It is something that has affected us here at Hungerford Web Design recently. One minute we are in the top 5 results for our keywords and the next we are on page 2 with one of our secondary domains and yet our primary domain is nowhere to be seen?!
The following should help put your mind at rest if you find that your site has suddenly disappeared. This text was taken directly from Your SEO Plan an excellent resource for anyone looking to improve their search rankings. Please do check out their site. We will be adding their link to our resources.
One of the most common questions we get is from people who think their website has disappeared from Google. If you’re in a similar situation, we have some ideas for you in this article.
If your previously high-ranking website seems to have fallen off of Google altogether, you are probably teetering somewhere between panic and desperation. As friendly consultants who care about your mental health, we want you to know this first:
Don’t panic! You probably didn’t get banned.
It will probably fix itself very soon, whether you try to solve the problem or not.
We say that because it’s the most common scenario that we’ve seen. Sit back, relax, and wait a few days. Or, better yet, go tell your boss that you’re working hard on the problem and then take a few days off. Most likely, your site will be perkily perched back in the ranks next time you look. But if you just want to be sure, by all means, read on to learn more.
The first thing you need to do is clarify the problem. Specifically, has your entire site been dropped from Google, or has it just been knocked down in the rankings for a particular term? To figure this out, you can do a site search, by typing this into Google:
site: www.myurl.com
(replacing “myurl” with your own URL, of course). If Google doesn’t return any pages from your site, it’s likely that your entire site has been dropped. Another way to check is to take a unique string of text from your website, one that is unlikely to be on anyone else’s site, put it in quotes, and search for it on Google. If Google displays the page from your site that contains this text, then your site hasn’t been dropped from Google.
If your site is still in Google, but your ranks have taken a sudden and dramatic nosedive, skip down to the “What Happened to my Ranks?” section, below. If, after several strategic searches, you still can’t find your site on Google, then yes indeed, your site has been dropped, and it’s time to figure out why.
Unintentional Spamming?
It’s possible (but probably unlikely) that your site was found guilty of spamming in Google’s eyes, and got banned. Generally, websites are banned for extreme SEO spam techniques such as “white on white” text, blatant keyword stuffing, or excessive redirecting. It’s not likely that your website would be banned if you’ve never done anything to intentionally trick Google into thinking that your site deserves a higher rank than is appropriate.
If you’re not sure about your status as spammer, SEO expert Jill Whalen has a forum that discusses “SEO No-nos.” Read it to get some indication of whether your site was spamming inadvertently.
Victim of Foul Play?
Whether you’re into conspiracy theories or not, you should entertain the idea that someone else did the spamming for you, causing your site’s disappearance from Google. We’ve seen it more than once: a site’s domain expires for a short time, and during that period, the pages are taken over by a domain squatter that displays not-so-nice content. You probably know if this has happened to your site, but if not, one quick way to see if this has happened to your site is to check your site in the Internet Archive (a.k.a. the Wayback Machine). The fallout from this scenario is something we describe in our case study of Providence Restaurant. (It’s worth noting, by the way, that even though that site temporarily displayed spam content, it suffered with terrible ranks, but wasn’t actually dropped from Google.)
Another form of devious doings on the web is content scraping, which is when other websites steal content from your site and then republish it, often multiple times. If this has happened to you, it is possible that Google banned your site along with the “bad guys” who copied you. Try doing some searches on other search engines, looking for strings of text from your website. You just might find an unexpected match.
Server Outage
Your server might have hiccupped just when Google came to index you recently. If your site was down when Googlebot stopped by, then Google didn’t find anything to spider, and didn’t include you in its most recent index. If your website’s hosting service is generally reliable, then you can just wait until Googlebot comes back (could be a few days, could be longer…) and hopefully all will be well again with your ranks. While there’s no sure-fire way to trigger a visit from Googlebot, getting some new inbound links, refreshing your content a bit, and submitting to the free URL submittal page never hurt anyone! You can use a Google Sitemap (a free service available via Google Webmaster Tools) or your own web analytics solution to monitor when Googlebot comes by.
Reinclusion Request
If you are certain your site has been dropped, you can submit to Google’s request for reinclusion page. Matt Cutts of Google has posted some information on how to file a reinclusion request. But before you file a request, be very, very sure that there’s nothing spammy on your site.
What Happened To My Ranks?
If Google hasn’t actually dropped your site, but you just noticed a sudden and substantial drop in rank for your favorite keywords, there are several possible explanations:
- Google could have made an intentional change to its results or its algorithm. A lot of people keep up on the news of whether Google has just had a major or minor algorithm change or listings update. We are not those people! But Matt Cutts’ blog is a good place to look into that kind of information.
- Google could be experiencing some temporary weirdness that makes the results different from what you’re used to. As we mentioned at the top of this article, we’ve seen this so many times with so many clients that this is probably the most likely scenario. In this case, just check your ranks again in a week or so. You might once again see that good rank you were used to.
- Your competitors could have gotten their acts together. OK, if your rank dropped by a few hundred spots or more, it’s probably not your competitors, as that would mean a lot of competitors getting their acts together at the same time! It might also mean a spammer is targeting the same keywords as you are. But if you’re just being outranked by legitimate competitive activity, then it’s time for you to work on your site. And this work includes optimizing for, and tracking, additional keywords.
- Do you have outbound links on your website that are pointing to a “bad neighborhood?” You may have linked to a website a year ago when it was perfectly kosher, but in the interim time it’s been taken over by a spammer. If so, linking to that site could be reflecting poorly on you. Take some time to check the sites that you’re linking to and make sure they’re all who you think they should be.
- Is your website new? Sometimes, websites show up in search results briefly after being launched, but then seem to drop dramatically out of the rankings after a couple of days, and are stuck in the depths for months. It’s a phenomenon that some have called the “Google Sandbox.” How to get out the sandbox? Get some inbound links to your site, and be patient.
- Is it possible that something has dramatically changed on your website? Say, you intended to update a single page but accidentally changed the page titles on every page of your site? Don’t forget to check your site and make sure everything is in order.
Hopefully we’ve given you some ideas about how to track down the source of your site’s disappearance from Google. Regardless of what you find, it’s always a good idea to make sure you’re offering lots of great content that makes people want to link to your site, and do some link building. In this way, you’ll have other sources of traffic that makes a Google problem like this less devastating.
