Google Cache Problems - Penalty?

[2much]

I've been noticing that a lot of sites that have recently dropped from the SERP's are not cached in Google. None of those sites have purposely applied no-cache tags, disallows, robots.txt or anything.

I'm almost 100% certain it indicates penalties.

Does anybody know why? Or how this works?

[I, Brian]

I've seen a number of pages without an apparent cache, but put that down to an incomplete index on Google's part.

Do a search for "web design" and check if the top result has a recent cache. So far as I can tell, htmlhelp.com has none, despite the intense competition for the keyphrase.

[Bernard]

The answer *may* not have anything to do with Google. Much like GoDaddy's problems with Google (http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11916&perpage=20&pagenumber=4#post126191) (which were resolved (http://forums.seochat.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=40782#post40782)), the web host Valueweb (http://www.valueweb.com/) appears to have been blocking Googlebot (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=117099&postcount=20). My sites (hosted by ValueWeb) are currently headed to supplemental results purgatory (http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18159&perpage=20&pagenumber=1) right now.

I'm not sure how many sites they host, but I would not be surprised to learn that a significant number of these reports of sites dissappearing from the SERPs are hosted by them.

[2much]

No, every one of these sites has dropped from the SERP's (rankings) as soon as they lose their cache links. They're hosted on totally different servers, and I've seen this with a few different sites/ people. There's something else going on here.

[I, Brian]

2much, Google still isn't settled from its February update. In some areas it still looks something of a mess.

[2much]

This has been happening prior to Allegra.

[scubamiamijared]

I am also a Valueweb customer and have several client accounts with them and this has happened to every site I have hosted with them. I talked to a tech rep and they admitted that there was a problem last night and trying to fix this. If anyone is a Valueweb customer and having the same problem I would suggest calling them and complaining.

I know my company is going to suffer drastically from this.


ScubaJared

[krisval]

Unless you know you are doing something wrong, wait and see.

I am having this issue. I launched a new site last month and submitted to directories. Within a few days, the home page was cached, then dropped the following week. The week after that, all pages were cached and remained that way for the remainder of the month until last week and all sub-pages lost their cache. I think the pages will reappear in the cache when Google finally resolves their multi-data sets. Before anyone jumps on this with explanations. This iste has loads of text and great content and no duplicate content at all. I am optimistic that this is a short term situation.

[PhilC]

Disallowing the cache doesn't attract penalties, and it hasn't changed recently. I've been disallowing it for years, because I object to it, and I've enjoyed many top rankings, and other ranking have been improving recently.

[2much]

Perhaps I'm not explaining my question clearly?

These sites that I've seen. They're not disallowing Google. They don't have robots.txt They don't spam.

I started noticing that some sites dropped from the SERP's. When I check the site, with most of them, I've noticed that Google doesn't have a link to the cache.

Since, I've spoken with quite a few people whose rankings have dropped. Invariably, Google doesn't link to their cache. A couple of these people have their own server. A couple are on shared servers. There's no chance that they were all on valueweb.

I'm surpised no one knows what I'm talking about? I've been seeing this for a few weeks, over a large type and number of sites.

[PhilC]

Maybe you should explain what you mean by "cache". I assumed that you meant Google's caches of the sites' pages. If you did mean that, that's what I answered.

[Bernard]

2much, have you checked to see if Googlebot has been consistently crawling the site(s)/pages?

[Nacho]

Marcela, can you provide with a few examples?

[NFFC]

>Perhaps I'm not explaining my question clearly?

Seems simple enough to me, perhaps people are looking at your post count and assuming you are stupid?

My guess is not penalties but yet *again* google DNS issues. Having said that you are usually more right than me.

[lots0]

a short term DNS name server problem should not effect rankings, for long anyway.

If gbot can't find the pages it will come back and check again and again and again...
Then gbot will come back later and look for those pages again...

>assuming you are stupid?

I assume everyone's stupid... That way I am correct most of the time. ;)

[Michael Martinez]

I'm not sure how many sites they host, but I would not be surprised to learn that a significant number of these reports of sites dissappearing from the SERPs are hosted by them.

I lease a server from ValueWeb and they are NOT blocking Googlebot from my sites. They did have some router issues a few weeks ago and took sites offline for a while to do some emergency maintenance.

People should not be so quick to jump to conclusions about what ValueWeb is doing. The person who reported that ValueWeb's router was blocking the bot did not elaborate on WHY. I doubt it was any conscious decision on their part. Intelligent routers may be blocking robots at many NOCs.

[scubamiamijared]

Well unless an email from them admitting that they blocked Googlebot is jumping to a quick decision then I guess I am guilty.

"The Google crawler was being blocked at our core router because it was affecting one of our product lines. This block extended over to our Shared Hosting accounts, however, the policy was removed as of yesterday."