Why is Google ignoring ALL my text

About half of my pages are in Google's cache but when i search for ANY snippets of text from my site in Google it finds nothing. This started about a year ago and has happened on and off a few times since then. My homepage has a PR of 4. I still rank OK for a handful of my keyphrases and am number one for my company name.

Even my pages that put me at number one for certain search terms return nothing in Google when i search for text snippets off that page. It's almost as if Google has banned all the text from my site from appearing in the SERPS.

From searching the forums i cannot find any mention of this specific problem. Does this sound like a penalty anyone has heard of? I have had a lot of mod_rewrite work done on the site to sort out duplicate content, so maybe it has something to do with that?

What's that you say...

I have had a lot of mod_rewrite work done on the site to sort out duplicate content

There is that phrase...

duplicate content

Please post some of the snippets of text your searching for

"All our products include FREE DELIVERY in the UK and if you need a Christening gift in a hurry, we also offer a next day service on many of our products even the personalised gifts!" (paragraph from my homepage PR-4)

Also "Our personalised books make really unique presents for 1st birthdays. In addition our Thomas the Tank Engine China and Kit Heath Jewellery are proving very popular first and second birthday gift ideas" (from an internal page PR-3)

Have checked on copyscape and cant find any duplicates

I did a Google search for

Christening gift in a hurry

and this came up

Christening Gifts | Baby Gift Ideas | Christening Stuff Ltd
Your 1-Stop-Shop for Christening Gifts, New Baby Gift Ideas, Christening ... If you need gifts in a hurry, we offer a Next Day Delivery service for a small ...
www.christeningstuff.co.uk/ - 29k - Cached - Similar pages

Is that your site?

no my site is not in the serps at all for that term

if you search on yahoo.co.uk i am top!

I did searches for

Thomas the Tank Engine China and Kit Heath Jewellery

and

Our personalised books make really unique presents for 1st birthdays

and I did not get exact matches

So I guess your right your text is not being indexed

Any ideas why my text wouldnt be indexed? I have never heard of this before. I havent done anything to warrant a Google penalty so i am hoping it is some sort of technical issue.

I think it probably is a technical issue.

All I can think of is keep trying to get back links to your pages

with your keywords in the link text

Hi jbob,

Interesting...

I assume you're "borngifted"?
I looked at the site...

Weird indeed... Google have your site cached and return 610(ish) listed urls, but - when I search for any snippet from your home page - they say "no results"!

I've not come across this before, which suggests (to me) that it's either a Google Error or a penalty...
You aren't banned, otherwise your wouldn't be in the index, but I can't understand why no snippets seem to work.
I looked for a reason but I couldn't see anything obvious.

I'm not keen on the "error page" text document that pop's up when I search for a non-existant url... It returns a "200" header code (which is "normal") so links to non-existent url's in your domain will result in Google listing a whole lot of identical pages (with a single line of text)... It can harm your listings.
IMHO you should ensure that any error document you use returns the correct (404 in this case) error code.

With that said, it's unlikely to cause this!

Your robots.txt and metas don't seem to be blocking anything and (obviously) Google have spidered the pages!

It could be something in your .htaccess (but I can't see that).

If you're certain your htaccess/apache settings aren't causing this, I suggest you submit a query on Google Groups... That should get some helpful response.

.. Hold on 'though

I searched for "online in the UK since 2002 so we know exactly which products sell the best" (a snippet from your pages) and you are listed... But when I add the preceding 4/5 words (your keywords) I don't see you at all (even 'though your snippet for the previous phrase includes the preceding words, so Google obviously sees them)!

That's very weird... but now looks more like a filter-type penalty (ie; You're site isn't banned, but - for popular keywords - you are filtered out of the results)!
That's not so unusual and - whilst it might not be the only explanation - when I've come across it before, it's been the result of a "penalty" related to specific KW's/terms - imposed either for spamming or as part of something like "The Google Sandbox"... (a condition which has often been said to effect new sites competing in highly-competitive markets)!
Obviously your site isn't new, so I'm drawn towards the conclusion that they are - for some reason - penalising you in that way.

Hold on... again
I also noticed that your domain name shows in Google as ww.yoursite.co.uk/ (note - only 2 W's)!
I also notice that I can access that domain - a duplicate (obviosuly) of yours...
Google don't show a cache copy of that url/page (weird since that one's listed in their results)!
What's mega-intersting is that Google lists 2,200 urls from that site (ww.yoursite.co.uk)!
Furthermore, I can access your site with any number of "w's" except for none - then it redirects me to "www"!

Now I'm thinking there's a problem with your .htaccess / apache set up and wondering if it's causing problems for Google.

I would suggest you start with your .htaccess/apache/mod_rewrite rules (specifically regarding canonicalisation) and take it from there

if your site is .co.uk then you can come easily in google uk.

How told you using TLD is very less impact on GEO targetting
Get back links from UK hosted website.

ClickyB
Many thanks for all the useful comments - i will start looking into the .htaccess/apache/mod_rewrite rules straight away!