My site lost all search terms ranking in 1 day!

[soundworker]

My site is 2 years old and have good ranking on 5-10 search terms (rank 1 -10). And the ranking was steady in half an year.
While 12 hours ago when I checked the ranking, I found my site disappeared from the 2 most popular search terms result. And 6 hours ago I checked it again samething happened on all search terms but 1 survive.
Then I just checked it 1 hour ago, I find my site lost all terms rank. But it's still index by google when I search by site:mysite.com. And 300+ pages indexed the same as before. My site home page PR didn't drop.

I also noticed that the search result by my site's related terms changed times. Several sites were affected, most of them dropped rank by 20+ or more. But my site is the only 1 who lost all terms rank absolutely.

I am wondering what is going to happen next.
What's wrong with my site?

[WiseWebDude]

Have you checked this thread: [webmasterworld.com...] There is a lot of help in that thread. Also, do you have dupe content issues, such as www, non-www issues? Do you have a dedicated IP? Do you have your IP redirected to your name and index.html redirected to http://www.example.com/? Do you have some hateful competitors like most of us do that are trying to exploit you? There are MANY out there that will try anything they can to find your site's vulnerabilities. Really we need more information to help is what I am saying.

[soundworker]

My site < has several important search terms >

I just checked page ranks and found a few of my subpages' PR updated to 4 during this time PR updating period.

I searched by site:example.com and link:example.com and everything was ok.

All no-www urls have been 301 redirected to with-www urls... 2 or 3 months ago ( can't remember the time exactly) I have no idea of the dedicated ip redirect thing.

And I added an auto link exchange page like 4 days ago. And it was indexed. I was afraid that may be the reason of the rank dropping. So I removed it yesterday, and requested a url removal at google webmaster tool. Also I lowed keywords weight a little yesterday. But they were there for about 2 years. And no hiden link or text. I noticed some other sites did have hiden link and text but they were ok.

Do you think it could be a temporary situation during google rolling? I heard of a few other ppl reporting the same thing.

[edited by: tedster at 1:54 am (utc) on Aug. 8, 2007]
[edit reason] no urls or search terms, please [/edit]

[trinorthlighting]

The link exchange probally killed you. Read Googles webmaster guidelines on links.

[soundworker]

update:

No robot.txt files uploaded.

.htaccess like this:
---------------------
# -FrontPage-
IndexIgnore .htaccess */.?* *~ *# */HEADER* */README* */_vti*
<Limit GET POST>
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from all
</Limit>
<Limit PUT DELETE>
order deny,allow
deny from all
</Limit>
AuthName www.example.com
AuthUserFile /home/example/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.pwd
AuthGroupFile /home/example/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.grp

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]
-----------------------------

[edited by: tedster at 2:05 am (utc) on Aug. 8, 2007]
[edit reason] use example.com, not real domain names [/edit]

[soundworker]

If it was the link exchange thing, what should I do now?

It's just on my site for 4 days long.
And other sites which are in Chinese and have the same link exchange progame are still ok..

[tedster]

If the ranking changes are that recent, still within the last 24 hours, then I'd say don't do anything more right now. Give things some time to see if the problem is on Google's end. Sometimes odd things do happen and then go away "on their own". But trying all kinds of different fixes for a problem that you haven't clearly understood can just make things worse.

Instead, study Google's Guidelines for a few days -- and then undo anything you know is in violation. But do keep a cool head so you don't aggravate the situation.

[soundworker]

ok, thanks,
I only removed the auto link exchange page and lowered keywords weight a little on home page.

And added a sitemap to google webmaster account.
Nothing else did I do.
I will wait for a few more days.

[c41lum]

Just woke up this morning and BAM 90% of all my Google search terms have gone.

We recovered 2 weeks ago from a problem we have had all year. All positions went back to pre dec 2006 positions. But then today 8th August BANG no mans land again.

If anyone knows whats going on with "G" it would be a great help..

[soundworker]

All my rankings recovered ,
And all other sites dropped ranking yesterday got back too.

Have no idea what is going on?
And what's next?

[c41lum]

We lost all positions at 7am GMT this morning.

[tbk106]

Same thing happened to one of my sites. Disappeared from all serps late last month and then reappeared. Disappeared again a few days later and it still hasn't come back. All pages are still indexed and pr is the same.

[bwnbwn]

This is wonderful I looked and lost more ground to interlinking websites from footer links and websites with hidden text on them that have been reported over 6 months ago by different people.

Great

What is really insane is a site that cut it's server off now going into week 5 is still holding strong in it's position.

How in the world can this happen I add content update the site add quality links and articles yet a disabled site continues to remain in the same position and I am dropping to spammers and interlinkers....

[c41lum]

tbk106, Did the sites around you drop also or did they stay the same in my occasion every other site stayed still, apart from our site which went from know where to page one then back to know where all in the space of 2 weeks.

[tbk106]

c41lum, Rankings appear to be the same on the majority of the terms. My site is still completely missing from the serps. Thank god for diversification.

[benz]

Hi,
I got the same problem here. Run a website for 3 years, PR4, over 1k uniques per day.

The accident happened for nearly 2 weeks now. In just one day, my pages disappeared from the positions where it used to be, though still indexed.
On that day, the hosting company moved my site to other server, which is located in other country.

Is this the cause? and what should I do? When my site recover to normal state?
Thank you very much

[Quadrille]

Moving server can cause a blip; it's quite possible that the spiders popped by and found nothing.

So long as the site is up and working now, if it that was the issue, it'll be brief with no long term harm.

UNLESS the move across borders has raised a TLD problem.

For example, if you had a .com site working well in the UK, then a move to the US could wipe you out in UK searches (You need either local hosting or .co.uk). Similar rules (not identical) pertain with most countries.

So if it's a simple hosting change, no problem. If you have a country TLD, it may be a biggie.

[andrewshim]

Do you have your IP redirected to your name and index.html redirected to http://www.example.com/?

Why and how should I do this please?

[benz]

Thank you Quadrille, BTW, there's one more thing, the hosting company might did some setting mistake on the new server, i did not realize that until 4PM same day, that the site is "bandwidth exceeded". To my calculation, the site could be out of touch/down for 10 hours or more. I doubt that this caused a serious effect on Google search system?

[Quadrille]

A site disabled once - maybe twice - due to "bandwidth exceeded" should recover next time around.

But if it happens frequently, you are seriously stuffed!

Either change the site, change your hosting package - or change hosts! It's not just the SEs who'll get sick of trying; visitors will not return or bookmark.

And getting links will get difficult, too.

If you are on a free host, then it's time to spend $5 per month - you'll not look back!

[benz]

Hope it'll recover when Google hits the site next time. Actually, I am spending more than 10$ per month for the hosting.
Planning to move host again if things do not improve by end of this month. This is the first time I face this sort of SE problem. I feel just,...frustrated.