bumpski - 11:08 am on Oct 21, 2004 (gmt 0)

When this happens, what does one do to get it back in the index?

Since this seems like a Q & A thread.

Normally one more crawl (could be a month) and you'll be back in the index. At this point the page would always have zero page rank, after another crawl your page will typically be assigned it's page rank. BUT now that Google appears to only update toolbar pagerank quarterly you will typically see PR 0 for up to 3 months after your page has been missed twice in a row by the Google crawl. There may be an "internal to Google" pagerank assigned after the second recovery crawl but you won't see it except in the SERP's.

The other oddity is Google seems to give brand new pages a significant boost in the SERP's (still), then after one more crawl the page drops down to a more reasonable location in the SERP's. The boost would last a day to a month depending upon the crawl schedule and the introduction of the new page. I think this new page boost can be why some questionable pages end up near number 1 in the SERP's. I think Google may penalize pages that seem to come and go in and out of existance. One could try to take advantage of this "new page" boost, that's why I suspect a penalty. This also implies Google remembers pages that are not displayed in any way in the index.

Google certainly remembers supplemental pages; one of mine for more than a year now, with no backlinks, that can be found.

Hope this wasn't too far off topic.