set up shop", have no keywords or have no general content, doesn't mean you will not get indexed. Where have I alleged that you must use keywords to get indexed?

You are completely missing the connection between content and the keywords within it. Content contains keywords. If you run a football site and make no reference to football within your content, then you will not be found when a user searches "football" or variations of it.

Content is not why you are indexed and crawled. Every site that search engines find, whether they contain any content or not, are added to their index and crawled every now and again to check for updates, as is the case with the many websites/domains I own with holding pages, but no content.

To further the example in my previous post, I own mykeyword.co.uk and mykeywordsolutions.com, the latter of which is 2 years older than the co.uk. When I search "mykeyword", the co.uk comes #1; bear in mind it only makes reference to "mykeyword" in the domain name and title. However, my .com of which does have content, sits at #10. If site age is such a vital factor, then why are these sites not placed the other way around?

That's an extremely myopic and ill-thought-out generalisation. Quality content is #1 for me - there's nothing better that creating stuff that people want - but no search engine can interpret content the same way as a human can. For this reason, I find it essential to carefully target the content towards the keywords I want people to find me for - there's nothing wrong or unethical about that.

If I was that interested in money, I wouldn't be wasting my time debating this topic with you. Judging by how little you take in and your failure/refusal to acknowledge that their are acceptable and ethical methods of SEO, that do work, it's probably sensible to end the discussion here. ;)