My site was excluded from google Search Index today

[Vrindavan]

My site was excluded from google Search Index today.

and i do the checking
From Google webmaster Tool
Sitemap
Submitted URLs
5745
2400 URLs in web index <--- why it does not drop to zero if i have been banned ?

How can i verify if google had really banned my site.

Or can this be a short term thing ?

The re-inclusion request require me to describe what may cause the problem.
[google.com...]

But i have no clue at all at this stage.

Keep working on the site and hope that one day can find out the cause of the ban ?
Or abandon the site just because re-inclusion is close to impossible ?

Thanks for help.

[tedster]

Please describe why you say your site was excluded. Does the site: operator for your domain show no results at all?

[vphoner]

Same thing happened to me today as well. My traffic dropped about 97% today. I thought my whole site was excluded, but I checked some of the keywords coming through and they are showing up on page 6 instead of on page 1. I was hit by Panda about two months ago (80% drop), but it recovered in about 3 weeks (my site has strong original content), but this one is much worse as far as the lack of clicks. Anyone else see their traffic down huge today?

This new Panda 2.2, does anyone know what its looking at? Any suggestions on changes to make sure this does not happen again?

[kd454]

they are showing up on page 6 instead of on page 1.

Sounds like you got a -50 or whatever penalty, which can come back sometimes takes a couple years though or sooner if your lucky.

[Vrindavan]

>> Please describe why you say your site was excluded. Does the site: operator for your domain show no results at all?

using google site search
no result at all

site:mydomain.com any keyword

entirely nothing

[tedster]

What about the plain, simple site:mydomain.com query?

It's important to know if your pages are truly not in the public index at all, or if you have an intense penalty, or if perhaps there's now a technical error on your site - such as an accidental robots.txt block or robots meta tag block.

[tangor]

Bad boy response: Did it appear in Bing? Any loss there?

[Vrindavan]

>> What about the plain, simple site:mydomain.com query?

nothing

Only Starred results of my home page only.

My site appear on bing.
Bing Page Indexed dropped 58% from last month

[tangor]

Bing Page Indexed dropped 58% from last month

Interesting! Might want to look at the offering, All websites are an "offer" of content. Could it be content that is in question?

[tedster]

How can i verify if google had really banned my site.

A Webmaster Tools account is the closest you can get to certainty on that question.

[Vrindavan]

>> Bing Page Indexed dropped 58% from last month

not sure if their description is accurate or not.
i saw that number next to the up/down arrow.

as i rarely check bing webmaster stats recently

and my past experience is bing's number of page indexed jump up and down a great deal in the past.

For google, i am pretty sure this is a ban now.

Will linking from my other sites to this banned site also has problems in future ?

[edited by: Vrindavan at 7:02 am (utc) on Jun 23, 2011]

[Vrindavan]

>> A Webmaster Tools account is the closest you can get to certainty on that question.

I did not see any difference yet.

They will highlight my domain as "banned" ?

[tedster]

Quite often, if Google sees a problem with their guidelines you will see a message in your WMGT account about the problem. If they feel you are just plain up to no good, they might not send a message.

If you know of a violation on your site, fix it and send a Reconsideration Request. If there is a manual penalty, it might be lifted. If there is no manual penalty, they often will tell you that.

[indyank]

If you file a reconsideration request, they will let you know if it is manual or algorithmic.

How to recover?

If it is manual,you will have to find and undo the violation and again file another reconsideration request.

If it is algorithmic but not panda, you will come back automatically after you fix the problem.
If it is algorithmic and panda - the whole web doesn't have a good answer for this yet.

[Vrindavan]

>> If you file a reconsideration request, they will let you know if it is manual or algorithmic.

automatic message from Google right after request submission ?

my first guess now may be webpages moved to a new location and forget to delete the copy from the old location(accessible from 2 URLs on the Internet). Duplicate title/ duplicate description results show up. But i really not sure if this will lead to a ban too.

algorithmic <<- also lead to entire index gone completely ? or just SE ranking drop.

Thanks so much for all the help.

[tedster]

Duplicate title/ duplicate description results show up. But i really not sure if this will lead to a ban too.

Not at all likely.

algorithmic <<- also lead to entire index gone completely ? or just SE ranking drop.

Almost always an algorithmic drop. Complete bans are quite rare today - the site need to be seen as extremely abusive for a ban to happen. Something like being part of a large backlink scheme, doing deceptive cloaking, something like that.

[Vrindavan]

>> being part of a large backlink scheme

backlinks from various manual blog posts to own site
(linkback in post, not linkback in comment) ?

forum signature link <- i guess not

And i assume if google will just lower ranking for a poor content site or cover less pages in the search index rather than ban complete site from search result.

Regarding quality, it is very possible for certain parts/section of the site is very good and useful and other parts of the site not so good. Depends on where the visitor is landing to the website.

[Vrindavan]

One thing i don't understand is on the sitemap page at webmaster central

from time to time, there is error shown
----
URLs not followed
When we tested a sample of URLs from your Sitemap, we found that some URLs redirect to other locations. We recommend that your Sitemap contain URLs that point to the final destination (the redirect target) instead of redirecting to another URL.
-----

When i click/check on the URLs mentioned on the right side of the warning message. I don't fond any error of that page and there is no redirect, no special code, nothing.

Sometimes, not all the time, if i click resubmit the sitemap. The error message will disappear automatically or may be still there after they "downloaded" the new sitemap.

Will google have problem if i use the following on htaccess to redirect "old pages location" traffic

I worry google think i am setting up illegal redirect and ban me.

ErrorDocument 404 custom error page URL
ErrorDocument 500 custom error page URL
ErrorDocument 400 custom error page URL
ErrorDocument 401 custom error page URL
ErrorDocument 403 custom error page URL

[tangor]

Custom pages... I've never used them. Never had a problem. Might start with that first. The number of redirects might also have something to do with things... occasional makes sense, masses of specific page redirects is something else. Just my experience.

[Vrindavan]

>> Might start with that first. The number of redirects might also have something to do with things...

so you suggest forgone all the "page no longer existed" traffic might make sense to avoid google ban ?