Pages not in google cache - possible remedies

[shashlik]

A few days ago our index page was dropped out of the listings and initially we thought it was simply penalized and would come back with a re-inclusion request after fixing the issue.

However, further analysis shows that this page and a number of other pages have no cache at all in Google. Google also says that it successfully accessed our index page last time on Dec 9 and it should have come to fetch it in the meantime.

Submitting the dropped pages in a Google sitemap shows that "all pages are listed" and no problems.

Any ideas what it could mean or how to find out.

[tedster]

We are hearing about this kind of thing from time to time here - and I'm not sure that there's anything more the site owner CAN do. It sounds like a back end problem at Google. Unless your traffic and rankings are being affected, just check your own server logs to be sure googlebot is getting a 200 OK status and then move on, I think.

[shashlik]

Unluckily, ranking and traffic are effected extremely badly (we already lost 90% of our traffic).

It started with the index page and is now spreading over to other parts of the website where we listed well.

We assume that loosing the cache does mean that the page(s) did not just get a penalty, but that Google is dropping us slowly out of the index.

Anybody with more experiences of this phenomenon and the timeline on which things happened would be very appreciated.

[JohnDoealias]

Same thing is happening to me.

[webmasterworld.com...]

Read tedster's message...

[tedster]

That message is probably worth repeating - problems can come about most easily from who you link OUT to. And if several people have access to your server, don't assume that you actually know all the outbound links on your site. Even Google had an employee (now ex-employee, I'm sure) sneak a link onto their pages a couple years back.

So consider these points:

1. Someone on your staff might be working deals you don't know about.
2. Your server may have been hacked, but rather than placing some malware or virus, you might be victim to some low-key parasite hosting of a hidden link - or even a visible link.

You can run a link checker such as Xenu on your site to collect all the external links that are really in the source code.

[Penrod]

Just an observation, but the same thing happened to me and now the number 1 postion (which google has no cached version) happens to be one of their (google's) big pay-per-click customers..