Page 1 result completely de-indexed

[dmaniatis]

We have about 100 content pages that are about 1 year old and have started climbing gradually in the rankings for the past 2 months. Last week a few of them had reached page 1 for the targeted keywords.

Since the 18th of Jan two of these pages are nowhere to be found while others continue to rank on page 1. Even when searching for "domainname keyword" other pages of our website appear instead of the most relative page.

The only way of seeing these pages in Google is to use site:[exact url].

We have done no recent on-page changes so I can not understand why we would be penalized. If anything I would expect a drop in the rankings even a very big drop but not a complete removal.

Any thoughts?

[tedster]

The only way of seeing these pages in Google is to use site:[exact url]

Well, they're not completely de-indexed if you can see them on some search, they are there.

How about "site:example.com" or "site:example.com keyword"?

[dmaniatis]

Yes, I can see them when searching for "site:example.com" and "site:example.com keyword"

But not when searching for:
"example.com keyword"

nor even:
"example.com [snippet of text unique to page]"

If it is there when searching with the site: operator but not appearing no matter how specific the search, does it mean that some filter is prohibiting it from appearing? It does not look like a 950 penalty to me since it is not even as low as that nor can I detect any proxy hi-jack.

Is anyone experiencing anything similar?

[Robert Charlton]

But not when searching for:
"example.com keyword"

For this search to work, both "example.com" and "keyword" would have to appear on the page.

It's not always common for the domain name to appear in the text on a page. On most of my client sites, in fact, that's fairly rare.

[dmaniatis]

thanx, they do appear on the page though.

[tedster]

If you look at the currently active threads here at the moment, you will see 4 or 5 reports of something like this. It sounds to me like there's a data bug at Google - it does happen, unfortunately. And if it is a bug, then there's precious little the individual can do but watch and wait.

On the off-chance that this is an intended result (and that doesn't seem likely to me) we'll probably need to wait until more reports come in - then we stand a chance of uncovering the issues that are creating this problem for some sites.

But as I said, right now it sounds like a bug. In the past, sites with similar reports found that things went back to normal in a short time.

Also, check to make sure you aren't scrpaed, hacked etc. There are many good reference threads in the Hot Topics area [webmasterworld.com], which is always pinned to the top of this forum's index page.

[dmaniatis]

Ok, I hope that this will be the case for us too.

I have checked quite a lot for scraping, hacking, proxy hijack and will continue to do so. In your opinion/experience would that result in a complete removal of the page or just a big drop?