home page disappeared from google [Archive]

Matt1959

21st April 2010, 13:54

could anyone very kindly give me a clue as to why my longstanding home page has completely vanished from google?! The sites about 6 yrs old and has always peformed well, other pages are still there though...

home page still shows ok when you enter the url

thanks...

nickjohnston

21st April 2010, 13:56

Are you set up with Google Webmaster Tools? Have a check to see if there are any issues.

This does happen though, but it will often be restored soon enough. Is it that you've vanished completely, or for a specific search term?

Faevilangel

21st April 2010, 13:59

link? try googling it ....

site:http://www.mydomain.com

Will tell you what you have indexed, and do you have Google webmasters (http://www.google.com/webmasters/) set up?

webhostuk

21st April 2010, 14:03

Hello,

I have also noticed some major changes from yesterday, I guess google is updating things.

Matt1959

21st April 2010, 14:09

This does happen though, but it will often be restored soon enough. Is it that you've vanished completely, or for a specific search term?

vanished for a search term that has worked for 5 yrs! when I enter the address into google i get the homepage but the google entry isnt the usual one...

unsure about webmaster tools i check wehn home as on a pesky laptop at mo

Matt1959

21st April 2010, 14:11

gareth, that link makes no sesne to me!!

Faevilangel

21st April 2010, 14:29

gareth, that link makes no sesne to me!!

What Google webmasters? or the site: ?

If you google site: then your domain, it will tell you what's indexing.

GW tells you what searches you are ranking for, if google has errors when searching your site etc

Matt1959

21st April 2010, 14:33

ooops,lol fav i see what you getting at now:redface::redface::redface::)

googling my site brings up thehome page but not using its normal description in the google lisitng ifn that makes sense

nickjohnston

21st April 2010, 14:39

Ah... Are you listed in dmoz.org? Google sometimes replaces the descriptions with the DMOZ description. If so, you can get rid of it using this tag in the <head> section of your page's HTML:

<meta name="robots" content="noodp" />

Matt1959

21st April 2010, 17:05

Ah... Are you listed in dmoz.org? Google sometimes replaces the descriptions with the DMOZ description. If so, you can get rid of it using this tag in the <head> section of your page's HTML:

<meta name="robots" content="noodp" />

I've never submitted the site to dmoz, so I guess it can't be that! I have noticed this happening with a competitor in the past but they've reappeared as if nothing had happened, the following day! lets hope the same happens here:rolleyes:

nickjohnston

21st April 2010, 17:08

Could you PM me your site? Can have a quick look if you like.

Kev Jaques

21st April 2010, 17:17

what's the search term?

Matt1959

21st April 2010, 17:22

pm's sent to both, many thanks. I gotta sinking feeling as to whats happened. I'm creating a blog currently and about 4 weeks ago I created a test page (since del3ted) whereby I copy and pasted my entire home page text content about 5 times (lazy way of filling up the blog post whilst testing image alignment) This is the page that now shows on google when searching very specifically as although its delated by me, its now cached by google..so if ever there was a case of duplicate content, this could be it:rolleyes:

am I on right track:|

nickjohnston

21st April 2010, 17:43

Could well be on right track with duplicate content, so it might well correct itself in the next few days.

Some of your image pages also feature the same text content, which may not help, but is unlikely to have affected the front page.

BryanJackson

21st April 2010, 21:31

I've had the "honour" of monitoring Google for about 10 years now. Every now and then, you get the "Google Dance", whereby search results fluctuate massively - with key phrases often ranking significantly lower than before... within a few days they often return to parity, or above. The last few days we've definitely seen some kind of update to the Google algorithm.

I'd certainly spend time looking at incoming links - good quality inbound links count for as much as quality content with Google. Keywords, etc. count for very little these days IMO.

Matt1959

22nd April 2010, 08:20

cant help feeling that some event has caused this as I watch my site like a hawk and its been steady at No 1 on google locally for 5 years ish with NO strong competition and now its gone, still!

I cannot use webmasters as I need to paste some code to my homepage or some such thing first and I dont know how to do this.

Is there anyone here who can give me, on a paid basis, a little help to set up my access to the webmaster facility?!

The site concerned is a very very simple 6 page site

Ben-ChilliMintLabs

22nd April 2010, 09:12

Is there anyone here who can give me, on a paid basis, a little help to set up my access to the webmaster facility?!

I'd be happy to help you with this for no charge - its very straightforward. Please feel free to PM me and we'll get it sorted.

Ben

Faevilangel

22nd April 2010, 10:36

cant help feeling that some event has caused this as I watch my site like a hawk and its been steady at No 1 on google locally for 5 years ish with NO strong competition and now its gone, still!

I cannot use webmasters as I need to paste some code to my homepage or some such thing first and I dont know how to do this.

Is there anyone here who can give me, on a paid basis, a little help to set up my access to the webmaster facility?!

The site concerned is a very very simple 6 page site

Send me a PM and I will run through it with you ;) No charge

BryanJackson

22nd April 2010, 13:25

It's worth getting set up with Webmaster Tools if only to check your site has no diagnostic errors (crawl problems, page speed, etc.) - good luck with the set up.

Matt1959

22nd April 2010, 22:40

well, we've got to the bottom of this. Seems that when I was experimenting with blog posts, I stupidly copied and pasted my entire home page about 6 times onto the blog post in order to practice some image alignment. Obviously I deleted the page once I'd finished fiddling with it but by then, unbeknown to me because I'd assumed the blog wasn't live, the page was indexed by google, then bang, yesterday, my home page vanished from google being replaced some pages back with this cached blog page. Net result I now have no website anwhere near page one:mad: no website on page one = no work:rolleyes: Via webmaster, I've removed the offending blog page so hopefully once google comes by again, the site will be back up there. Don't get many things wrong but this sure was a howler:)

so you bloggers out there with sites already, be careful what you post;)

MASSEY

22nd April 2010, 22:47

Thats a shame sounds like you have a little niche search term ;) i would imagine you will be back to number 1 soon, i have quite a few sites i link and mess about with and they then drop in the ranks but after i alter it again it goes back to normal.

Matt1959

22nd April 2010, 22:57

yes a shame, would go about half way toward saying how I feel about it! I'm not sure what the answer is here as I was being guided as to how to use the theme. Unbeknown to me, I should have been ticking the private edit box at the base of each post when publishing. You live and learn I guess, I always never assume anything and this time I broke my golden rule by assuming the thing wasnt going live.......bit of a **** really:rolleyes: