How many MIA sites are there?

Are you #15 when you search for your company name?

[Whoa]

Misery loves company, so I'd love to hear that my site is not the only MIA site. How many others are there?

By MIA, I mean that your site is x.com, x is a unique name, and yet when you search for x, you find all kinds of weird sites above you (sites that link to you or mention you) and your site is way down in the results.

I believe Walkman and Chico Loco are similarly afflicted. Are there others?

If so, perhaps we can figure out what we've done wrong (or what wrong has been done to us). I can't for the life of me think of a single thing that would warrant the mistreatment.

I realize there are multiple threads on Allegra, but I'd love to start one that is exclusively dedicated to those who are still in the index but you can no longer find your site. It used to be #1 and now it's say #15.

Just to be clear, if you've been dropped completely from google, this isn't your thread. If you used to be #1 on "blue widgets" and now you're #50, this is not your thread.

This thread is exclusively for the MIA, the forgotten-souls who have been relegated to the Outer Siberia of the Google Index where even those who know and love you cannot find you.

[walkman]

"This could be a whole new thread here, maybe a whole new forum actually. I know, it probably won't be somebody like my workplace company that tags Adwords for selling clicks on registered names. Unless maybe a class is formed and we decide to get in on it. I think sooner or later someone will tag them though. "

Geico already tried it:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[AndyA]

Add another one to the list. I've been everywhere from #89 to #235 for my unique site name. And to top it off, a site that MENTIONS my site in about a -90 font text size in the SAME COLOR as the background (i.e., hidden text) ranks ABOVE my site! My site is clean and original, with no SEO tricks. No relevancy at all for the search, but a big reward for Spam 101 violations. It's pretty bad that Google can't even deal with same color text and backgrounds anymore.

Google is broken.

Andy

[wrgvt]

One of my sites came out the sandbox in the last few months, and now when searching on the site name, it no longer comes up #1 but #40 instead. It looks like a couple 302 redirects are above that listing, and I wonder how much effect they have on that.

[Iguana]

Does anyone here remember the PR0 penalty in 2002? This was an cross-linking penalty that penalised sites with loads of links to another site. I have always had a few 'satellite' sites that link to my main site (same theme for the sites) and I was hit with PR0 on 2 of those satellite sites. The main site received no penalty but obviously didn't benefit from the links.

The more I think about my 3 MIA sites, the more it seems to me that something similar has been happening. I can eliminate affiliate links and duplicate content as a reason for my sites disappearing.

My current theory is that sites with a lot of links to one site are being hit as well AND ALSO the site they link to (even though my main site has thousands of links from all over the web as well). What constitutes a lot of links I don't know (number of links as a % of total?) but I think it is based on past linking patterns - even if there are no links currently. I am certain that Google has been able to identify 'closely related sites' (whether through Whois or linking patterns over time).

Can anyone disprove this i.e. say that they have a MIA site that has never had a satellite 'feeder' site?

[MissusC]

Ok, here is what happened to my PR6 site which is 2 1/2 years old and has ranked up and down between #1 and #5 position for it's keywords for over a year:
December 17th saw a drop in google traffic to all of my sites but this one in particular. It stayed down until this new update started.
THEN it soared to the top of rankings and traffic was the heaviest ever for 2 days. THEN, it began to drop again and now is in the abyss. Hardly a referral from Google at all. A few days ago when I searched my site name, I would get several things above it, including sites that redirect to my site and even webrings. NOW, when I search for it, I can't find it. But if I do site: my name, I find it listed on page 18! I have done nothing to warrant this unless it is something I am unaware of. I have tried everything I can think of to pull my site from this slump but nothing seems to make ANY KIND OF DIFFERENCE. This site is listed in ODP and I still get traffic from Yahoo and MSN. The site has listing for both the WWW.mysite.com and the no WWW version. They have different cache dates. I have done nothing about this because I don't know what to do about it. I am not a super webmaster. I don't have hundreds of sites, only a few.
Funny thing is, my other sites have soared in traffic and they get referrals for all kinds of things that I would not expect. In fact if I search for things that I would expect to find my MIA site, I find my other sites simply because they have a link to my site? I don't have the same content on any of the sites. All are orginal content. All are basically about the same subject but different aspects of this particular subject. All are linked together. I have never seen anything like this.
I have contacted Google and been told of course that my site has not been penalized in any way. I sent message to the feedback address provided by GoogleGuy but no answer.
One thought is, I have one page on this site that is getting more traffic than the home page. Could this affect it's ranking?
Any suggestions or help is vastly appreciated.
I have to concur..... Google is broke.

[GodLikeLotus]

Add me to the list.

When the last update began we seem to have made it back into Google, rated 1 and 2 for our company name again. This lasted 2 days and then we just sank.

It certainly looks like Google is broken, if not then Google seems to have a very strange idea of what good results are. How can a good result for a companies name be pages upon pages of links from DMOZ clones.

[Chico_Loco]

I just had an idea.

I feel extremely unprofessional now that people can't even find my company through a search for "myuniquecompanyname" (and it's not a keyword).

I'm going to start an adwords campaign for myuniquecompanyname, and the ad will be (to paraphrase):

MyUniqueCompanyName
We apologize for Google's poor results.
Click here for the real MyUniqueCompanyName.

[MissusC]

MyUniqueCompanyName
We apologize for Google's poor results.
Click here for the real MyUniqueCompanyName.

I second this idea!

[theobeest]

I'm a victim of this update with one site.

[twebdonny]

am noticing a flux again for some keywords,,,anyone else?

[walkman]

"am noticing a flux again for some keywords,,,anyone else? "

what DC though?

[bsand715]

It might be beneficial to all who have an MIA site to post the general subject of their websites. (Travel,Finance,Insurance etc.)and maybe return pages to see if we can establish some sort of pattern.

After futher research on the general subject of my MIA (Finance - 19.5 mil. main keyword),all the big player-big names,seem to be untouched.

After Flordia - detuned keywords, added pages for steming kewwords and keyword pharses as well as adding related subject pages plus added state and city pages (Duplicate Penalty because of this maybe?) Also had added manufacturers customer relations pages that were ranking high. All floating in the darkness of cyber space now.

A strange Google traffic graft over the last year (until Feb.1) shows site would peak in X number of returns drop way down and start again unti X area reached and drop again.

!MSN and Yahoo traffic still building!

Sure would be nice to know problem. What bothers me is niche sites that rank so good are built in same pattern
and sh--- flows down hill, will these sites get nuked by the google ghost?

[ncgimaker]

MyUniqueCompanyName
We apologize for Google's poor results.

Did you lose conversions?

We are one of those MIA sites, but we have keywords in our domain name. In most markets we are nowhere to be found. It's not a competitive category of product, so its not likely to be targetted specifically for tweaking by Google. Also we have multiple languages and in some of those we are the only supplier, yet we can't be found on any of those names.
So to us it looks like a glitch.

It might seem to be a disaster for us online, but not so! I've been puzzling over this for days, our online sales dipped noticable together with our hits from Google, then over the next few days they returned back to normal.

I haven't switched on PPC, the extra sales seems to come from a better conversion rate from direct visitors, and other search engines.

I suspect that visitors first arrived through Google by searching and after that they always visited us by repeating the same search. Now we can't be found they arrive by different routes.

That would explain why searches don't drop off over time. If someone finds a good 'widgets' site I would expect the number of searches on widgets would go down over time, yet it doesn't seem to! So I think people take the same route to the site, via Google, until they find the route blocked, then go a different way.

[KrisVal]

Everyone seems to be checking data centers and there is nothing wrong with that. However, I have been using site:widgets.com widgets and every day, I see radically different results. I am also seeing totally irrelevant results. If I were paying for a site search service, I would cancel. It is terrible.

The longer this domain name thing continues, in my opinion, the more flack Google will receive from users.

[webdude]

May as well add me to the list. Searching for the company name is ranking me at #8. All others above me are sites with links to my site.

Interesting. I just noticed it today.

[pcarlow]

Add another. My site with DMOZ listing went from #1 to no where, in fact over 80% of pages including index are no title, no description, no cache. Still #1 in MSN and Yahoo. Love the Adwords idea, gonna go do that right now.

[Brad_Waller]

We have five main sites that I pay attention to. Four all are number one for their sitename search, and one is MIA some of the time. From work, it is gone. From home, it is #1 and #2.

The site that is gone is a bit different. We had the site at one domain for 10 years, but moved the content to the present site (with correct 301 moved permanently redirects) back in October. The site came back a few weeks ago, and now appears to be MIA with the latest update. Even so, Google still is sending us about 13% of our total SE traffic. I would not mind seeing the traffic jump up by a few thousand a day like it was before, but Yahoo seems to have taken up the slack and we are getting more traffic from them now.

[Pink Panther]

Have you read [webmasterworld.com...] ?

Seo1 is proposing aggressive link building as a possible trigger to being filtered from the results.

This is certainly true for us, having just managed to persuade a few authority sites to link to us. We were very high in the serps for 4 days prior to the MIA filter being applied.

Anyone have similar experience?

Can anyone agree with or refute this possibility?

[walkman]

"Seo1 is proposing aggressive link building as a possible trigger to being filtered from the results."

I can't mention names but way too many sites with tens of sitewides are thriving. I mean sitewides with 20K+ pages and all of them with just one or two anchors.

[eyezshine]

I can't see how link building can hurt you. I think the problem is still being caused by the page hijackers.

Do a search for inurl:domain.com on your MIA sites and see if there are 302 hijackers by looking at the cache of the links that are not your website.

If their cache is a duplicate of your page then your site is MIA because of the page hijackers. Your site has a duplicate penalty from the 302 redirect which tells googlebot that your page has temporarily been moved to the hijackers url.

Then your entire website drops in the serps.

[crashingflwrgrl]

Quote:
My site with DMOZ listing went from #1 to no where, in fact over 80% of pages including index are no title, no description, no cache. Still #1 in MSN and Yahoo.

That's exactly what happened to my site (automotive related). It could be aggressive link building but all I did was add a link or two per day from other related sites. Nothing shady or black hat about that!?

[bsand715]

I can't see how link building can hurt you. I think the problem is still being caused by the page hijackers.

eyezshine I think you are right. Still looking deeper into the results.

Definitely something going on.
allinurl: pulls a long list of what appear to be spam sites that use my sites URL without the dots (www keyword keyword com)not sure if its hijacked yet, google cache does't show my exact page but the page that has the no dot domain name are returned.

Wish I could list all the spammy domains.

An interesting return in the #2 spot is a page of mine that returns a 404.

If a page or site has been hijacked. What can you do.

[glitterball]

Just a quick comment about the recent link-building question.

We have done very little link-building in recent months, although I have been quite surprised at just how many links I now have from spam or sites that don't seem to have any obvious function. I only noticed these when searching for sites that contain my domain name.

Googleguy, please let us know what is going on here!

[MissusC]

If their cache is a duplicate of your page then your site is MIA because of the page hijackers. Your site has a duplicate penalty from the 302 redirect which tells googlebot that your page has temporarily been moved to the hijackers url.

My MIA site has this problem. There is a site using 302 redirect. I have reported it to Google but what else can be done?

Thanks for any help on this subject.

[bsand715]

A lot more sites will be in trouble next update. ZEUS [webmasterworld.com...]

Google appears unable to fix.

[bsand715]

>>Is there a way to search or a unique identifier/pattern in ones logs that would indicate this sort of abuse?<<
>>Here's one thing you can check in Google:

inurl:tracker2.php yourdomain.com<<

When I chech the above I get this reply:

>>>>>>We're sorry...
... but we can't process your request right now. A computer virus or spyware application is sending us automated requests, and it appears that your computer or network has been infected.

We'll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your computer is free of viruses and other spurious software.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we'll see you again on Google. <<<<<<

[bsand715]

We have done very little link-building in recent months, although I have been quite surprised at just how many links I now have from spam or sites that don't seem to have any obvious function. I only noticed these when searching for sites that contain my domain name

"Ditto" Gliderball

[samwise]

Hi

I've noticed that I have a lot of PDF files on my site. They are product manuals from a number of different manufacturers. I've had them up for a number of years and am now thinking that they maybe duplicate content?!

Upon searching through google site:mydomain.com I found that the pdfs are listed and are not supplemental.

I'm thinking of removing them but just wanted to be sure or at least see what other may think of this.

[Rollo]

You can count in almost all of my sites since Sept. 23rd, 2004.

They made a return guest appearance for a few days after Allegra, but back into the sandbox they went.

Still waiting on Google to start looking for the baby they threw out with the bath water.

[Marshall Clark]

For those of you who have been victims of a 302 pagejacking - you should complete a DMCA notice and send it off to Google in order to have the hijacking pages removed from the index.

Note: BTW - there are serious penalties for filing a fraudulent DMCA notice so do your own research and make certain that infringement is in fact occurring before filing a notice.
Here's some additional info on the DMCA Safe Harbor Provisions:
[chillingeffects.org...]

Here's a template DMCA notice to get you started:

Re: Notice of Copyright Infringement
Google, Inc.
Attn: User Support, DMCA Complaints
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Company Name
Sent by: Name
Address
Phone
Email

Digital Millennium Copyright Act Infringement Notice

Notice of copyright infringement
1: The copyrighted work at issue appears at yourwebsitehere.com.

2: The material that is infringing on my copyrighted work is located at:
URL:
Cache:
Query:

URL:
Cache:
Query:

Put description of how your work is being infringed (usually a block of text copied verbatim from your site)

3. My contact information:
Company Name
Sent by: Name
Address
Phone
Email

4. Contact information for the infringing party:
Company Name
Contact Name
Address
Phone
Email
IP #

5. I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above on the allegedly infringing web pages is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

6. I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Signed: _______________________________

Date: _______________________________