"In and out of the index" - a recurring problem

[zerillos]

Please help 'cause I feel like I'm loosing my mind here. It's the same thing happening all over again.

The website is a blog.
For better explanation:
A - is the index.html page of the blog
B is the post
C is the page with the images for that post
A links to B and B links to C

- G is indexing A,B,and C on day one
- on day two, only A and C can still be found in G' index. The B can no longer be found. It comes back in G's index after a few days, when the interest on the content in B is gone....

A has just a small part of the text in B and C has no text at all, just images.

Why is G taking out of the index the B page?

This has been happening for over 4 years now.

Without me changing anything on the website, it suddenly starts. after a few changes on the site (which I'm not certain have any effect), it starts working again. After a few months the problem reappears.

It started again yesterday.

Please give me an idea why is this happening

[tedster]

This isn't the first I've heard of this kind of thing - the "minty fresh" index seems to be a different thing than the solid, established, main index. But why would your page drops out of the "minty fresh" after just one day - that's the question.

How strong is the site's backlink profile, or Toolbar PageRank?

[Gemini23]

< moved from another location >

Hi... I have had some success in recent months in getting blog posts on to the first page (or two) of Google and quite often within minutes... genuine articles for niche topics. I have noticed this week that a couple of posts have been added to within the top two pages of Google within 10 minutes or so... but the the next day they have gone completely... (not in the top 100 anyway) any suggestions?

[edited by: tedster at 3:48 pm (utc) on Aug 26, 2010]

[Gemini23]

what I don´t understand is IF Google doesn´t like the content then why list it in the first place?

[tedster]

With fresh content, I think it's more like Google gives it a test and measures their user response. Then it's sink-or-swim time, compared to the established URLs in the SERP.

[Gemini23]

an interesting concept ´sink or swim´ - is this a generally recognised theory that Google does this? and how is it measured? if being on page 2 or 3 I would have thought that it unlikely to get many human visitors...

[tedster]

I don't know how generally acknowledged this idea is - but it is a good description of what I see.

If a page starts to rank on page 1, even once in a while, I do advise watching the bounce rate and making sure the traffic is happy with what you're serving them. And pages that are given a chance on Page 1 do show up there more often in the future when the traffic is healthy.

[zerillos]

I have PR4, but I don't think there's a connection. I have two friends who experience the same thing and they have different PRs.

what I don´t understand is IF Google doesn´t like the content then why list it in the first place?

It's not a matter of like or dislike. When they get indexed they get pretty high. even after they are brought back (after they were dropped) they are on the same position (high).

At this point I believe it's something to do with the architecture of the website, or something to do with the DNS settings (refresh rate and so on...). A few times when it happened, the DNS settings were messed up. After they got fixed, the problem disappeared.

regarding the sink or swim issue... there's definitely something like this going on, but when it happens, the post just drops a few or more places, but never gets pulled out completely.

[zerillos]

Come on guys, at least does anyone experience the same thing?

[Gemini23]

Just to confirm that I had three new blog posts last week... and they ranked on page 1 and 2 for a day or two.. then dropped out of sight... (no where to be found) and then three days later.. back on to page 2... and have now been there for about a week...

[zerillos]

I checked the headers of my webpages with the many tools available and this is what i discovered:

Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Pragma: no-cache

could this be the source of the problem?

[tedster]

Not likely - it just tells the browser not to store a cached version.

The rule seems a bit extreme for a blog, because it means every page request needs a full download from the server every time it's requested - the visitor cannot take advantage of a cached version if there were no changes. But that should have nothing to do with major ranking problems.

[Gemini23]

My blog doesn't have these settings so not likely.

[rros]

I have always thought that the in-and-out syndrome -unlike in "a clockwork orange"- was the result of the many iterations algos had to go through until they are certain about where to rank a page. And that these iterations have been taking longer and longer, measured in months. Could there be vastly more calculations now, compared to back then? Or it makes no difference to their computing power? Then, there is the happy unforeseen consequences (happy by their standards)... sandboxes, lack of stickiness, seemingly penalizations for on-page/off-page changes, etc.

[vandread]

I'm seeing a similar occurrence on one of my sites, with the difference that my pages remain indexed, but appear no where in the top 300 results in Google. When I search for the link it appears in the first result, when I do a search sitename title it appears in the first spot as well.

Other pages from the site appear in the 30-50 position range when I perform a keyword search for the terms.

Anyone ever experienced something like that?

[bongkph]

Same thing happened to my site. After posting "About My Post", it will rank on top 5 for the first 2 days, after a while the article will be dropped or taken out completely, but the index itself will be displayed when searched for "About My Post".

The funny thing is, anoter auto-blogging site that ripped my "About My post" will stay on top. Does'nt Google clevere enough to distiguish the original article?