Vanished from Google

[tom_d]

I've searched the forum for this problem and have seen similar issues. But I'm sure something is not right. Before with various search words many of the pages on my site would rank very high. Now with those same words my site is gone but everyone else’s page still have the same ranking, minus mine. Everything vanished on Jan. 1.

If I do a domain name search, it's picking up the page title and text from my link bar, which is an include page. But no description from meta or the content.

It seems like it is being purposely ignored.

[rogerd]

Tom_d, welcome to WebmasterWorld and sorry about the delay in replying. The first thing to do in this case is wait - you could have been caught by a database glitch, or had a server outage at an inopportune time.

Check your logs to see if you are getting spidered, make sure nothing dicey is on your site, and find some nice new links. With any luck, you'll be back in business soon.

[wanna_learn]

tom_d

You problem is very much similar to slow death sites, which many Members on Board are at the moment suffering.

We had a whole big thread on it, which has been UNFORTUNATELY removed for NO REASONS.

Hang on now! and keep wondering!
Google has nothing to say on this evil most problem.

[webdude]

I just totally disappeared for my index page (not in the first 1000) after ranking between #10 and #1. The G has been in flux the past 2 days and I am not going to let it concern me. When I hit refresh, one moment I am there, the next I am gone, or sometimes I am popping up #1.

Go figure.

I think we need to wait until things settle down before we start to panic.

[nileshkurhade]

First time in my life I encountered this on Google -
Server Error
The server encountered an error and could not complete your request.
If the problem persists, please mail [e-mail] and mention this error message and the query that caused it.

More than 8 refreshes after I still encounter this.

[Jakpot]

You problem is very much similar to slow death sites, which many Members on Board are at the moment suffering.

We had a whole big thread on it, which has been UNFORTUNATELY removed for NO REASONS.

I was aslo wondering why it was removed

[skymanhonor]

All my sites dropped (I get bored of hitting next before I find them) between this morning and this evening. They all target different travel destinations, are all legit in that they have good content, incoming and outgoing links (and deserve to come up on the first page). One of them has been #1 for the last year.

-I change up the SEO of them every time google spots changes and repositions them... maybe that has something to do with it.
-I add content to them often (once a week) and change around old pages
-I don't interlink them (maybe 5 links total when related)
-I have one site (for my business) that links out to all of them
-it seems odd to me that google would care the sites are all owned by the same person (nothing else explains why they were all dropped at the same time, because they were all optomized in a different manner and are completely different sites)

In response to Tom_D's initial post: I had a site that only the domain name showed for 2 months, and one day it snapped to normal.

[skymanhonor]

All my sites came back to normal positions (they were gone for between 4 and 12 hours).

[thewebboy]

My page rank 5 site is now GONE from Google, not pages at all.

[marcs]

All my sites came back to normal positions (they were gone for between 4 and 12 hours).

Were these new sites (late 2003 or after)?

[Krapulator]

Yes, strange things are afoot at the moment - however it is far too early to start worrying.

[tom_d]

I first published my site in October and have been gradually updating with additional pages. I was actually surpised in November to discover most of my pages would rank high, when key words were used on google, relevant to page content. That's when I started using sitemeter to track traffic. Then on Dec. 31. I vanished from google. The only way I'm getting any traffic is through google ads, which is getting expensive.

I've added a couple of links in, but I'm also paying for those. My content seems to be of high relevance to many, because those coming from adwords view numerous pages and linger.

Could a competitor contacted google somehow, to have me removed? Any chance that by adding sitemeter, it gummed it up for me? Any ideas, on how I could quickly get re-established by google? Or is it just a pay, then wait and wait.

[a_chameleon]

My site's gone, completely, too! From #5 to nowhere.

Is there a way to see if I've been "booted" ..?

Help..?

[glitterball]

Me Too!

I have had 2 sites now booted.
Maybe I should transfer my domain to my sister and then Google won't know that I own both of them.

[adfree]

tom_d

Very sorry to learn about your problem. I can feel the frustration, yet - please try to address this issue long term and with the right attitude.

Here is how I would tackle the situation:

- See what your site does with the other SEs
- same problem? something is definitively wrong!
- next check: use online tools that mimick spiders, SE's
- here you can learn a whole lot about your improvement areas (trust me, you got them, even dell.com has some)
- by now you will already have some advice to start tweaking, correcting
- one of the most frustrating issues: check your robots file at the server (if you have access), some folks got their robots.txt file corrupted (or hacked) and were dropped by the SEs), ask your hosting company if you don't own the server
- see some of your competitor's sites, look at their source code to get more ideas, by comparing their <head> section for example with yours you will start asking questions to yourself, find answers around here in the forum, use the search feature
- do you have links coming in from other web sites? you NEED some or G will not index you (cuz not found, hanging in the air, detached from the rest of the web)
- after this you should have built a site that is way better than what you have today

Now, if you are not back into Google by then, this leads me to the most important message:

MAKE SURE YOU DON'T HAVE ALL EGGS IN ONE BASKET!

If for some reason you have trouble getting back into Google, at least you need traffic and revenue by other means. Don't just play the Google game, play the "USEFULL, TECHNICALLY SOUND AND USER-VALUE-ADDING WEBSITE" game.

Done that you will be back in Google and have built something to last.

'nother important message:

NEVER give up, NEVER start improving, the reward is massive between the frustrations! And if it's just so that you have learned a lot and can apply at will.

Cheers, Jens

[simonuk]

I'm glad I'm not the only one this has happened to.

Sounding more like a major update like Florida is happening than a small quirk.

Simon.

[creative craig]

I to have had similar problems over the last couple of days. 5 sites have all vanished from the front page listings, exactly the same after Florida update, they all came back about 2 weeks later.. just have to wait and watch.

Craig

[trillianjedi]

When I hit refresh, one moment I am there, the next I am gone, or sometimes I am popping up #1.

Load balancing. Not all DC's have settled.

TJ

[ravishingr]

I've been crushed over the last 24 hours. I have a series of sites that target a lot of small keywords and had great positioning for a long period of time. My sites were established. About a year old. Now, complete and total devastation.

[alexeyryb]

I've had two "keyword1-keyword2.com" sites at the #1 position in Google. Both sites has been vanished after this update.

[adfree]

Can we please focus on answering the initial question instead of everyone just telling everyone how and what got nuked?

Sorry for being blant but I guess the initial requester had a valid point in asking for advice.

Thanks, Jens

[Sunset_Jim]

My site has also vanished from the Google SERPS. At least it is not in the top 800. Before the Florida update my site was in the top 5 for highly competitive key phrases. About January 1, some of my pages appeared around 350 in the SERPS for these same key phrases. Now the site is gone again.

My site has lots of pages with quality content, incoming and outgoing links, and no excessive SEO. I would think it is an authorative site, but apparently Google doesn't think so. My competitor's sites have not changed since before the Florida update. I have reexamined my site and made a few minor changes, but they have not influenced Google. My key phrase is found in the title, banner alt tag, and header, and in the abchor text in some of the incoming links, but I don't see why this would be considered excessive SEO.

My site is a travel guide site and on some pages I have extensive lists of places of lodging such as hotels and motels, all of which include the name of the city in the address which, incidentally, is also included in the keyphrase. I have wondered if this could be considered as SEO.

[identity_00]

there is no reason - google is garbage and a lot of people are losing millions. No rhyme or reason for every good site that was keep I could show you a bad that still holds top positions.

We can only wait for a better engine.
Its pretty sad they cant even spend two minutes to explain what they are doing right now.
I lost everything - just like many others.
I have already started to visit other search engines just not to give google credit anymore.

Sorry about that man.

[Just inPrefs]

Hi!

Everything in Google looks strange since months. However, maybe there is a good explanation in everything. I can't say more than other webmasters or SEOs say.

However, regarding PR0, I suspect with a degree of certainty of over 90% that a penalization is involved. I hope at least it's a short term one. But nobody will know exactly. Only Google does.

I advise you to send a polite email at [e-mail] or at [e-mail] but don't expect too much from them. In the meantime don't miss the great advices of addfree.

[Jakpot]

Does anyone have an idea why most of the Lycos (Tripod and Angelfire) sites vanished from the Google index? My pages still have PR but no cache and the don't show up in the SERPs.

I am wondering if Lycos has recently (since 10/04)
reconfigured a DNS server that inadvertently blocked Googlebot.

I have written [e-mail],
webmaster@google and Lycos but they have not answered.
Is there anyone who can be contacted to look into this problem?

[edited by: Jakpot at 4:13 pm (utc) on Jan. 29, 2004]

[Sebyte]

Hi

I read in this thread about using online tools that mimick spiders. Can someone tell me where I can find these Tools that mimick Spiders please.

I want to include this in my SE.

Thanks
Sebyte

[adfree]

Sebyte, you can find some here:

[searchengineworld.com...]

...some here:
[searchengineworld.com...]

...more here:
[searchengineworld.com...]

Need more - sticky me, cheers, Jens

[site_muda]

From what I read here most are pi$$_d at being removed form top spots only weeks ago. I had a number one ranking and had too much business to deal with. Now, we're nowhere to be found on Google (i.e. Yahoo, AOL,). still on MSN, Lycos, Hotbot, alltheweb.

My Big Question is:
I changed my homepage to display a image redirect to a credit reports co. which I will receive money as an affiliate..will this hurt me. I also have this image on other pages as well and 3 more image re-directs which are competitvely placed and are appropriate for the site which is financially related. any answers would be helpful

[tom_d]

Hello Everyone and Thanks

I started this thread and appreciate all the helpful advice. But, I find it interesting, that I can now type in "vanished from google" in google search, and get this thread as the No. 1 ranking.

So basically, my search for why I'm vanished ranks high, but my website is nowhere to be seen.

[c1bernaught]

Too soon to worry...

it's not over yet...