Homepage nuked by Google?

[flam]

HI,


Got a very strange SERP this morning and my homepage TOTALLY disapeared from the index but only for some specific terms ????!!!! WTF!! :mad: :eek:

It's really weird, it only seems to happen on certain datacenters.

Even more funny, a simple plural of the same keywords would return the normal results ???!!

did I get hijacked or something? Is there a pro with experience of that could tell me what the hell is this about ? :confused:

[cahbaxter]

Flam,

what's the URL?

[asans]

Hey Flam,

Very same problem here! :confused:

Today checking for the usual keywords, I found that one site of mine doesn't show in the first pages of Google for many keywords, like before. This site have some years, always doing very good on Google: in the first page for many competitive keywords, without any trick or black hat.
Now searching for those keywords the home page doesn't show at all in the serps, but it's still ranked (of course in lower position) for the internal pages, and, in a very low position, for the homepage without the www.
Yes there isn't a redirect from "mysite.com" to "www.mysite.com", but the site is quite old and it has always been ranked with the www without any problem.

With the "site:www.mysite.com" command it appears that all the thousand of pages (at least the internal ones) are all still indexed, with link:www.mysite.com" it appears the usual number of links and the site shows on every page still its usual PR. But checking for "www.mysite.com" or "mysite.com" Google doens't show any result anymore...

Summarizing actually the home page seems not to be indexed anymore and then the home page doesn't appear in the serps anymore.

It could be caused by the fact that there isn't a redirect from the "www.mysite.com" to the "mysite.com" version?
It could be a "first step" of any kind of penalization?
I should wait or do something immediately?

Many thanks.

[Papadoc]

My sites are fine, but I've heard comments from several others regarding the same thing. Last time was after the May update including some friends who have kept me up to date on what they did and the results. It was determined in all of those cases then that I was aware of, that the problem was over-optimization of several pages on the site that conflicted with some new rules that Google put into place against keyword stuffing, overuse of H-tags, and a few others.

No doubt that Google has been tightening up on and redefining things. What some used to consider highly agressive SEO and what Google used to accept, they have now redefined as spam within their algo. No offense meant, and have no clue if that would apply to your sites. None of what I saw back then would even be called black hat... just overly aggressive. Totally legit tactics pushed just a tad too far, and enough to trip over the edge when the edge was moved. Could be that they have quietly slipped in some new rules without major changes in the algo.

Several things that I've seen since then also gives me the impression that Google is actively continuing to push those limits, and a lot of SEO'd sites that have done well might just take a bite.

In all of those instances above, adjustments were made and all positions were restored. The better news is that those people that I personally know started going through their sites with a fine tooth, spotted potential issues, did major overhauls in some sections, updated stuff with things they've since learned, and overall made a much better SEO'd site. In the end, all of these sites are doing much better with one of them up over 100%. Took about a month of being out of the SERPS value positions.

If this isn't just a blip on the screen for you, I'd start like above examining pages for stuff that might be too aggressive and backing off a bit.

[flam]

yeah it seems to be some outcome from their index work recently.
Yahoo did that to me back a few months ago .... will it happen to me with MSN next ??? Good question huh ? :o


By the way papadoc...what would you define as overly agressive ? Too many occurences of keywords? H tags etc... ?
Well my pages are just constructed like this...I'm not a super copy writer...I do what I can, now that it does not please Google it sucks because it pleases my visitors apparently...shouldn't Google's goal be to understand what would please visitors ?

[Papadoc]

Well, adapting Jeff Foxworthy's style, according to Google:

- If your keyword density is greater than 6-7%, you may be spamming

- If you use more than 2-3 H tags with the same keyword, you may be spamming

- If you bold, italics, or otherwise accent most of your keywords, you may be spamming

- If your page title uses excessive repetition of keywords, you may be spamming

- If your meta description uses excessive repetition of keywords, you may be spamming

Keep in mind that the operative above is "may be". Google doesn't tell you much. Nor would I dare say where the edge of the cliff is here or how much of any one thing or combo of things would cause problems on YOUR site or any given site. But the more issues like this that you add to it, the greater your chances of index trouble.

You don't need to be a great copywriter, as you put it, to stay in Google's index. I am sure you know better than that. They are not judging your style. But if you have 2 out of the top 3 search engines removing you from the index, I think you have a problem.

Make your site reader friendly and don't come down heavy on any given tactic. Read your pages as if you were seeing them for the first time and determine if there is good flow to the text. THEN, determine if the things you do off the main body of the text are to give the reader a better idea of the actual content or if they are there to jack up your ranking.

Also consider that many people do some of the above tactics as a short cut to building links and adding content. It is far easier to use your keywords 57 times on a given page than it is to go out and ask for two links from complementary sites. However, the latter will not get you into trouble and there won't be backlash from engines that change their algo.

[threetwo1]

Hey - I've had a high ranking homepage for 6 years.

We have servers running our customers' software applications. Some of those web apps link to our homepage. For some reason our actual homepage URL has dissappeared - it has been replaced by a new URL that is for our production server (hosting client apps).

The SERP takes our homepage Title and Meta Descr. but gives the wrong URL - instead of a home page w pagerank of 5, I have no page rank.

I can't figure out why it thinks this URL is our homepage - it crawled the sitemap and it shows googlebot the correct homepage????

We do have a highly optimized site but don't do anything over the top. The one recent change was adding a phrase in Bold and Grey at the bottom of each page that contains keywords for that page.

Help or ideas on cause are appreciated.

thanks,
joe

[AuctionInsights]

Asans,
What you describe is exactly what happened to my site two days ago. :eek: I was at the top of Google's SERPS for numerous key words. Now I can find my site way back in the SERPS - and the results no longer show for the www subdomain. :confused:

I've never engaged in any black-hat SEO. Nothing to do but take the time to tweak my pages and wait I guess. :mad: I'll also research some of the 301 redirect threads I've paid scant attention to in the recent months.

I can't offer any constructive comments other than you are not alone in your frustrations.

AuctionInsights

[marika]

I just confirmed that our site was removed from google as well. The results no longer show for the www subdomain. However, our internal pages are still indexed and we're getting even more traffic from google than we have in the last week.

We have not engaged in any black hat SEO. I doubt our site is overoptimized. Does anyone know how to contact google? I wrote to their help form and asked for additional help.

[asans]

Asans,
What you describe is exactly what happened to my site two days ago. :eek: I was at the top of Google's SERPS for numerous key words. Now I can find my site way back in the SERPS - and the results no longer show for the www subdomain. :confused:
AuctionInsights
Thanks for your reply.

All I can said to you is to wait before taking any decision...because my site came back where it was before just after less than a week, without doing any change.

I think that it's only a Google glitch...