Top results - now banished completely

[lloydforth]

I have had no. 1 rankings for 3-4 search terms for the last 5 months but as of last week my site has been banished from google. If i search for the full url i get back a result but on trying to click through it says server not found (probably due to the www. part missing as when you hover over the link its not there).

Could a competitor have used a remove url feature i have read about?

[stinkfoot]

mmm nasty thought makes you wonder though doesnt it

[taps]

lloydforth: I don't think so. The removal tool only uses data from your server, i.e. your robots.txt and information stored within the html files stored on your server. A competitor cannot harm you exept he hacks your server.

I'd suggest to check your site for duplicate content. Most common is the problem that you serve content under two addresses:

www.yourserver.foo/contentpage.html
and
yourserver.foo/contentpage.html

You can check that in Google by using

site:yourserver.foo/
and
site:www.yourserver.foo

If you receive results for both addresses dup content might be the cause.

Make also sure you did'nt kick yourself out by making a mistake in robots.txt.

I'd recommend to browse through this forum and read all topics about "I've got kicked". Check your site again and again. I'm sure you'll find the problem and fix it.

[lammert]

Could a competitor have used a remove url feature i have read about?

According to Google there is almost nothing a competitor can do to remove you from the SERPs. In order to use the Google URL removal tool, the user must have access to the site, or the site must be down for an extended period of time.

If the competitor has access to the site, he could add a robots.txt, or add a noindex to the header of the pages and then use the removal tool. If the competitor has no access to the site--which is most likely--he would be able to remove a page of the site if that page is off-line at the moment he does the remove request, and the page stays off-line for the next four or five days. This is because Google checks many times for the 404 return code before it believes the page is really gone. As I mentioned, this type of removal can only be done on a page-by-page base, so ONLY if your site was off-line for a period of about a week, and your competitor added manual all individual page URLs in the removal tool, that could be the reason for your ban.

So most probably it isn't and it is either a technical glitch which should recover in the next weeks, or a ban from Google.

[jomaxx]

If i search for the full url i get back a result but on trying to click through it says server not found (probably due to the www. part missing as when you hover over the link its not there).

Is it possible that the non-www version of your domain USED TO resolve but now does not? Possibly due to a hosting change? In any case, I would recommend having it resolve properly and redirecting it to the www version.

[lkcho]

It happens to 2 of my websites too. Ranked within top 10, now suddenly ranks outside 100+. Weird, hopefully will get back to normal soon.

[stevelibby]

i have had much the same thing in the past 24 hours, i have not changed my site and had top rankin g and then suddenly bang ta-ta,
i have been looking through the posts today and i still cant see no reason why my site has dropped 30-50 positions from number 1?
Can some give some pointers to look for as to what has happened?

[reseller]

stevelibby

>>i have been looking through the posts today and i still cant see no reason why my site has dropped 30-50 positions from number 1? <<

Maybe you find the reason here ;-)

msg #:107
[webmasterworld.com...]

[rfgdxm1]

>I'd suggest to check your site for duplicate content. Most common is the problem that you serve content under two addresses:

>www.yourserver.foo/contentpage.html
and
yourserver.foo/contentpage.html
Yep. You need to make sure this isn't happening. I just server side redirect all calls to root to www.

[redintheforest]

Our site has been dropped as well. My webmaster said this happened once before and after a month or so it showed back up. Technical glitch from Google?

We already advertise with adwords - so we are showing under somethings.

Question: Can you remove your site and then addurl to google? Would this be a faster fix?

[CygnusX1]

We also have dropped by a large amount from our listings. I can only hope that things go back to the way they were. :)

[redintheforest]

Stevelibby - According to Google, it maybe in the keywords (see [google.com...] "...it's possible that your site is still included in our search results, but that its placement decreased for these keywords. Reshuffling of our search results can occur when new sites are found and assigned a higher rank. No one at Google hand adjusts the results to boost the ranking of a site..."

[reseller]

redintheforest

>>No one at Google hand adjusts the results....<<

Now why do they say such garbage? ;-)

Food for thought:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[frup]

No one at Google hand adjusts the results *to boost the ranking of a site*. Sites rank organically, but Google hand picks sites for banishment. It's obvious they do this to anyone who watches super-competitive terms.

[redintheforest]

LMAO - Too bad they picked me....

[reseller]

frup

>>No one at Google hand adjusts the results *to boost the ranking of a site*.<<

But if they remove by hand, for example sites #1, #2 and #3 for any reason on a specific serp, then rankings of sites #4, #5, #6 etc. shall be boosted accordingly. Right? ;-)

[frup]

reseller, of course that's correct, the ones below the removed sites move up. But if you want to understand what is going on you have to understand what they are doing. It's obvious that they are doing this for some search terms. Probably Google regards it as removing "spammy" websites. Google probably looks at how a site achieves its ranking and if it feels that the site is there through frowned-upon means, the site is banished. That would be my guess of what is going on, through watching sites get whacked one after another...

[ari11210]

What is the best way to redirect domain.com to www.domain.com to avoid the dup content problem? I am running PHP.
Thanks

[ari11210]

Can anyone help with this?
Thanks

[stevelibby]

it has nothing to do with the ketyword bit, my home page hasnt been updated since 31 august, yet the rest has?
What does anyone make of that?

[needinfo]

lloydforth, lkcho & stevelibby,

I seem to be having the same problem as you guys (possibly duplicate content). Take a look at this posting I made earlier and try the same on your sites and let me know if you get same results.

I'm having a problem with some of my sites but one in particular. I use to rank on top page for MANY search terms, then on or around 31st August 2005 it dropped to page 3 or lower depending on search term.
Whilst investigating this site I noticed that some of the internal pages shown when using the site: command were showing as www.www.mysite.co.uk/foldername/.
I then typed in the domain homepage address in my browser address bar with different amounts of "www" prefixed to the domain name with the following results :
www.www.mysite.co.uk - Cannot find Page.
www.www.www.mysite.co.uk - Page Found OK.
www.www.www.www.mysite.co.uk - Page found OK.

alll www prefixes of 5 and above - Cannot find Page.

If anybody has any knowledge of such a thing then please let me know. I would also be VERY interested to hear from anybody else who is having similar SERPs problems as me to see if they get the same or similar results.

[stevelibby]

i have just tried what you said but i did not get the same result, howver i have noticed that when you type just the domain in with no .co.uk that my links have gone from 4`300 to 11`000. and what worse is that all old pages appear there?
Anyone else had that?
Has google gone wrong?

[stevelibby]

i have just searched for my domain name in google and then tried to view caches for my pages and on some i get an error which shows: cache:loadofnumbers:www.domain.co.uk
what is happening, i am stating to think that i may have issues with my server?

[modemmike]

Stevelibby, have you done a header check to make sure your site is serving up a response of 200 OK? Stickymail me your url, I'd like to take a look.

[cynicaldog]

I'm having similar, but different, issues with my sites vanishing.

The site I'm most concerned about is one which could be considered an "authority" type of site -- it's been in the top 3 results for its search terms in Google for the last 3 years. On or about August 26th it disappeared from Google, and also seems to be gone from Yahoo. It's #1 in MSN. When I pull it up and use the Google toolbar it's just a white bar, PR0, when it's always been a PR7. If I do a search for mydomain.com in Google, it shows no results at all, as if my domain doesn't exist. It shows no backlinks, when it actually has over 2000 of them, at least.

I do use the .htaccess 301 redirect code to avoid duplicate content on www vs. non-www.

To keep things interesting, 4 similar sites on the same IP have also been completely removed from Google and are "white barred". While the sites are similar in the service which they offer, all are different in terms of design, written content, etc. One other related site, which only has two backlinks, has remained a PR3. Other sites on that IP which are completely and utterly unrelated seem to be unscathed.

The only thing "spammy" about the sites is that each has 10 text links on the index page. They're visible and not hidden and have always been there since the day these sites went up. The linked-to sites aren't spammy or in "bad neighbourhoods".

I have noticed that if I type "mydomain" into Google, I find over 12000 references to it, some of which are from sites just blatantly stealing and copying pages of my site. However, as I said, my site has been up and running for over three years, and the sites which have stolen my content (even my graphics, sheesh), aren't trying to mask their domain, so there shouldn't be any confusion about "who was first".

Any ideas? I'd hate to lose these sites -- I really don't make any money from them, but I'm really proud of them for being innovative.

[modemmike]

stevelibby, I took a look at your url and noticed a few things but I am not a pro at this so take my advice with a grain salt.

Your site is is probably feeling the effects of a dupe content filter because the non-WWW version of your site is also indexed. I was also able to find several sites appearing to be using the same content (try searching google for copyscape and use that tool to see them).

BTW, headers from the site checked out fine.

My best advice right now is to redirect your non-WWW traffic to the WWW site or vise versa.

Your rank is pretty good all around (PR, Alexa, BL's) so this may be a temporary glitch for your domain.

[minnapple]

check your backlinks, to see who they associate you with

[cynicaldog]

I guess I figured out my problem on my own -- ALL of my high PR sites have been hijacked by creeps using that 302 redirect stuff. I thought some of my sites were just experiencing normal ebb and flow in the SERPs, but using the allinurl thing I've found that basically every single one of my high PR sites has been taken over. Not just the ones I mentioned earlier in this thread, but a bunch more of them as well.

[pescatore]

"Google URL removal tool"
does anyone knows where i can find it download it and how can i use it,i need to delete an old website,any help will be welcome.

[AAnnAArchy]

So, why won't Google do something about this? Surely seeing www.mondothievery.com/www.sprockets.com triggers something at the plex that says, "Hmmm, this isn't right. No one with a normal non-thieving domain would put someone else's domain in their url." All of our work is being stolen. Google can stop it, but won't. Why not?