website washed out of google completely last night

[sunnyk]

I noticed last night around 9.00 pm when I checked Google that all of a sudden we can't find our site by looking for it by domain or any keyword (site was coming up earlier in top ten for several keywords)! Site has hundreds of pages and site had a pr 5 last month and was showing good rankings on sj this month when the dance began and now it shows pr0 greybar for main and all other internal pages. Site has been around for more than a year. Gooblebot visited the site several times yesterday and last time it visited was around 22.40.06. Log file shows altavista scooter and another crawler also came in around the same very second. Google Directory shows the listing once every fifteen tries but google search does not show any pages expect 3000 pages for term "mydomain" only and still has links from february 2003. Site is still listed in dmoz directory if you go straight and check on dmoz.dir. Can someone please help.

[Powdork]

Maybe doc Powdork can confirm that these acute symptoms are indeed Dominitis.

Actually, it sounds like someone may have performed a Googlectomy on your site.:(
Seriously sunnyk, first the dmoz thing. Dmoz experienced problems with their rdf dump from the latter half of last year until Feb/March this year. Then there was a new dump which was incorporated into the Google directory around March (someone can probably give more accurate dates). It's likely that the index Google is using is older than when that dump was incorporated into the G directory. I'm not certain whether the Google directory is also undergoing some sort of flux right now but it would seem likely.
Has the site been in Google's index for 1 year or just been around?
Typically, what you describe would be very scary (I know it is for you right now). I think it will be all right though.

[aross]

We have a new site that has now got lots of pages indexed by Google. The site has many incoming links of PR4/5/6. But the PR is Zero for every page on our site. When we go to see the links to us it comes up as none, with this:

Your search - link:2BOSbW:ourdomain.com/ - did not match any documents.

If we go: contain the term "ourdomain.com"... there are many results from our linkers.

Can anyone help?

Many thanks.

[jeremy goodrich]

The problem with the toolbar could be causing it - even Google Korea was showing a PR 0 for many people :) and I doubt Google would penalize themselves.

[rfgdxm1]

My guess is it is that "new site" part, rather than the toolbar. How new is new?

[papy_john]

hi everybody,

this message from brussels belgium
i found out that my site disppeared for google search
i change URL and made some changes to my index file
plse can somebody look at my index.html to find out if i did something wrong
tks to you all

[edited by: Woz at 8:00 am (utc) on May 25, 2003]
[edit reason] no URLs please [/edit]

[NovaW]

If you changed the URL then it's probably just that google has not included your site in the index yet.

You might want to contact the sites that link to you & ask them to change their links to point to your new URL - that way you will get back to where you were faster.

[Woz]

Hi Papy, Welcome to WebmasterWorld.

Google is doing strange things at the moment, so if you made major changes to your page then there may be a delay with your new page getting indexed. Also, if you have a new site, then it will appear in the database briefly but then disappear again until it reappears next update - just like Magic. ;)

Patience is called for at the moment, in the meantime, settle back and have a read through some of the fora here, there is a wealth of information available.

Onya
Woz

[percentages]

papy_john, Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

First suggestion is to please read this site's TOS. Your post is most likely going to get stomped on as soon as the mods wake up from some well deserved shut-eye!

Site reviews and posting your own URL are no-no's.

But, while it is here I guess I'll give you my 2 cents. It looks like your site is very new, it was probably included by Freshbot and has now been dropped. That is normal, it will probably be included again within the next 3 months, at which time it should become a permanent fixture.

Until then you may pop up and disappear from time to time. Every newish site goes through this cycle, nothing to worry about!

[percentages]

LMAO....the Woz Mod needs no sleep!

[Morrison]

I have site with PR6 on the main page for a long time.

I just notice that after the last update my main page got PR0.

My inner pages still have good PR (5).

But what I realy don't understand is if my main page have PR0, how come it apear first on all my major keywords?

can anyone tell me what it is about, and what can i do about it?

thanks.

[percentages]

hmmmm...Brett you have a bug or an interesting mod feature!

papy_john's thread has somehow been embedded inside of this thread. It was a stand-alone thread only 10 minutes ago.

Hope you are not using Google technology to rank threads now :)

[Powdork]

Threads are often molded, blended, weaved. Its all part of the Magic.

<added>not the same Magic alluded to above by Woz. Its WW Magic as opposed to Google Magic</added

[Napoleon]

Some filters were applied last night. However, first things first:

NFFC: "I have seen a lot of index pages go missing this update, it used to happen a lot in the past but not lately. I honestly think Google have a glitch."

Yes, something is certainly wrong somewhere with respect to index pages. This is widespread, and there is a whole thread on related stuff.

Clean index pages are not being returned, whilst sub pages are. I think speculation of penalties are wide of the mark, as there is just no pattern between the sites affected. I expect it to be sorted by Google soon (and certainly hope so).

NEW FILTERS
Something was chaned last night for sure, and at least one alteration applies to hidden text. How do I know?

On the front page of one of my sites I had the following on one of my links: style="color=silver"

Yes, it's an error. Should have been: STYLE="color:silver"

The net result is that it rendered the link hidden. I didn't even know about it (because I couldn't see it).

Last night - wallop - site gone. Yes, a personal nightmare. But it does kinda prove that changes occured.

I understand (and sincerely hope!) that this type of ban is temprorary (30 days?). Maybe someone else can confirm that?

[rfgdxm1]

GOOD GRIEF! Now my other site has been afflicted with some strange infection of Dominitis. If I enter the domain name as a search, it comes up "Sorry, no information is available for the URL mydomain.com." Yet, it is still in the index. However, it has dropped dramatically for a couple of keywords, although only slightly for a third. However, this effects only the home page. The internal pages all seem to be ranking as I'd expect for appropriate search phrases. The home page of this site, along with all the other pages, are free of hidden text, or any hidden anything else. Something is whacked at Google.

GoogleGuy: what the heck is going on at the Plex?

Added: yet, if I click on "Find web pages that contain the term mydomain.com", this site of mine and all the pages appear. And, this change happened all of a sudded across all datacenters. Bizarre.

[coconutz]

>>I understand (and sincerely hope!) that this type of ban is temprorary (30 days?).

"I would go over everything with a fine-toothed comb to make sure you've removed every bit of hidden text from your site. Within a month or so, if all of the hidden text is gone, you should should show back up in the index again."

GoogleGuy [webmasterworld.com] message #7

[Napoleon]

Thanks for that Coconutz - appreciated. It looks like 30 days in the clink then... SOOO frustrating... and so very annoying (at myself). A very costly glitch.

Still, at least I should bounce back.

[owldeath]

Hi - this is my first post here, and it looks like I arrived just in time..

I read earlier in this thread that there was a problem with index pages at the moment. I kind of freaked out when I saw my site gradually drop down the rankings from top to 20th so I thought it was some sort of SEO penalty - not that I really know how to do SEO anyway - but I had lots of keyword repetition and a big H1 as the first text on the page, and in the title. So I thought oh well I might as well just forget about trying to optimize as they are just getting wise to anything. So I redesigned the whole page just with the user in mind - not google, but have I jumped the gun a bit? Is it just a temporary problem?

[Napoleon]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld Owldeath.

Is it temporary? I think so. A substantial number of sites have suffered the fallen index page problem. I know for a fact that some are totally clean (and indications are that the vast majority are).

It could be an error/glitch as NFFC suggests. Or it could be missing links or anchor text. Either way, it is something that Google will want to fix.

The issue of course is how temporary is temporary? I can't really help on that one, other than remind you that we will see new data applied at Google in the few weeks. That may address it.

NOTE: This is a different issue to the 'hidden text' gaff mentioned above. I doubt there is anything I can do about that except wait for 30 days, other than perhaps stick the begging bowl in front of my best friend GoogleGuy ;-).

[owldeath]

Thanks for your reply :)

So do you think I have been too quick in changing my page? I haven't got any hidden text but maybe a few of my outgoing links aren't that great. I have just one key phrase that I had targeted - what do you think is the best way to get the site listed highly again as google seem to change their rules all the time, so I'm not sure what the latest advice is.

Cheers!