"You disappeared from Google because..."

"You didn't keep paying us to submit...."

[johnser]

Hi

Weird situation - A UK company has approached us and said they were paying for an automtated system <SNIP> for 6 months until the end of March.

Their URL was listed in G till the weekend with a PR5.

They now have 83 backlinks but the site's just disappeared from G. It still has its PR5 though....

The company asked the operators of the automated system why this might be & they said - wait for it....
"Its because you stopped paying us to submit it for you".

This is obviously complete rubbish yet we can't figure out why the URL is nowhere to be found despite PR5 & 83 links...

Any clues? TIA
J

[edited by: NFFC at 1:13 pm (utc) on April 14, 2003]
[edit reason] Specifics removed [/edit]

[RichD]

-self edited due to specifics removed from first post-

[STMLJohn]

Do they have more than one domain? Google commonly lists "mirror" sites and multiple domains under one domain. My site has several active domains (just my brandname with different suffixes) but only one is listed in Google at any one time. You can kinda control which one if you can point your Yahoo/ODP listings at it.

[sullen]

That's outrageous!

The site has not been dropped because it hasn't been submitted (as you probably know). But sites do disappear and then reappear sometimes for various reasons (Google having glitches, site being down briefly when crawled etc.) It's probably just be a coincidence.

As far as I know, there's nothing a company like this can do to cause a site to be dropped - and if there was it wouldn't be instant (and it would be complaining about spammy tactics they were responsible for).

Wait a week or two before getting too worried about it.

[creative craig]

Give them these threads to read:

Google Updates and Everflux, the Monthly Mid-Cycle Changes [webmasterworld.com]

Googlebot: Deepbot and Freshbot FAQ and Information [webmasterworld.com]

Craig

[toddb]

Is it at all possible they used the remove url? Since the PR is the same they did not remove a crucial link or anything.

[johnser]

Thanks All (& Rich yes, thats the 1)

It was the company's main URL, not a mini-site and no duplicate/mirror sites are involved.

I'm guessing maybe the only thing it could be is there was a server glitch when Gbot came to visit. Only possible thing I can think of..

First time I've come across a decent site that just disappeared despite being well ranked previously yet its still retaining its PR & links.

Am still a little bit suspicious about the automated thing...
J

[Receptional Andy]

>>Is it at all possible they used the remove url

There is no remove url - have a look at the Google webmasters FAQ.

[gsx]

There is no remove URL?

[google.com...]

... but you do need access to the site in question.

[qball0213]

Could they have changed the robots.txt to block goggles spider the previous crawl?

[johnser]

Unlikely - The company wouldn't know how to spell "robots" & the "automated" system didn't have access to that.

J

[Receptional Andy]

There is no remove URL?

[google.com...]

... but you do need access to the site in question.

'Renmove url' makes it sound like a form where you can get rid of a site, whereas Google's FAQ recommends banning spiders with robots.txt which is hardly the same thing. There is no way to 'remove' a site from Google. You can just make it inaccessible to the next Google crawl via standard techniques. This is what I meant.

[robertito62]

johnser, I have a similar situation.

One of my pages, PR 5 with over 50 backlinks which was 1st page result on last index has now disappeared. It is still in the index and has its PR and backlinks but will not show on the SERPS for the corresponding keyword search.

Last month same thing. I emailed G and the page reappeared (on page 1).

I am fairly inexperienced but it looks like a glitch. I will probably email them to find out what could I be doing that is causing the problem.

Today I have also noticed that for term KW1, Google comes up with a result that has no correspondance to the search. So there are glitches here and there. In this specific case, they picked up a wrong URL mixed with someone else's description.

[RawAlex]

I have a domain that ranks in the top 20 on a very popular single keyword... sometimes. It appears and disappears about every 3 - 4 days. This is an older, established site. It continues to appear in other SERPS during the entire month, but winks in and out on the most popular (and highest trafficed) term. It doesn't just drop a bit, it is nowhere to be found in the first 1000 listings.

Not sure why, but it might the same thing others are seeing here. Googleguy?

Alex

[gsx]

Receptional Andy, that page shows you how to remove a page from the index on the next crawl, but there is options where it states "If you believe your request is urgent...", but you have to change the page/robots.txt and create an account before you can remove a page or whole site.

[daamsie]

Did this automated system require them to paste any code in their pages by any chance? Perhaps there is an include to a file on their site that they can use to add the 'no-index' tag if they feel like it. Just a guess though.. the whole thing seems strange.

A server glitch wouldn't make any sense, because then the page wouldn't have any PR at all. A site with PR, but not in the index suggests to me that there is some robots.txt or no-index work going on.

[vincevincevince]

or they owned and pulled down the backlinks?

[daamsie]

The fact that it still has a PR though, indicates that it still has backlinks. Would be interesting to see how many it has though, just to check. It will be interesting to see if freshbot picks it up when it starts again..

[Hagstrom]

Johnser, this sounds suspiciously like a thread [webmasterworld.com] we had a few months ago.

Are you sure you were in the top SERPs and not in the Sponsored Links?

Edit: Added URL