Domain expired for 3 days, completely gone from google search results

[sittmo]

I have a website created using googlesites. Originally I had a custom domain through google domain, but then this was recently acquired by Squarespace domains. I originally had my domain set to auto-renewal but for some reason when it was transferred over to Squarespace, it did not auto renew and it was expired for 3 days before I renewed it. However, now my website is completely gone from google search results, it used to rank first for my keyword.

The funny thing is that in google search console, it says my domain is still indexed and when I search for it using "site:" it still shows up, meaning it is indeed indexed. However, when I search for my keywords, even copy and pasting the exact paragraph word for word on the home page of my website, it is no where to be found in the search results. This is not a matter of ranking low on the search results, but rather not showing up at ALL, I've literally went through the entire 15 pages of search results and it is not there.

There are also no manual reviews/actions on google search console. I've been submitting my website in google search console for indexing daily (even though it is already shown as indexed).

It's been about two weeks now since I renewed my domain and I still can't find any results on it in google search. Is this just a matter of waiting and eventually it'll come back? Thanks.

[phranque]

have you checked your web server access log files for clues that googlebot has visited your site since it was restored?

[sittmo]

Yes, when I check google search console, it says:

Crawl
Last crawl
Jul 9, 2024, 9:19:48 AM
Crawled as
Googlebot smartphone
Crawl allowed?
Yes
Page fetch
Successful
Indexing allowed?
Yes

So clearly the site is being crawled, is indexed, but just not being found at all in search results. Really strange...

When I search for the site on Bing or Yahoo, it comes up fine as the top ranked search result.

[engine]

@sittmo

As was mentioned, check your web server logs, not GSC

It may be that G is still crawling where it expects your site to be, and not where it is now.

[sittmo]

How do I check web server logs? I am using google sites.

[not2easy]

Hi sittmo and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

I haven't used Google sites, but in general, if you are paying for hosting, you are given a setup that allows you to SFTP to the domain to upload and download files. Your logs are hosted on your account and you can download your logs as a record of all visits.

[sittmo]

Thank you. I'm only paying to have a custom domain, but my website is hosted using google sites, which is free. I don't think there is a way to check server logs for google sites. As far as I know, google sites is very limited.

[not2easy]

You may be right. "Free" has a price, too. If your site includes a Control Panel (CP) account, you may be able to use that to examine traffic/visits. It depends on what tools they include there.

[aristotle]

Maybe your registered domain needs to be linked to your google sites stand-alone website. There may be instructions for how to do this at sites.google.com.

I know that a google site can be created as a stand-alone site without even registering a domain because I did it once.

[lucy24]

When you do your Google search, at the end of all results does it say something like “soandsomany very similar results have been omitted”? I'm wondering if they treat google sites the same way they treat google books (i.e. their own content), where some pages are simply ignored.

And double check:

copy and pasting the exact paragraph word for word

When searching, do you put your exact text in "quotation marks"?

[aristotle]

In your domain registrar settings, what name servers ns1 and ns2 are you using? I think Google sites might use a different method to associate a registered domain with a google site that you create. In other words, the normal ns1 and ns2 method might not work.