Front page de-indexed

A sudden dramatic upset with Google, any help please


Here is the situation
- We have a main web site which has been in operation for four years
- We have done well in the search engines during this time for our favoured keyword searches, usually being positioned on the front page of results returned at position 2 or 3


- We have other domains which ‘point’ to this main site. Currently these are not done with a 301 redirect but we can change that, which I understand would be recommended
- We also have no redirect on nonwww to www - again we can change that


- About two / three weeks ago, we suddenly noticed that on our favoured keyword searches in Google, we were nowhere to be found
- By this I mean the main page of our main site could not be found
- so, it appears that the main page has been de-indexed
- pages within the web site were being returned, also subdomains - albeit much much much lower in the engines

- running a site: my site dot com only returns pages within the site, but not the front page
- we have done a complete analysis of our site, checking Google webmaster information, checking outgoing links, incoming links, bad neighbours, OD on keywords, etc
- all verifications seem to show no problems
- we don't use any black hat techniques
- we have asked for re-consideration by Google
- checking yahoo, msn, etc we are still high in their SERPs



- we are a magazine, so frequently articles of ours are reproduced across many web sites. Most of these artices on press release sites quote us as source; forums are a different matter, sometimes they link back to our site, sometimes not - but this whole situation has been the same for some years
- additionally, we have a reseller whose copy on their page was reading the same as ours - I have since amended this. They are a newer entity, having been a reseller for us for about 8 months


Do you think it is the duplication issue across external domains which is causing us to experience the wrath of G?

If so, do you think our main site front page will ever be re-indexed?

If we’re unlikely to be re-indexed, should we make our main site one of our other domains? Should we redirect the domain which is being affected by G to that domain or would that then affect the new one?

We are at a real loss to understand this and could really do with some help. Traffic is dropping off every day. I can’t believe that a site which has been fine for four years would suddenly run into this kind of problem.

All help appreciated

Could be a couple of things:

An over optimization penalty for the homepage. have you been getting a rediculous amount of links with the same keyword? this could trigger it for a while, or have you got any spammy items on the actual webpage?

Or it could be the www. nonwww. Google will see this as 4 different homepages:

http://seochat.com/
http://www.seochat.com/
http://seochat.com/index.php
http://www.seochat.com/index.php

So google could get confused as to which homepage is yours so it takes it out completely for now. plus with the external duplication its quite possible google is confused.

As to 301ing the domains you have to this one, i would wait for a little while and just continue getting natural links to the homepage once you have done a permenant redirect to one homepage, and once reindexed you could consider gradually 301ing the domains.

Hi

Thank you.

We did indeed check for over optimisation as this was one of our thoughts too. Definitely no spam type items on the front page (nor indeed anywhere in the site)

I'm not sure what you mean when you say "have you been getting a rediculous amount of links with the same keyword?" Can you explain?

I think the www v nonwww is a potential problem area for us, so I reckon we'll sort that one out straight away.

We have stacks of natural links to our www home page, so once we have done the redirect to this home page, perhaps that will help.

As for external duplication, there is not much we can do about it. Being a magazine we are constantly quoted or our articles put up on various sites (usually with us as source but not always) and it's pretty impossible to monitor this.

You don't think there is anything else which could have caused the problem do you?

Many many thanks for your help

Thats all i can think of without actually looking at the website. i mean with the links; did you get a hell of a lot over a short period of time with the same anchor text (i.e. "Blue Widgets"). I have realised google could see this as an over optimization and have seen websites just change their title to make it less relevant and when they come back change it to the original optimized one. if this works though i have no idea... never tested it.

Ahhh, understand; no, the links were built up over the last four years with no surge at any time.

What a strange thing for them to do... never tried it either!

Many thanks, I just hope things revert to normal soon as our traffic is taking a right dive.

Yea its stressful, but just dont do anything drastic! thats the worst you can do

Cheers.

No, we won't do anything drastic. Will try and remain

My opinion its most likely the pointing service. This caused me heaps of trouble. google sees them as different sites with duplicate content IMO. It splits/assigns PR between them (if they are indexed). I reckon your HP on multiple sites has possibly trigerrred duplicate conetnt problem..

Thanks. I'm sure duplicate content is an issue. I'm only worried in case it's something else. Still, we'll sort out the www v nonwww issue, then do the 301's.

We're assuming duplicate content is the problem and are fixing it. But as G won't tell us what the problem is for de-indexing our front page, who knows what the issue really is?

Once we've done that, do you think we'll get re-indexed? Also, any ideas or thoughts on how long it might take?

Also make sure the homepage only reverts to one file. i.e the root website.com/ or the index file website.com/index.php.

in terms of how long it will take. could be anything at all. just keep getting the quality links in and sit it out.

Will remember to do that - thanks

OMG, I can feel gallons of wine and hundreds of cigarettes coming on whilst we sit it out !

Check the DC’s first especially the .com to see if its just the 950 penalty. Basically just over-optimization penalty where you appear at bottom or midway in results.

I've seen this happen to about 30 sites. None have had their index page returned to results even after periods of 1-12 months. Some were oldies but the vast majority of the index pages have now been gone six months. Interestingly a few had the index page returned when they switched the exact page to a new domain. I don't consider that an option if the site has been around a while.

The commonality in about 90% of cases is the sites tended to be more than a year old. 60% 3 + years old.

With the above stats and yours you've got to remember that you and them were once listed in Google regardless of the www or non-www issue.

The sites mentioned used an exhaustive array of methods to beat what seems like a penalty.

None ever had a reply from Google re-inclusion requests. The index pages remained in Google though they didn’t appear in keyword searches.

> we have a reseller whose copy on their page was reading the same as ours<

Is this still cached by Google?

Sounds like you also have some serious duplication issues spread out over a variety of domains. From what I normally see only the oldest domain (which can be other than you) that utilizes the original content gets credit from Google. The rest utilizing the content are only seen with a search that yields omitted results.

Only time will tell which nobody likes to hear. After 3 months you'll know for sure.

Hi outland

Thank you.

This will probably sound stupid but what are "DCs" ?

The front page is appearing nowhere, not even further down the results but absolutely nowhere. I went through all the results, including supplementals. It is only some of the inside pages which are appearing at all. Even doing a site: check our front page does not appear.

Is your overall opinion that we sit it out for three months? And, if at that time the front page is still de-indexed, move everything to a new domain?

As you say, with the site being four years old, this is not something we are keen on doing. However, if needs must...... You say a few who did this had the index page returned; what about those who did not get it returned?

Are we stuck with this for ever?

PS : I checked to see if the reseller's page is still cached by G and yes, it is - thanks for the tip.

Update

To add to this whole nightmare, I just ran my usual keyword checks this morning.

Lo and behold, the front page one of our other domains which is currently aliased (not with 301) to the de-indexed front page of our main site domain comes fourth on one search and fifth on another.

Strangely too, the 1st position on one of these searches does bring us 1st but with a page from within our main site domain.

Also, if we do a keyword search on our name (which matches both the main site name and this other domain name), it is again this other domain which comes 1st.

Now, we are happy with these SERPs of course. But why has this happened and is that front page of one of our other domains likely to be de-indexed too?

What do you think?

Go to http://www.mcdar.net/dance/index.php and do a search for your various keywords. First though go to your own index page so it will be highlighted in their results. Check the various groups of DC’s and the .com which is at .147

No, I don’t suggest new domains to anybody for anything. That’s purely a decision people make on their own. Most of those individuals I mentioned were tech savvy with multiple new and old sites who choose a quick fix that worked for them. One said even with the switch to a new domain the page see-sawed in and out of the index. The others remain missing.

The three month figure is just a general figure when anybody can tell they have problems of any kind. At a year it’s for sure.

Most of your problems though don’t seem penalty related. If you read your own comments you’re answering many of your own questions.

In your case a quick fix might be adding the url of that cached page to Google’s add my site feature. Removing the duplicate might return your page.

Why does it happen? Personally I feel its in the way Google now crawls. With all their penalties and filters there is collateral damage they really don't care about. But with all search search engines its not an anything goes proposition like it was 7-8 years ago.