Dead page ranks #1 in Google

Never did so good when it was alive.

[larryhatch]

My site ranks #2 for an important 2-keyword phrase in G, and this really pleases me.
Naturally I checked out the site in the #1 slot.

Its a DEAD PAGE! It looks like the owner let his registry lapse, so the
registrar presents one of those "under construction" tombstone pages instead.

The dead page/site was never all that good or bad, and never ranked #1 while alive.
It drops dead and (voila!) its on top, #1.

Its good that Google allows site owners time to recover their domains
before deep-sixing sites in the serps, but this has been going on for 2-3 weeks now.

The last thing I want to do is endanger my #2 position.

Is there some safe polite way to suggest that the top slots should be reserved for live pages?

How about an email saying something like:
"Dear Google: Please search for kw1 + kw2. The #1 top result is a dead page .. why is that? "

Maybe I should just pull weeds and leave well enough alone. What do you think? -Larry

[abates]

Does the snippet in the SERPs show the fact that it's dead? i.e. if people see it, are they likely to click on it at all? If the answer is no, then I don't think you need to worry...

[Staffa]

My site ranks #2 for an important 2-keyword phrase in G, and this really pleases me.
Naturally I checked out the site in the #1 slot.

The same happened to me earlier this week but irony of ironies the site in spot 1 is my own old url where the starting pages of my new site were located before my new site existed. The old pages have now been dead for almost a year.

[Vadim]

site in spot 1 is my own old url where the starting pages of my new site were located before my new site existed

They probably are now experimenting with boosting the original content, trying to filter out the derivatives.

Since it is new we observer some glitches. However in your case they have the excuse because "cool URI never change"
[w3.org...]
Vadim.

[larryhatch]

abates: Its painfully clear that the page is dead.
The title and snippet are all classic tombstone "under construction" stuff from the Registrar.

Using IE at work (some network) I see entirely different serps, dead page not showing.
At home using Firefox, the anomaly appears. I've cleared cache etc etc
and its the same thing for weeks now. I suppose that's a separate little mystery. -Larry

[followgreg]

I saw more of these since the so-called rollback (which isn't really one IMO) for some reason but I can't really explain it.
It might have something to do with the old cache dance recently appearing.

[larryhatch]

An update here: The original webmaster apparently renewed with his registrar.
I'm glad to see that really, though I envy the #1 slot.

NOW, Google shows the Net*** Sol****** tombstone page (under construction) as its cached page,
and returns the original site content when you click on the main link
.. and .. the Title in this first place slot in the serps still says Net*** Sol****** yadda yadda! Amazing.

Now I can see what the original content was. Its not the main page of the original site by a long shot.
Its some bizarre internal page that could never reach
position #1 on its own, no way.

Now I'm curious how such a snafu can happen.
If I had the magic key to that, I could start my own business. -Larry

[followgreg]

Hey Larry, that's what I m asking myself too, this strange rollback type of SERP seem to produce a lot of things but better relevancy probably not. (for now at least)

[soapystar]

yeah seeing so much of this......you had a page that google really liked and was relevant....google plays with its filters....now it looks at the original page..decides it doesnt like the page in terms of its structure so goes to the next scoring page on that site..the next page can be total rubbish and google will still show it maiing the serps look daft...also it ay simply dsiplay a page that the original site linked too..it may just be a frame or redirect but google will dsiplay this over the filtered page.....now how much of the filtering is due to data shifting and incorrect scoring i cant decide....but the result is the same..crazy pages ranking when they shouldnt simply because they have some connection with the original ranked page or site...

and just like sep 22 the more content you have ona page the more you open yourself up to a filter (or data shift)...

[frakilk]

It almost seems like indexes that contain scoring data e.g. text in title, H1 text have been corrupted or are not syncing properly. I say this because the most relevant pages of site are not being returned in a lot of cases.

For instance I have many products displayed on one of my sites. Each product has its own product page with product name in title text and H1. When I search for the product in Google and when my site (eventually) shows in SERPs I may receive a category listing page which just contains the product name in normal text (within an anchor). This is a sure sign that indexes are buggy and imcomplete. There is absolutely no reason to return a category listing page where the visitor has to scroll down to try and locate the product upon landing on the page, compared to a product page which has the exact information the visitor is looking for.

Anyone else seeing this a lot?

[SincerelySandy]

If you want a page to rank well in google, don't put any content on it, just get other sites to link to it with the words you want to rank for. Of course it's a catch 22. Hard to get people to link to a blank page, hard to make money from a blank page.
Sometimes it seems easier to rank for certain keywords in google (works well in msn too) by getting links to your page with the words you want, and then making sure those words are not on your page.
I am deliberately using this method to promote one of my latest sites. I'm trying to get it to rank well for a very popular companies name that many other people target the hell out of. I don't have that companies name anywhere on my site, even though the site is about the company, but I have links to my site using that companies name (bloggers are great for this) and it's working great. I think I have a very good shot at getting the #1 spot for this companies name because they have their name plastered all over their site and I'm betting those filters will prefer my site.
By the way, I'm not recommending people remove the keywords they want to rank for, just giving food for thought.

[ulysee]

Well at least almost everybody is seeing what I've been seeing for at least 3 months in my sector - "garbage".

[frakilk]

Yep.

And guess what, if we are seeing it it also means that Joe Public is seeing it as well. Hot coals under Google's feet.

[walkman]

same here. A domain, deactivated years ago is #1 for "mydomain.com", which is in no man's land. The disabled domain is mydomain.com_somethingelse.com. It's funny how google works these days.

another domain keeps going drastically back and forth in the ranking---without ANY changes in links or content.

[colin_h]

The same thing happened to me last year, around september. It only took until December 27th to sort out.

Oh God, Not Again!

[Vadim]

There is absolutely no reason to return a category listing page where the visitor has to scroll down to try and locate the product upon landing on the page

The reason is probably that Google believe that searches come to the directories about widgets because widget directories provide better search for the widgets than a general search engine. Therefore it makes sense to show first the listing page. May be it is the carefully selected list with the cream of the cream.

As for the pages for the specific types of the widgets, Google probably believe that the searcher prefer to find the page of the original producer, i.e. first hand information.

Even if the producer and the owner of the directory is the same company, for the searcher is probably better first to look at the entry producer page because the producer may have new type of the widgets that the searcher knows nothing about.

Vadim.

[Blueshadow]

Do you think Matt Cutt/google know about this issue. BD only show my current up to date index.php page but the rest of the pages is from 7-8 months ago that doesn't even exist anymore.

[MasterG00gler]

You should try searching something on chinese or portuguese. The highest ranked are many times broken links, directories with huge keyword stuffing and featuring AdWords and Smileys and all that sort of crap pub.

Wasn't always like this...

I did spam reports for a while, but I never saw any improvements for over a year so I quited.

[nedguy]

And guess what, if we are seeing it it also means that Joe Public is seeing it as well. Hot coals under Google's feet.

Not really. SEs can get away with 10% relevancy because the public's standards are so very low. The majority go away satisfied if they find one result on the first page that answers their query.

It'll take them a while to notice that these days on Google the other 9 are junk... while on Yahoo only 6 are junk.