Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
It was just very strange. I have a VERY small niche. A fan site, you might say. Usually a search for Joeseph Smith (this is NOT the name involved) shows my index page either between #31 and #46 or between #96 and #115, depending on which DC I hit (and yes, I have been following the datacenter thread started by g1msd).
Wednesday morning, I had a huge surge in traffic because Joseph Smith was in the news. About 6 PM (I am on the West Coast) it was like someone turned the tap off.
I went to a random Google datacenter and did a search for Joseph Smith. My index page didn't show up in the first 200 (I didn't dig any farther), but an interior page came in around #134.
I then did a G search for http://www.example.com using my domain
The site is just 2 months old and G is not yet showing backlinks of course, but G had been showing all 85 pages under the "from the site" query result and 104 pages under "contains the term" (Yahoo shows 5,400 links to my site, none of which were bought).
Suddenly, G was showing about 40 pages under the "from the site" query result and 60 pages under "contains the term".
Today the traffic seems to be returning, and a couple of quick checks show that G has "found" many of my pages, including the index page.
It's not back to normal, but things are improving. I have to say that right now that G seems VERY unstable. Any thoughts? Suggestions?
Thanks in advance.
[edited by: tedster at 4:47 pm (utc) on June 23, 2006]
[edit reason] use example.com [/edit]
Wednesday morning, I had a huge surge in traffic because Joseph Smith was in the news. About 6 PM (I am on the West Coast) it was like someone turned the tap off.
So you were ranking highly for keywords and all of a sudden your site was gone? Barring a problem with the site command, it sounds like a hijacker--I've seen this happen several times because they target high ranking keywords. Check every listing in the inurl; intitle: and link: Google commands and look for a listing with a 302 redirect to your site (run the link through a server header checker). You might have to use Yahoo being as your home page isn't showing up in Google. Also try CopyScape.
It wasn't that my site was gone, just the index page and a bunch of sub-pages. All have returned. Traffic yesterday was back to normal. I'm thinking it was related to G spinning knobs. If it was a hijacker, would it all have returned so quickly?
No, it would have taken action on your part. Probably Google twirling dials.
In another case it was an operator problem. The home page listing dissapeard and magically reapeared a couple of days later. I have the same thing happen to other pages on my site.
1) On and off, I am seeing that G is grabbing text from deep inside the index page of sites, to use as the description in the SERPs. I cannot identify a pattern of the criteria G is using to select which text to use.
2) As we discussed here (and I've seen it mentioned elsewhere), G sometimes "loses" a site's index page. Then it reappears with no action taken on the webmaster's part.
3) G sometimes "loses" large portions of the pages in a site. They may or may not return.
4) In another thread here at WW, there is a very dead horse that is still being beaten (although with diminishing enthusiasm) that represents the propogation of what may or may not be an update.
5) In a number of categories (non-competitive commercially) Wikipedia is showing up in the top five results with alarming regularity, well ahead of other, smaller sites with much deeper, verified content.
I think Lorel had it right when refering to someone "twirling dials". I am now convinced that G has tweaked their algo and filters to the point where they are unable to regain control of the SERPs and are just doing damage-control.
On a search for "city-name hotel", only 4 of the first 10 results actually pointed to the website of a particular hotel in that city. The sponsored links were MUCH more relevant.
On a search for "city-name gardener", only 1 of the top 10 results actually pointed to a gardener.
A search for "buy offshore racer" produced only 1 link out of 10 pointed to a site where one could actually "buy" an "offshore racer".
Broken. Broken. Broken.
What URL do you have in any links back the the root index page?
Is it "/" or is it /index.html instead?
What URL do you have in any links back the the root index page?
Is it "/" or is it /index.html instead?
g1smd,
Which way do you think it should be "/" or /index.html?
Obviously stuff is in serious flex at the plex right now... corrupted titles, lost home pages, site: indexes on a roller coaster.
I wonder how much of this due to the 5B page spammer, and how much is normal lurching in preparation for an update.
Google lists / as your root index page and filters out /index.html as a duplicate.
Except that / is too weak to be listed at all.
There is your problem.
You know what to do.
The site is just 2 months old. PR0. Yahoo says 5,800 backlinks. On G, pretty much always in top 100 for two word search term, sometimes #31.
(shuffles off looking for rope, muttering "broken. broken. broken.)
Thank you. thank you. thank you!
