No unique text from my site in search results

[Jbob]

I have a problem. Pages from my e-commerce site are indexed by Google, but when i search for ANY unique text from my site it is not returned in the first 1000 Google results. This started about a year ago and i put it down to duplicate content issues. I had a nightmare with my CMS including session IDs, canonical issues etc. Which it took a while to fix. However, my site doesnt seem to be recovering.

I still rank top for a few keywords, but like i said, NO unique text from my site returns in the results.

Does this sound like some sort or penalty? I do not sell links or get involved with dodgy link farms. I don't really know where to go from here - I cant wait forever for my site to recover.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated...

[stevelibby]

i had the same problem, but not now, i would say that g doesnt feel that your site is in its priority group!

[tedster]

g doesnt feel that your site is in its priority group

The inability to show up for a unique text string is an odd thing that can happen - it definitely happens for urls that are in the "supplemental index" or whatever it has recently morphed into.

I still rank top for a few keywords

That's a positive sign that you don't have a penalty.

1. Have you tried searching for unique text strings that include one of your keywords that is currently ranking well?

2. How do the site: operator results look for you? Specifically, is your home page at #1? Is the total number of urls returned in the same general area as what you intend to have? How far does the site: number drop if you do the search on AOL?

[Jbob]

Hi Tedster
1. Have you tried searching for unique text strings that include one of your keywords that is currently ranking well?

Yes and i am not in the results
even if i search on my website name + keyword i am nowhere!

2. site: operator puts my homepage at number 1. The number of urls returned is 1,010 , although only 230 are actually displayed. I have about 500 pages submitted to google.
AOL returns about 90 pages when using the site:operator.
What is the significance of this?
Thanks

[tedster]

My first guess is that you still have unresolved duplicate url issues - or maybe you've fixed them but Google is still sorting it all out.

The low number of pages on AOL tells me that indeed, only a small number of your urls are in the main index. If you search on a text string from a url that's in the AOL site: results, can you see that page in the results?

And if you can't, what kind of results do you get? Is your content duplicated by another domain?

[Jbob]

No, when i search a text string from one of the AOL-indexed urls i still get nothing. The results returned are not exact matches of the text i.e no one has duplicated my content on another domain. However, the majority of the (dodgy looking) sites seem to just be lists of alphabeticized and non-alphabeticized random words!

I have just recently fixed a problem whereby my site was Google indexed for both ww. and www. versions. Do you think this would be enough to cause this level of problem?

[tedster]

Possibly - it depends partly how much your potential PageRank for what you are thinking of as "a page" has been fragmented by both that problem and related types of canonical problems [webmasterworld.com].

Beyond that there is a complexity in Google's processing that allows a website issue to cascade through the SERPs in ways that we cannot always predict looking in from the outside - only an engineer on the inside could see that logical chain. I would suggest you stress test your site for all manner of multiple url problems listed in the linked thread and fix everything that you possibly can.

I would also not agonize over the 'unique text strings' problem. Stay focused on the metric of real search traffic traffic and get that into healthy shape. The unique strings issue is a symptom that something isn't quite right - but it doesn't tell you exactly what that is. Unique text string search will not put even one penny in your pocket.

[Jbob]

Many thanks for all your help Tedster, I will do as you suggested and hope for the best!