My site is no longer listed in Google's search results.

[stp1st]

I have an online business that has been running around 4 years. No real problems until this recent weekend (7-6-14) when my listing on Google's search results was suddenly removed.

I reviewed Google Webmasters Tools and I got a 404 error for my sitemap.
I resubmitted a new sitemap which was crawled jut fine. (44 of 45 pages were indexed)


I figured that my listing should have made it back by now but it has not.


Here is the situation...

Since the creation of the site there have been two "homepage URLs". the first being "stores.example.com" which is the actual homepage URL.
Then there is "example.com" which redirects you to "stores.example.com"


Currently "example.com" still exists in Google's search results when I search for the website specifically, but "stores.example.com" does not come up.

Note that "stores.example.com" is the first page listing that customers would find most often.




Am I being penalized by Google's crawler for something?

What does everyone suppose the issue is here?


Thanks

[edited by: brotherhood_of_LAN at 12:53 am (utc) on Jul 9, 2014]
[edit reason] Changed example domains to example.com [/edit]

[not2easy]

Hi stp1st, welcome to the Forums. What do you see if you type the following URLs into your browser (substituting your own domain for the example.com part)?
http://stores.example.com
http://www.stores.example.com
http://example.com
http://www.example.com
-and does a trailing slash get added or what happens if you add one?

When you post your response, please re-substitute with example.com (it is the only domain name we can use here that doesn't create a link by default, so that we can discuss structures and not links).
Also, it would help to know if your redirect is implemented via your .htaccess file (are you on an Apache based server?)
These details can help you get some help pretty quickly.
.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:31 am (utc) on Jul 9, 2014]
[edit reason] disabled auto-linking in examples [/edit]

[lucy24]

does a trailing slash get added or what happens if you add one?

Isn't this detail handled by the browser? (Assuming you mean requests for the root alone, whether original or redirected.) Someone hereabouts once explained it to me, and I've confirmed it by experiment.

[JD_Toims]

Also, it would help to know if your redirect is implemented via your .htaccess file (are you on an Apache based server?)

This is a good question and an answer would definitely help.

I'm not too sure about what's being looked for with the trailing / showing or not since neither Firefox or Safari [for sure] show it or the http:// any more, even though both are technically there and if the trailing / is not present in a request it's either added by the browser or redirected to by default on any Apache installation I've worked with [when browsers showed the trailing / for root requests that is], so I'm not sure what we could learn that would help from that question?

[stp1st]

When I type in example.com into my browser without a trailing slash it takes me to the homepage without adding a slash.

When I type it with a trailing slash, it removes the slash while taking me to the homepage.

It was the same situation for both URLs even when adding www dot to the beginning.



I am using Bigcommerce and I believe that it is not an Apache based server, but my understanding of those sort of things is limited so I could very well be wrong.

Thanks for your time

[tangor]

Is a canonical tag in use as well as the redirect? Are we sure there are no conflicts in either?

[JD_Toims]

When I type in example.com into my browser without a trailing slash it takes me to the homepage...

Let's forget about the trailing / for a minute -- When you say "homepage", do you mean example.com, www.example.com or store.example.com?

BTW: Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

---

ADDED: If you go to [freetools.webmasterworld.com...] and enter http://www.yourdomain.com/ what is the server response code: 301, 302, 200, something else?

[edited by: JD_Toims at 1:57 am (utc) on Jul 9, 2014]

[stp1st]

@tangor the HTML has not been touched for years. Is it possible that a conflict could arise without any manual changes being made?

@JD the "homepage" I am referring to is stores.example.com which has always been the homepage URL

[JD_Toims]

Cool -- I added to my previous post.

My guess is since Google has decided to show the URL they decide to and disregard the fact it's redirected in some cases is why you're seeing example.com rather than store.example.com when you search -- Yes, I think it's not a great thing to show anything other than the destination URL in the results, because it can be misleading to visitors, but it's not my decision, so I'm guessing you're in a situation where Google thinks it's better to show the domain name, rather than the sub.domain people will actually land on.

[stp1st]

I got a 302 when I entered www.example.com and it addressed that it leads to stores.example.com

I also want to point out that although example.com still shows up in the search results, it is not listed on the first page as stores.example.com was.

It is so far into the pages that even looking through 20 pages did not bring me to it...


But what's odd is that one of the category pages that is the least looked through still shows up around the 8th page with the stores.example.com URL

So to clarify, there is a result on the 8th page that shows up as stores.example.com/category

[JD_Toims]

That's interesting and I'd try to get it changed to a 301 if possible -- Google's changed their handling of 302's over the years since the on "302 hijacking bug", and the last official statement I remember hearing is they adjusted the handling to be much closer to a 301, but that was years ago and things may have changed since then, so if there's a way you can, the first recommendation I'd make is to get them changed to 301's.

I'm not sure it'll make a difference, because to not reintroduce the "302 bug", they pretty much have to handle them as 301s, even if they take a bit longer to "trust" the redirect.

Beyond that:

First, I'd start scouring inbound links and disavowing anything that's not "trustworthy", because G's a bit "penalty happy" these days and the penalties aren't always presented in WMT.

Second, I'd review all content and make sure you're presenting visitors with what they're looking for -- Notice I don't use the word "quality", because imo Google can't determine on-page quality reliably yet, so giving the visitors you do get what they're looking for is the best answer, imo.

Third, I'd find traffic any way I could without Google, because what happened to you has been happening for years and diversification is really the only safeguard.

[edited by: JD_Toims at 2:43 am (utc) on Jul 9, 2014]

[stp1st]

Thanks for the tips JD.


By "inbound links that are not trustworthy", you mean links to my homepage that are posted on other sites that appear shady, unnatural or useless correct?

[JD_Toims]

Correct, but not only to the homepage, anywhere you see them pointing to pages on your site.

If you go to [freetools.webmasterworld.com...] [probably the best single set of resources I've found] you'll find the first link on the top left is to: Google Backlink Checker for Penguin and Disavow Analysis

There are a couple of videos on the page about how to use it -- The advice given is absolutely *great* imo, so I definitely recommend watching them both before you do anything with the tool.

[lucy24]

Looking back at the original post...

The whole situation seems inherently wonky. So you've got two URLs
example.com
and
stores.example.com
but a request for example.com will always redirect to stores.example.com -- in other words it is impossible to see the "real" root?

Is the whole site like that, so in effect it's all on a subdomain? If I were a search engine, that would drive me stark staring bonkers.

[JD_Toims]

Is the whole site like that, so in effect it's all on a subdomain? If I were a search engine, that would drive me stark staring bonkers.

Not to "just plain disagree" with you, because I respect your opinion, but example.com redirected to www.example.com is essentially the same thing, so why should/would it make a difference to a search engine if store(s).example.com was used rather than www.example.com?

[lolamjambuna]

If you visit official google webmaster forums, you will see that you are not alone. 100s of webmasters are complaining that their site has disappeared from search results without any reason.

[webcentric]

Just wondering if the OP has run a site: search e.g.

site:stores.example.com

vs

site:example.com

and what the results look like.

OH, and another plunge with possible associations to a sitemap update or sitemap error. Can't help but notice it was mentioned.

[Robert Charlton]

A while back, I spent some time talking people out of using BigCommerce, as it's a hosted "solution" that's pretty naive about SEO... with apparently no server access. I've tried to avoid wasting much time on the details of the platform, though, so I've got to confess I don't know it well.

I believe that stores.example.com is set up with CNAMES, that there's duplicate content all over the place, and that the common approach is to try to block the dupes with robots.txt.

Last I checked, there was no implementation of rel canonical, but that might someday change. Additionally, somewhere I saw that they'd announced they were offering 301 redirects, but that's a vague enough statement, and there are enough other limitations with the platform, that it wasn't worth checking further.

As far as I know, all the normal things an SEO would do can't be done, and you rely instead on luck as to how you're linked to. Conceivably here, a competitor saw the setup and got a link for you that linked to you the wrong way.

[netmeg]

A while back, I spent some time talking people out of using BigCommerce, as it's a hosted "solution" that's pretty naive about SEO

I've looked at it a couple times on behalf of clients and came to the same conclusions.

[Planet13]

I am guessing that bigcommerce promotes themselves as an "affordable" ecommerce solution...

[stp1st]

So at this point it seems so me that my problem is a Googlebot penalization.

My site's got a ton of unnatural links to numerous sites that seem like sites that were created for the sole purpose of simply adding links.

These sites have no content of their own. It is just a big mess of links to a million websites.



With that being said...

Does it sound like my site is receiving an algorithm penalty?

**Note that one link for stores.example.com still exists on Google's search. It is a category page for one of my least viewed categories. So we re looking at: stores.example.com/category
And example.com still exists in the search results as well. I just have to search for it specifically.

[stp1st]

@webcentric

performing a search with "site:" did make a difference when I search for stores.example.com

It brought up a few of my category pages that included stores. in the URL

So now where I stand is that my homepage for stores.example.com is gone but 3 of my stores. URLs still exist in the search results, they just dont appear high up on the ranks unless specifically searched for