Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I can't be the only one, I know some forum sites that have had similar experiences - but what about other sites?
I have lost everything on all four sites, except my basic index page links on Google. For those sliding down that page count pole worrying what it's like at the bottom. Don't worry, I am already here, i'll break your fall!
Regards,
Martin.
"There is an interesting experiment going on over at the google-sitemaps group..."
Couldn't find this using search...is there anyway you can guide me there short of a url?
That's called duplicate content.
I will say that after Matt asked us to submit problem sites (which I did - back in early March), over a five day period I saw my pages jump from around 200 to around 890 (the site has 1,100 pages).
Since that day my page count has been slowly decreasing and it's now around 800 - not nearly as bad as others are reporting. Mozilla Googlbot comes around frequently and I see it pick up new pages, however, nothing seems to be adding to the index, only slowly disappearing.
I don't think they've completely worked out the problem that GoogleGuy / Matt went after. Hopefully, they'll figure this out in the near term. Something is clearly not right.
Ironically, my traffic from Google continue to increase at a rate of around 15% per month. Go figure.
....Something is clearly not right. <<<<
BillyS,
you have a real knack for understatement.
LMAO.
That would be an awesome idea! Instead of banning entire sites, simply ban the offending pages and leave the rest.
I really like this idea.
Each page has unique title and content. Content unique to the site. Every page validates perfectly at w3c.org yet over the past few days, I've seen my indexed pages slowly drop until I now only have my homepage left!
My pagerank also dropped at the end of March from 3 to 2 for no apparent reason. As far as I could see, I had made positive improvements to the site and introduced no negative ones.
Could it be that Google is penalizing me for using dynamic URLs like http://example.net/index.php?content=web_hosting_comparison
When my pagerank dropped after I converted the site to PHP, I thought I had overcome this by using the Google Sitemaps. It worked initially, in that Google then found all my pages and listed them, but since then they have slowly disappeared until just one left :-(
The site is still crawled but since I lost the last 9 yesterday, Googlebot doesn't seem to be visiting so much.
I even have adword & adsense accounts but they don't seem to effect the indexing!
I don't know how to contact google but I have to say, I'm losing faith in them now. I'm off to concentrate on optimizing for the other search engines.
Peter :-(
<No personal urls
See Forum Charter [webmasterworld.com]>
[edited by: tedster at 6:43 am (utc) on April 20, 2006]
Site 2 google is reporting over 10k but actually there is under 5k in total pages (older site and is ranking very well in searches)
Site 3 is new - ish. Google had it at about 60 steady pages then 900, then 11,000 only to drop us back to 44 mostly supplimental pages now... All in about the last 3 weeks. This happened after we moved a bunch of internal links to our index page to get some type action going.. This is a large site with several hundred thousand pages...
So it's all over the place.
arran.
I do agree that search results on google are not as accurate as they used to be... pages with hardly any content are listed on top!
I think google is trying to device a way to fight spammers much effectively and sooner or later I feel they will go back to their results before BigDaddy but this time they will have a better spam detection rate....
I am keeping my fingures crossed!
------
seosutra
Has anyone successfully used google sitemaps to reverse/reduce this problem?
arran.
Nope.
Nope.
It's really about time G put there hands up and said something is not working and a fix is being worked on!
After all how can a page that has ranked in the top for months with a PR4 now not been shown anywhere or even be cached!
Has anyone successfully used google sitemaps to reverse/reduce this problem?
I'm using sitemaps and it's not helping at all.
I expect this situation to correct itself, but like other webmasters, I will lose a lot of business until that time comes. Google's constant volatility with unforgiving SNAFU's are becoming synonymous with the Google name itself. If one is not well positioned in MSN or Yahoo, then they are too much at the mercy of a tempermental of an over-rated search engine.
Sitemaps haven't helped, possibly the opposite. We just dropped them.
I have not rated well on Yahoo, my sites are only 4 months old but got off to a good start with Google and MSNBot due to the large amount of reference information on the pages.
Since Easter I have disappeared almost completely now. I am a Google AdWords customer, the bots keep coming around but my pages are fizzling out.
Incidentally, I just checked my server logs at 7:00 am this morning. Does anyone know who Agent: Solnet-SwishSpider is? They have overtaken Googlebot in the amount of pages they have spidered. They went through about 500 this morning, Google only goes through about 30 or 40 per visit.
I bet the sales of Asprin have gone through the roof because of all this... sheesh.
Martin.
Now the only page listed is the one with no dynamic link - the homepage.
I'm about to convert my URLs to static (or what will appear to be static) URLs. Lets see if I get my pages back on to Google.
If you want to watch what happens, the site is <snip> (but I've not made the change yet. Going away tomorrow for the weekend, so I'll try to do it before I go).
I use sitemaps, so I will update the sitemap too and submit it to Google.
Peter
[edited by: trillianjedi at 2:08 pm (utc) on April 20, 2006]
[edit reason] Please see TOS, thanks. [/edit]
You cant post personal urls at WebmasterWorld - so if you would like to edit your post while you still can it would be cool (a mod will edit it sooner or later)
Oh BTW - check out posts on Canonical url issues etc. I would have thought that may be more likely than changing to php. (also check out some DCs and see if they have indexed the www and the non-www homepage (hint hint))
So how can this be? On the one hand google says the page doesn't exist and on the other it says, here it is!
The absolute worst thing about this is I am climbing somewhat in the serps. site is coming out of sandbox and when people search, the return is for my index page. That means they are 2 clicks from the serp for the product. Instead of the product page returning for the search. Sheesh!
in theory the same as a page showing PR but no cached info - if I wasn't loosing money over this it would be almost funny
I am being hit in sports, general directory, shopping and travel.
I can only guess that google is going to come back and add these web-pages.
I hope anyway. :)
I am being hit in photos, sightseeing, lodging, UK editorial.
I have lost everything except my indexes on Google, and dropped from 172 Scotland pages to 9 on MSN.
I'm about to head for the Scotch cabinet.
Martin.
[edited by: tedster at 12:47 am (utc) on April 21, 2006]
