Help What Happened To My Web site?
Your Web site has gone from being in the Google search results for several years to NOT even being in their index. Or, after being in the top ten SERPs for a very long time you suddenly do not even show up in the top 100. Despite what Google states, something terrible has just happened to your site.
Now, this FAQ answers:
- Why this is so
- What to do about it
through a concept called brainstorming.
Nobody is going to magically fix your Web site for free. You own the problem. You might try throwing money at it. But, in the end somebody is going to have to put some hard work, called problem solving, into fixing your problem. This FAQ on Google search engine problems is designed to set you on the right path, for FREE. But be warned: Correcting fundamental problems on your site, is often very time consuming.
First of all, Google uses hundreds of different datacenters whose behavior a lot of people find confusing to deal with. Google’s global network of thousands and thousands of PCs is buggy, by definition. Google’s algorithms are ever changing. So, it is best to do nothing unless your problem has persisted for at least several weeks. You need to rationally access your situation before taking action. The last thing that you want to do is to make hundreds of totally unnecessary changes to your site.
SERP problems with Google, in most cases can mean only a few things.
- The mostly likely cause is a problem with one of your fundamentals.
- Too many bad links (ie, 95% of the hyperlinks should work correctly).
- Taking way too long to respond to the googlebot crawler,
- And, so on …
- A visitor who was not very happy about what they found on your site (ie, an erroneous search result complaint) has made anabuse/spam complaint.
- The googlebot crawler has detected quality / fundamental problems on your Web site.
Google recommends that you review your Web site, against the Google’s Webmasters Quality Guidelines. But, such PC babble is really NOT all that helpful. You can try scanning your pages through a spam detector. Are you participating in a linking scheme with other low-quality Web sites? Has your site hosting security been breached and your site been hacked, without your knowledge?
If your site has been banned by Google, or if it has disappeared completely, then you must also file a request for reinclusion. But, only after having corrected issues, like hidden text on your Web pages. Since most Google SERP problems are due to problems in your fundamentals, hoping that Google in a few hours will magically rescue you from some hard work is only wishful thinking on your part. Likewise, thinking some Googler has singled your site out is total nonsense. Remember that you are doing battle with a computer rather than with a human being.
As a practical matter there is a lot to be said for reverse engineering.
One place to look for quality issues is the Google’s Abuse Complaint System. Therefore, you should look at how abuse complaints can be filed. Those areas that might conceivably be targeted are the most likely problem areas for banishment problems. So, scan your site for these types of problem areas.
People can complain to Google about:
- Hidden text or links
- Misleading or repeated words
- Page does not match Google’s description
- Cloaked page
- Deceptive redirects
- Doorway pages
- Duplicate site or pages
- Spammy sites violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines
- Reporting Odd Behavior (Malicious software that displays weird toolbars, popups, or redirects to strange sites)
- Inappropriate or irrelevant search results
- Report a legal matter
W3C Validation?
Don’t make me laugh. W3C validation problems might slightly affect accessibility, and cause display problems; but they most certainly wont result in banishment.
Supplemental Index
Mature sites are not likely to have fallen into the supplemental index, unless:
- You have recently have done a lot of SEO work and made changes that the googlebot does not like.
- Made global layout changes to your Web site.
- Made major internal linking structural or organizational changes to your site, such as changing your blog program to WordPress from another blog format.
- What changes have you recently made to your site? Making too many changes to a site without giving Google sufficient time to respond to your changes, one at a time, is always a bad idea (unless you know what you are doing).
Superstitious Behavior
In psychology, there is a concept called experimental neuroses. Webmasters always need to be on guard from going crazy when trying to deal with Google problems. There are far to many people going nuts, engaging in all types of superstitious behavior, and suffering from experimental neuroses, or worst. There are far too many nut jobs out there handing out totally nutty advice. There are far too many SEO Trolls out there who are all too happy to take advantage of naive webmasters,
