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that's another panic post.
One of my sites suddenly disappeared from Google some days ago.
From Logs-reading I can guess it vanished on the mid of this month and I also found out the last googlebot visit was on 17.03.2003 (from IP 216.239.46.***).
The site is relatively recent and was indexed approximately on February.
Is this lack of Googlebot (more than 2 months) a distinct sign of a penalty/ban or this exclusion can be a consequence of that transition phase commented by many posts here and so considered as "not-dangerous"?
The google toolbar shows an enigmatic, empty PageRank bar-shaped gray...is it normal in cases like this?
The site makes strong use of php that generates potentially a great number of pages with recursive, similar content (with inclusion of files, etc), and before the storm there were at least 20 pages at glance nearly hidentical indexed at Google). A potential root to ban?
On the other sites i am monitoring, all seems to go as usual, and now even the newer sites start to be indexed.
Any clue is appreciated. Thanks
welcome to WebmasterWorld.
Are you sure the your robots text is Google.bot friendly? (do a site search - see the link on top of this page). Do you still have site external links towards your site's pages?
I would guess Google is clever enough in just not showing duplicate pages within one site.
From what I understood of the latest Google penalties for hidden text and hidden links, it just means you are out of the index, it does not mean your site will not be crawled anymore.
Concerning the robots.txt, everything seems to be OK, following the usual standard of exclusion of certain directories. So I can be quite sure this should not cause any Google-related problem, even because we use the same standard on other long-term indexed sites.
Concerning external links toward the site, well, actually they are at present not so many, mainly due to the youthness of the site.
What appears strange to me, and definitively alarmistic, is the fact that Googlebot has not been crawling that site for 2 month and half: checking the logs of all the sites we've got, I can summarize the Bot activity on regular bases (basically a relative regular monthly visit).
But this rule doesn't apply to this site...and is out of index :-(
Now paranoia assults the client and us, and there are 2 opposite feelings:
1 - Wait 'till the next update and see, strange things are happening on Google during those last weeks: nothing to be afraid of, the situation will tend to normalization soon and your site will be back to Google again. (realistic?...utopia?).
2 - Change, change, change something! There's something wrong in your site and those new filters, algos...
Don't hope, girl, the sword of Damocles doesn't hang anylonger above your head...the rope is already broken and, open your eyes, the bitter truth is a short word: BAN!...the broadest fear of all..
Bye
[google.com...] might help as well.
