My Web Site Has Disappeared?

The Web Site Disappearing Act, one minute you’re there, the next you’re gone

Is this a magicians trick or merely a Google illusion

"My site has disappeared from Google", this is quite common particularly with new sites, which are indexed then seem to disappear only to reappear several months later.

Firstly, there are two issues here

• Your site has disappeared from the listings all together or
• You new site keeps disappearing and coming back

Lets take the first more serious situation

You site has seemingly disappeared from the search results. This could be due to a number of factors

Every month and sometimes more often Google does a ‘reshuffle’ of its directory following a continued program of spidering [looking at your website] and noticing changes in text, descriptions and looking for new pages and generally checking that pages are still found and working.

This re-indexing will usually have hardly any or little effect on your websites positioning for certain phrases and in most cases your site will maintain a level performance providing you don’t do anything the search engine doesn’t like.

For instance, Google don’t really bother with ‘keywords’ and instead it looks at other factors to measure and value your web sites relevance. In fact Google have at least 100 factors it uses to measure the importance and relevance of your website. These factors are not published but generally speaking good Web site designers and especially SEO companies are aware of most of them and will try to make sure your website complies and conforms to these factors so as to please Google and therefore enhance your websites performance in the listings. See Google’s webmasters guidelines

View the official Google Webmaster Guidelines at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Sometimes your website can disappear for longer periods and its almost impossible to determine why

One good reason for making sure you follow the guidelines and not do anything that Google considers to be ‘Black Hat’ as such techniques will be deemed to fall foul of their guidelines and get your website penalised by several of their ‘human raters’ or in the worst case scenario get your site Black Listed and Banned and removed from their directory all together never to return.

Remember, that Google are a responsible Search Engine and are positively changing their methods of indexing and continuously refining their search process and algorithm and will therefore change there factors without notification to you or webmasters. They don’t have a responsibility to webmasters or websites owners as such but they do have a responsibility to searchers to provide as accurate and as defined search as is possible and to continually check results to ensure that they are doing the best job possible for their search clients. One of the main reasons Google came into being was that search results before Google were somewhat hit and miss and not categorised and just like a huge reference library the books were all on the correct shelf.

!If you engage the services of a company that promises to obtain top 20 listings on Google within a given period you can bet your bottom dollar their techniques are not going to be totally white hat or transparent. Always ask how they intend to do this and be specific, as this often cannot be answered honestly.

If your web site has disappeared all together first check to see if it is still in the directory, go to Google and click on More and then click on Directory to search for your URL by entering your website address in the search field www.abcdefg.co.uk

As long as your website is shown to be in the results then your website is still in the directory [somewhere]

If you have done anything that is considered to be inappropriate then you must consult your Webmaster and SEO Company if you have one to ask them what they have done recently to have possibly caused your demotion. It could be a number of factors such as

• Over Optimisation [abuse of repetitive keywords]
• Cloaking [Using hidden text files or white text on white back grounds]
• Bad Links [inappropriate links of a non relevant nature which may even be offensive or immoral]
• Shadow Domains and Gateway Pages
• Link Farming

These are just a few reasons why your site could be penalised there are many more…

 

These are black hat techniques and should be avoided at all costs

 

My New Site Was listed now it has disappeared

Secondly a New Site will first appear within a Search Engine after it has been submitted or spidered by Google then seemingly it may disappear only to reappear some weeks or even months later

Google intends to out perform its search rivals by claiming to deliver the best and most relevant search results that are the most up to date and accurate as possible. To do this they must look at constant changes and improvements which does mean that your website can be affected by moving both up or down for search phrases.

Why Does This Happen

It would seem that Google are apprehensive about letting the new kid on the block push their website up the listing and ranking without earning some time in the wilderness. The theory behind this is that ‘older’ sites have stood the test of time and weathered all storms and if still standing does justify a certain degree of respect for being around for some time. We all know that Google value backward links to sites as a measure of the importance given to a site from other sites as a sign of good value. The more links your site has acquired in principal the better Google views your site.

In short a new site should really start out with very few links as by its nature its new and therefore has not been seen by many other website owners / webmasters so how can a new site start its life with 300 backwards links from other sites.

You have to earn your feathers and get through your apprenticeship period before you can be given the Google seal of approval.

This is known as the Google Sandbox Effect

Responsible SEO companies will be continually working on your site to improve its performance and to be aware of changes in Google’s factors and trying to keep up with the constant changes in Google’s algorithm that is why it is important for any website to maintain a continuous program of white hat SEO techniques so as to keep pace with these constant changes and keep you website climbing the search results ladder and not falling down them

The effects of this constant program of change will invariably have an effect upon your website as Search Engines get smarter at indexing, reading and cataloguing your website then the harder it will be for you to maintain a high position

Climbing the Google Ladder is like the snakes and ladders game – you have to keep your wits about you and constantly watch the game plan but the only difference with Google is they keep changing the snakes and ladders around

Posted by admin on Friday, July 16th, 2010