my homepage dissapeared from Google

[quisolopercaso]

Hi-

searching for my full name on Google, my homepage used to be the first result (as I believe it should be; my name is unique). Since last week, my homepage does not even appear.

I have tried adding more words to the search in order to isolate the result, and sure enough I get that the search "did not match any documents."

I had a couple of backlinks, that I have now removed. The same problem occurs from different computers. Searching with Yahoo and Altavista works fine. My homepage is very professional and simple (I am a university professor). If helpful, I am happy to give the link.

I understand other people are experiencing similar problems. Any help would be most appreciated.

[AussieWebmaster]

is it on an edu server?

[quisolopercaso]

Yes, it is on an edu server.

[AussieWebmaster]

but a professional page? selling something/

[quisolopercaso]

Oh, no. I am not selling anything. It is just a typical homepage of a university professor, with a list of publications, CV, teaching, etc.

[jimbeetle]

An edu page being dropped, huh? We don't see much discussion of that around the boards, could be interesting. Can you post the URL (use the form "example dot edu" so there's no active link), so we can take a gander at it?

[quisolopercaso]

Sure. Here it is

www dot math dot utah dot edu/~defernex/

[pageoneorbust]

Hi, I've looked at your page. This is an interesting situation. Google finds your actual path and other pages: www dot math dot utah dot edu/~defernex/cv dot pdf for instance but your index.html is gone from google's index for some reason.
Right a this moment I'm looking at your index and I do not see anything provocative but have some q-ns:
have you ever used somebody's content/copy on your page, some article or essay etc. (even with a writer's permission);
may be you linked some titles of those articles to internal pages with some copy written by somebody who already have the same copy somewhere else posted online?

Also, check your link with www dot copyscape dot com and you will see yourself that one Article Title "Ample vector bundles with sections vanishing along conic fibrations over. curves, Collect. Math., 49 (1998), 67-79" is found on numerous resources as well.
That means Google knows that! It may consider that as duplicate content.

[quisolopercaso]

I see. The articles (such as the one you mentioned) are mine, but I don't mind removing the link to the PDF files if that helps. (It is true that the journal has the copyright, but the PDF version linked in my homepage is slightly different to the published version. I didn't think it was an issue.)

I have actually copied some of the wording in my teaching page (see extension ~defernex/3210-S08.html). For instance the ADA Statement is standard phrasing. Do you think that that might be the reason?

[AussieWebmaster]

the pages with the dup content would get the drop not the homepage... unless they see the site as a content hijacker... but not too likely

[quisolopercaso]

In case it might be relevant, it occurred to me that I used to have earlier versions of my homepage on other edu domains, with the links to the same PDF files. However these pages have been removed (the last one more than a year ago).

[pageoneorbust]

Here is what I see right now, which looks like a poof of my concerns about your situation:

I opened your article under that title "Ample vector bundles with sections vanishing along conic fibrations over curves." I see that you have the same content (almost, slightly can be changed) on 2 URLs:
1. www.imub dot ub dot es/collect/accdocg/E49067079 dot pdf - journal link
2. www.math dot utah dt edu/~defernex/papers/conic dot pdf - local pdf link (internal on your site).

Now let's make experiment: copy these words which belong to your article:
In the last 20 years the study of special varieties as ample divisors attracted

and paste it into Google search bar. What do you see? #1 ranked thsi URL:
www.imub dot ub dot es/collect/accdocg/E49067079 dot pdf
which is external source of the same content.

And you can not see you local URL anywhere in search results on Google. Why? because looks like Google made his choice.

If you copy the same words (extract from your article) and paste them into yahoo search bar, you will see a lot of URLs with your content and one of them (2nd one) will be your local pdf document from your site. So obviously Yahoo is not Google, it has a different algorithm and thats' why you are experiencing issues with Google only!

Well, this is my analysis and theory so, you can accept that and think how and what to do in order to come back on Google based on the info provided.

[pageoneorbust]

"the pages with the dup content would get the drop not the homepage"

I disagree, I think any home page which is linking to internal (local) pages with dup content can be penalized. As long as you obey the rule to avoid duplicate content on your site (no matter which page), you are fine...

the solution can be found here (Google's Webmaster help):
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=61050

or just use external links to Journal

[AussieWebmaster]

true... the dup meta info was enough for some sites to go supplemental so now they could just be dropping them

[quisolopercaso]

Thank you all for your help!

I have removed the links to the PDF files, as well as my teaching page (where some of the wording was duplicate).

At this point, do you know if I need to contact Google Webmaster to ask if they can index my homepage again? and, if so, how can I contact them?

[pageoneorbust]

Frankly, I do not know if you can ask Google to include you back in index, but you can make the right steps with your website and wait till Google crawlers will go through and put you back.

Google Webmaster Help is the name of their tutorial.