My site has been First Now vanished from Google

My site has been the first of its kind, I drop off Google

[sabine7777]

For the past year I have experienced periodically being completely dropped off Google. My site has been the FIRST of its kind and is in all the natural search results on the first spot. I'm just a small business, but since spet of 2004 I have been vanishing off of Google every 6 weeks or so--recently it has been more often and for longer periods. Does Google discriminate against Older sites? Are they doing it so that we will advertise with them? Any help, advice, comment from a desperate single mother of 4!

[ysari]

I was not affected by bourbon or previous updates. But this one hit me hard. The only thing I can remember I did recently was to customize my 404 error pages, because my web host provided a tool to do it for you. Could that have been the cause?

[soapystar]

no!

[mikeD]

i'm from the UK and was hammered by this about 3 weeks ago. exact same thing, but only seemed to effect my websites.

[Dayo_UK]

Well this has been going on since December last year.....

Unfortunately people there does not seem to be much hope of Google fixing it.

Look for other opportunities, other search engines, other ways of promoting your sites.

Or look for another job.

It does not seem that making changes to your site can help your situation once down with Google.

Google have not got the staff able to fix the problem. It is a shame - but things change.

Whoever took Google down this path of trying to patch up problems in the index needs to be fired. But that is upto Google rather than us.

Only fix for Google at the moment would be perhaps to crawl to Yahoo and ask to use their index while they do a complete rebuild - and lets face it that is not going to happen.

Google R.I.P

I mean think about it folks - little Gigablast is better than Google. And Search Hippo. They dont have the same basic problems that the Google index has.

[edited by: Dayo_UK at 11:24 am (utc) on Sep. 26, 2005]

[JuniorOptimizer]

I for one don't feel like crying, I feel like fighting. Google can shove their traffic you know where.

[Dayo_UK]

>>>I for one don't feel like crying, I feel like fighting.

Unfortunately it is like fighting a dummy.

Google - Worse than Gigablast! - By a long long way. Just did some more test searches at Gigablast and they are so much better than u - embarrassed?

My Current thoughts on the order of best search engines:-

Yahoo.
Gigablast.
MSN.
Ask Jeeves.
Search Hippo.
Wisenut.
Google.

I wish I was joking.

[reseller]

Dayo_UK

>>I mean think about it folks - little Gigablast is better than Google. And Search Hippo. <<

But you forgot to mention google.co.uk which I love much. It has been so faithful to my site. Even when I took a hit at 22nd July and most of my Google´s referral vanished, that great British Gentleman Google UK was there sending my site its "Marshall Help" portion ;-)

Long Live Google UK!

[Dayo_UK]

Reseller

Yes, sites can do well in Google, although Google UK is just a DC with a bit of a twist.

However, Google just has huge gaping wholes in the index!

Dayo

PS - My ranking above - there is a big gap between Gigablast and MSN, and an enormous gap between Wisenut and Google at the bottom.

Perhaps Google can use Gigablast results - might be less embarrasing than asking Yahoo - I dont know. But why they continue with a broken index is beyond me.

[bobster2]

"Google R.I.P"

You reckon?

It's not bitter little webmaster's that keeps the google machine going. It is the surfers and advertisers.

Roll with the punches.

[Dayo_UK]

>>>You reckon?

Yep, unless things change.

It might take a while for the momentum to shift.

Whatever, I dont really care - I have been living without Google since December last year.

It is incredibly frustrating however to see such basic problems with the index destroying it.

Perhaps the surfers wont care for now.

[Jonno549]

I have non-webmaster friends who aren't using Google at the moment, they've gone to Yahoo because "the results are better".
It's possible that people at G is even more frantic than we are at the moment, becuase when something like this happens they would have to be losing traffic. People can be more fickle with search engines than websites even.

[reseller]

Usually at this stage/phase of an update, GoogleGuy show up here on this forum and give a weather report. Maybe he is on his way ;-)

And I thought that the good old Matt will post this morning a weather report on his blog. No way .... he is talking instead about "Fun with zip codes" (:(

[cleanup]

About the only positive thing that I can see at the moment is the fact that GG has NOT come around here posting yet.

Normally when he does that the update is all but over,
so for me at least until the fat lady sings there is still hope!

[Dayo_UK]

OK

Last post for a while :)

Just did a search for a product I sell.

Let say Widgets GH6759X - the product page cached on 18th September.

Search results as follows.

Page on another site which links to product (frustrating but been happening for a while)

Page from my site that links to product (Supplemental - Cache Nov 2004)

Another page from my site that links to product (Supplemental - cache Nov 2004)

(More results from www.example.com)

Etc

Click on the more results and the product page appears below the two pages above.

Sooo supplemental pages from my own site dated November 2004 which are now 404s are out ranking the correct page cached just over a week ago.

Hmmmmm

Reseller - had a quick look at your site - looks fixed from where I am sitting - maybe/hopefully for you traffic will return to Pre Algera levels with time? - Lets hope :) What is traffic like now it is a monday things may look more intresting - looked on Alexa but that is not very accurate!

PS. Also looked at your site in Gigablast - look how much better it is!

Note to self - time to chill.

[reseller]

cleanup

>>Normally when he does that the update is all but over,
so for me at least until the fat lady sings there is still hope! <<

Psssssst!

Thats a copyright infringement ;-)

Most correctly:

"Normally when he does that the update is all but over, so for me at least until the fat lady (copyright Caveman 2005, All rights reserved) sings there is still hope!" ;-)

[djmick200]

This thread is now at 317 postings and still zilch from those in the know.

Read msg #:74 again. 3 days have passed since I said that.

Even a juggle over at Yahoo hit the home page of WW but funnily this didn't...............

How about your opion Brett? I would go a long way here.

PS Yes I think Brett is in the 'inner circle' lol ;-)

[edited by: djmick200 at 1:02 pm (utc) on Sep. 26, 2005]

[thecityofgold2005]

I have seen nothing to indicate an update yet.

There has been minor shuffling for the past few weeks but that is all.

[stargeek]

66.102.9.104

does look like a genuine update, lots of changes.
perhaps an increase in weighting of external links.

[taps]

To me 66.102.9.99 looks the same. However my site doesn't seem to recover yet.

[soapystar]

what evidence is there for brett being in the know? I mean he let that last thread run for 19 days and then locked it momements before the full weight of the filter hit saying something about wait for something more definite to happen!

hum..interesting.....

[edited by: soapystar at 1:13 pm (utc) on Sep. 26, 2005]

[stargeek]

you can see the 66.102.9.104 changes by adding some
-kjhsdk -ewriu -weriuwer -oiuere type arguments to a search on google.com.

[wiseapple]

Posted the following over at Matt Cutt's blog:

---------------------------------------------
“We use titles and descriptions in our sub sections to introduce contents of our articles which is the same as the title and description on the top of our articles and related articles as well as the meta title and descritpion.”

I am monitoring many sites which use the same setup as above and seem to have a penalty or filter. Is this practice considered bad? Could this trigger a duplicate content penalty or filter? Would appreciate your comments.
---------------------------------------------

Here are the things I have noticed with our site:

- "Site:" command produces wild numbers. Sometimes 10X the number of actual pages.

- Many pages were in the supplemental index.

- Pages in the supplemental had cache dates back to Nov. and Dec. 2004.

*** The "&filter=0" is really doing something. If I append to a given search, my pages/site ends up back where it was before something happened on Feb. 2nd. I am not talking minor jumps. For one search term, I go from somewhere in the hundreds back to number six. On another, I go from eleven to number one. This was the case before a "filter" was applied. I am surprised there is not further discussion of this "filter" command.

[djmick200]

Just checking 66.102.9.104 now.

Im seeing a few changes there to.

If i search "djmicks widgets" nowhere worth talking. do it again and add &filter=0 my position is #4 on this DC. Doing the filter on other DCs it is still showing its pre 22nd place of #1.

soapystar
Im not suggesting anything hence my "lol ;-)"

[edited by: djmick200 at 1:20 pm (utc) on Sep. 26, 2005]

[ltedesco]

It looks the same to me too

[stargeek]

try a search for
weapons of mass destruction on
66.102.9.99
or 66.102.9.104
or
out of touch executives

[cleanup]

Reseller,

He,He, Well at least that shows us how easy it is to pick up a dupe penalty without knowing it..;)

I'll change Fat Lady for Large Woman!

Soapystar, - locked thread and filter
Yes I noticed the exact same thing..mabe just coincidence?

[djmick200]

try a search for
weapons of mass destruction on
66.102.9.99
or 66.102.9.104

same results on both the above for me but not the same here 216.239.59.98

[stargeek]

216.239.59.98
looks exactly like google.com to me for weapons of mass destruction and miserable failure.

also I'm seeing the extra Google Sitemaps related links dissapearing on the updated DC's.

[diddlydazz]

some of the comments (and SERPS) remind of the mess that was made in Feb 05

some of the whitehat sites that got hit with that update never recovered (nor did the SERPS) until june, some even later.

just looks like it has affected different WebmasterWorld members this time

probably including some of those who were saying that "all is well" at google in mid Feb.

if your site is not top in google for your own unique domain name, for example: myuniquedomainname then maybe google are messing about with the same stuff as last time.

(IBM wasn't top for IBM at one point)

anyone being hit that was hit in Feb 05?

dazz

[Dayo_UK]

>>>some of the whitehat sites that got hit with that update never recovered (nor did the SERPS) until june, some even later.

Or not at all.