Only homepage removed from google

mydomain.com/ has PR0, mydomain.com (without slash) has PR6

[feelfree]

Hello,

I guess i get penalty. Actually i didnt do any spam or any different thing for more than 6 months.

now mydomain.com removed and doesnt seen on SERPs. but other pages of my site still indexed and still seen on SERPs.

and mydomain.com/ has PR0, mydomain.com (without slash) still has PR6

Anyone see this before? when will it get indexed again.
Is there anyway to ask to any google department why am i dropped?

Thanks

[samuel_ado]

till .......

[zaneta]

any news?
did you get reply from Google?

[samuel_ado]

not yet :o(((

[Trodda]

Both [xyz-domain.com...] and [xyz-domain.com...] are missing in our case. All sub-pages show up fine. Haven't received any removed URL notices though. Which address were these notices sent to? Looks suspiciously like Florida symptoms to me.

[zaneta]

what do you mean?

[feelfree]

Trodda,

it sends to [e-mail]

And i got answer from google. it says

"Thank you for your note. The site that was removed is a dead link. We do
not add dead links to our search results. "

and blah blah.

it means that. if a website doesnt have index.html
you can remove it's homepage as well. what will do php or asp users.

Tuna

[zaneta]

please clarify
we have lost our first page which was
www.mydomain.com/default.asp
and we had configured also iis properly
please tell if this could be the problem ( that we used default.asp and not index.asp or index.html)

[feelfree]

Hi zaneta,

it is easy

if you dont have index.html you will lose your homepage. what ever it is. default.asp or default.php or index.php

[samuel_ado]

Tuna,

Mine was index.html and it has been removed but the message coming from google contains "www.mydomain.net/index.htm NOINDEX" and i didn't have index.htm in my root..
i don't know it is a clue or not ...

Adnan

[zaneta]

What looks strange to me is that google always sends messages about the removal of pages that... dont exist.

We had only default.asp as the default page, and the message that came was about the removal of
www.example.com/index.htm NOINDEX
and
www.example.com/index.html NOINDEX

Same situation happened to Adnan who only had index.html ang google was talking about the removal of index.htm

[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 11:16 pm (utc) on May 5, 2004]
[edit reason] No specifics please! [/edit]

[samuel_ado]

lol.. it is a reason for google to kick us out :o))
just kidding...... but i am afraid that google could be the actor of this sketch.. i hope i am wrong but this is not fair to be removed if we don't have one of "default or index or home" .php .asp .html .htm .jsp

it looks like a kind of penalty but still don't know the reason...

[Trodda]

Zaneta, Google Florida Update in November saw missing homepages galore.

[webmasterworld.com...]

[samuel_ado]

ok, penalty is acceptable for this disaster.. but "reason"? was it to push us to put ad-words at google? (like before xmas)
does google need to play against Yahoo? and why? google is still #1 and they will make us runaway from google...
andddd next update, sub-pages will go down cause googlebot will not come index page and will not continue to subpages...

why some sites still exist? did google close its eyes and choose us?

come onnnn GoogleGuy, waiting for you to give us some clue

[zaneta]

what is the procedure from google do they reply to e-mail requests?

[samuel_ado]

in 2 or 3 days

[zaneta]

what did you uderstand from the discusions for the problem of Google in November?

[samuel_ado]

i had totally 72 googlebot visits till now but i didn't check it when my index page droped yesterday morning.. i was looking up my logs and i have seen googlebot for main page and subpages that means googlebot is still coming for main page.. maybe google could allow bot to visit us ..! (hope)

[samuel_ado]

<added>
as you know googlebot is not coming if the web-site has been penalized
</added>

[Brett_Tabke]

couple things:

Very intersting topic. I have studied this issue for an hour and don't know what to make of it just yet. Google has been notified of it.

Please, no specifics in thread and certainly NO personal information of other posters.

Thanks

[samuel_ado]

hi Brett_Tabke,

it is nice to know an admin is takin care of this topic...
have you heard this problem before from any other country? cause mostly Istanbul, Turkey & Greece sites affected (at least till now we knew that).. is it possible to be regional? or have to wait for an announcement from google..

[rocco]

indeed very odd, from one domain that was posted in this thread google acts like this:

[domain.com...] - PR 5 - page exists
[domain.com...] - PR 0 - page exists
[domain.com...] - PR 5 - page does not exists
[domain.com...] - PR 5 - page does not exists
[domain.com...] - PR 0 - page exists
[domain.com...] - PR 4 - page exists

that's messed up!

[senkron]

You're right rocco, for me it's the same!
[domain.com...] is PR6 - page doesn't exist

How comes a page which doesn't exist and never existed might have a PR6?

[senkron]

I also want to add one more thing:
link:http://www.domain.com/index.html is >0
Other observations:
link:http://www.domain.com/ is =0
link:http://www.domain.com is >0

Still no clue why this is happening.

[edited by: senkron at 2:44 pm (utc) on May 5, 2004]

[mars9820]

As probably is the case in all the above examples is that someone (probably your competition) faked an email address as [e-mail] and requested google to remove certain URL's from their index.

Even when the competition is only successfull for a couple days until you sort it out. This can be a very costly and painful situation for some of the members overhere.

This problem can be solved by google very simple by creating a so-called "handshake" with the removal requests.

Immediately the following came in mind:

1. Webmaster wants to remove URL's
2. Webmaster goes to google homepage.
3. Webmaster is forced by google to create an ID.
4. Google provides a small text file (google_remove.txt)
5. Webmaster uploads the small text file in the root of the domain.
6. Webmaster ask to remove the URL
7. Google checks the existance of the text file.
8a. If the text file is found. URL's will be removed and notification by email.
8b. If the text file is NOT found. No action and ditch the request.

Maybe we can suggest this to GG to help us save ourself from this torture in the future.

[pageoneresults]

Google views the quality of its search results as an extremely important priority. Therefore, Google stops indexing the pages on your site only at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for those pages or as required by law. This policy is necessary to ensure that pages are not inappropriately removed from our index.

I'm a little confused with all of this. I've used the Google Remove URI feature before and it requires specific action by those responsible for managing the site. In my case, I had to add Disallow: lines to my robots.txt file.

In reference to the index.html issues, that page should be returning a 404 if it does not exist in your root. Have you guys/gals checked to see if your server headers are returning the proper status codes for invalid pages?

Some competitors can be very techincally savvy. If they find anything wrong with your server configuration, they can easily wreak havoc on your campaign.

P.S. Google also has a verification process for removing URIs...

Remove your URL or Google Groups Post [services.google.com]

This process requires email verification and password. Here is an example of the email that is received once you request removal of a URI...

Greetings from Google!

This email was automatically generated when your account was created. Visit the following link to activate your account:

You must activate your account within 24 hours or it will be removed.

If you did not request this account, or do not wish to proceed with the removal of a URL, please ignore this message.

Regards,
The Google Team

So many things to think about in this scenario...

• Is there someone within your organization (past or present) who has access to your email accounts and can set up an address for this specific purpose?
  
• Is it possible to hijack email DNS to perform this dirty deed?
  
• Has someone found a vulnerability in the system as Brett has stated in the home page description for this topic?

[edited by: pageoneresults at 3:18 pm (utc) on May 5, 2004]

[samuel_ado]

i get lost 3 web-site and only 1 has 404, other 2 sites didn't have 404..
there was not robots.txt no meta tags for noindex,nofollow..
so?

[HitProf]

Just a few thoughts:

- how many sites and emails are we talking about? Many pages are missing these days, especcially from new sites. Not nessecarily related. to those emails.

- PR's in toolbars are not accurate. They are not up to date and can actually be 'made up' (derived from other pages).

- could it be a rogue bot trying to remove dead links and deleting a few too many? The emails are still strange though.

- did everybody check the IP-addresses of their recieved emails?

[birdy]

Some competitors can be very techincally savvy. If they find anything wrong with your server configuration, they can easily wreak havoc on your campaign.

P.S. Google also has a verification process for removing URIs...

What I understand here is;
There would be 2 options

i)Someone realy made a good trick to google and eliminated their process. If that has happend all webmasters who lost their site one by one has made request to Google but no one heard anything back officially!

ii)Google has changed or applied new algo/filter but still no announcemend made by!

IMHO something is going on and Google will put last dot on this subject and I am looking forward to hear that asap.

[feelfree]

pageoneresults,

I think you must check all thread again.

why you people dont want to believe us.

You said:

So many things to think about in this scenario...

Is there someone within your organization (past or present) who has access to your email accounts and can set up an address for this specific purpose?

Is it possible to hijack email DNS to perform this dirty deed?

How are these can be possible? we are here more than 5 webmasters, we have more than 100 websites, in different servers, we are working all different companies.
How can somebody hack our system in 2 days. can you believe this. is this guy worked with all of us in different times. and he got all information (even he went and worked in greece and turkey and egypt) how possible is this?

why you people never thing that even google can made mistake or google can be hacked.

we are all suffering here and noone (from google or someone can talk with them) didnt take attention to our problem. do we have to subscribe to supporters forum. yes maybe.

if google penalty us why do they send us email that they removed our urls. and why do they say we removed dead link, when we ask why they removed us. but be sure that our websites dont dead. they are working. only we dont have index.hmtl or index.htm

i sent their email before it really seems like their email. and also they replied my question. but they just replied me never checked what did they removed.

anyway i think we cant get help here.

i hope google index me again quickly.

regards

[HitProf]

Another possibility I forgot:

Did you check your server for virusses? Could be a virus modifying your homepage and sending remove-url request. Check your head sections as well.

This would fit Google's procudure for removing pages.