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Google dropped my site from the index: jump ship or wait it out?

         

sethlazar

8:43 am on Sep 14, 2008 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



So I recently did a redesign of my site, and in redesigning thought I would do some basic, and I thought not excessive search engine optimisation. Unfortunately, something that I did properly hacked off the google bot, and my site has now completely disappeared, having performed very well in google before I redesigned it. These seem to be the possibilities:
1. Google webmaster central says that I had duplicate title and duplicate meta tag problems. It's not very clear about what this is: does it mean the meta description tag duplicating the title tag on the same page? That I definitely was doing so I've changed that. Does it mean the same meta or title tag appears on different pages? I don't think I was really doing that, and can't see why it would be a reason to pull my site. Anyway I'm pretty sure I've got rid of that.
2. Google has a problem with tabbed panels. My pages are loaded with tabbed panels; does google consider this cloaking?
3. Google has a problem with redirection pages. Several pages from the old version of the site were (and still are) well ranked in google. I changed the text on them to announce that they were going to redirect people to the relevant new page in the new site. This involved using javascript that I got off the web, inserted into the <head> part of the page, with the link within the script, then an 'onload redirect()' in the body tag. Does google have a problem with this?
4. Something else that I do not know about has caused them to kill my site.

I'm completely at a loss here, they're also not displaying my pagerank in the webmaster central. I've done a 'submit your site for reconsideration' after changing everything mentioned in the first option, but don't really know what else to do. If I've sorted it out, will I return to my old ranking? How long do they take to change their minds? If I wanted to just start again, would I just have to get a new domain name, or would I need to buy a new webhosting account as well?

I really have no clue; it all seems quite arbitrary. My pages are loaded with real, user-friendly content completely appropriate to their keywords, there's no funny tricks except for a few IE hacks to deal with browser incompatibilities, I've basically tried to do everything by the book, but I've just seen a decent search engine ranking, built up over six months, completely shot down. Help!

Thank you in advance,

Seth

martinibuster

9:00 am on Sep 14, 2008 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Did the amount of content increase?

sethlazar

9:07 am on Sep 14, 2008 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Hi. What do you mean by amount of content: on each page, or number of pages? Yes to the first, no to the second; each page now has a tabbed panel with up to 9 tabs, each showing a different one of my pictures (to avoid people having to reload the whole time). There's also an accordion panel navigation bar on the right. This means there are fewer pages in total, though as I said I did keep the old page URLs for redirection pages (I've taken them down, and will try to remove those dead pages from google).

Another weird fact: I found the bit that says about pagerank and that has actually improved since the redesign. Before I only had a single medium ranked page, now about 1/4 to 1/3 are medium ranked. And yet if you search for my site even using a full string exactly replicating the key text, it doesn't come up, so it's obviously been pulled, rather than just slipping down the rankings.

thanks for replying by the way.
Seth

sethlazar

7:01 pm on Sep 15, 2008 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



right i think i've partly got to the bottom of it: I think it's as simple as the fact that i had index.htm before, and now have index.html, and everything previously was pointing to the first one. So I changed it back, but i think too late; I've just got to wait for it to get into the index again. i think...

dauction

7:07 pm on Sep 15, 2008 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



seth is index.html still on the server ? remove it if it is

jimbeetle

7:16 pm on Sep 15, 2008 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



3. Google has a problem with redirection pages. Several pages from the old version of the site were (and still are) well ranked in google. I changed the text on them to announce that they were going to redirect people to the relevant new page in the new site. This involved using javascript that I got off the web, inserted into the <head> part of the page, with the link within the script, then an 'onload redirect()' in the body tag. Does google have a problem with this?

Yeah, this would be a problem. Best bet is to put 301 (permanent) redirects in from the old pages to the new pages. And you'll also want a permanent redirect from your now obsolete index.html to index.htm.

sethlazar

7:34 pm on Sep 15, 2008 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thanks very much for the tips; I've done a generic 404 redirection page, I'll now work out how to do the 301s. Index.html is no longer on the server.
 

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