Individual Pages being DeIndexed

[Lenny2]

I'm at 50% loss in Google traffic today. It seems to me like certain pages were dropped completely out of the SERPs. The only recent changes I've made are:

1. 301 redirected some URL's to shorter URL structure

However, at least one of the pages missing from the SERPS was not 301 redirected at all. It's a 7 year old page; unique content... etc.

I can understand not ranking AS WELL... but, what I don't understand is the complete wipe-out of a page from the SERPs. (ie. if I do a site: search in google for the URL it doesn't show me the result) To add to the confusion other pages are ranking well/the same as they always have.

Has anybody else seen any individual pages be taken out of the SERP's recently? Anybody else experience anything like what I have described above?

I'm wondering if this is a temporary sandbox type penalty... or if something technically is wrong... or if this is another Panda -like change.

[johnhh]

Wondered if this would come up...Noticed two or three pages so far that disappeared for no reason used Fetch as Googlebot in WMT and they are back in .. few more (OK alot more ) to check

[tedster]

If it's only been a day or so, it may very well be a glitch on Google's end rather than anything about your site - huge pile of data sometimes attract bugs, incomplete polling from one data center to another and things like that.

I've seen this happen occasionally and reverse itself with no action from the site owner. But I do like the Fetch as googlebot idea that johnhh suggested. Makes sense and certainly can't hurt.

[Lenny2]

@John, are you saying that you have run into a similar situation? Did you find anything technically wrong with your site?

Another thing we did recently to try and pair down on the indexed pages is: CANONICAL the second and third (refine your search options) in our category pages back to the main category pages...

Anybody think that this is causing the deindexing of those pages?

[johnhh]

@Lenny2
Thats fine ( I think ) Canonical back to the first page. Eliminates duplicate content. Technical errors, I have spent hours on that - especially why the cache page shows a larger font , preview is OK.
Panda , IMHO, is partly about reducing pages with duplicate comtent, either on your site or others.

How far you have to go on reducing indexed pages ... I have no idea.

I have left one missing page, I have not "fetched as googlebot", just to see what happens.

I don't think noindexing pages, or adding canonical, will result in any missing pages that you have not noindexed in any way.

To be honest no-one really knows - all we work on is our personal experience, and what works, or may work, given it takes a long time to filter through, for one site may not work for another.

_{I wish I could spell canonical without copy and paste}