My index page has lost google rank???

Client Joined: Dec 04, 2004 Posts: 757

Hi all, another strange thing with google I am not sure if many have noticed this problem with their sites but about a week ago I lost my index page Google 5 rank? to 0?
Strange thing though my other pages are staying ranked?, I checked my site using a link checker and for some strange reason it shows I have no links coming from google at all ? this is weird as I know for a fact I have thousands?
um sure it must be google doing its weird things Very Happy

cheers all
mrix

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 3:24 am

There are a variety of possible reasons for this.

The first possible reason is that your homepage has no original content yet has 20%+ space occupied by advertising. Some new Google policies will delist your pages for having excessive advertising and recipical links and many functions that hang the bot. More than anything else, it is looking for new, original content and if it gets to the point where there is nothing there that is new or original, it will delist you. It won't consider your blocks at all. I'm talking about news. This is why forums are in the 2's and 3's because at least it is new, original content.

If you want to be found in Google, publish news.

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 3:47 am

My sub pages having been changed in months and they still have ranks? my front page also has a nice forum block that shows changing posts etc. but maybe some new news post could help? I`ll give it ago Smile

Cheers
mrix

Involved Joined: Oct 09, 2004 Posts: 293

I dont know if I agree with 64bitguy on what perameters Google has changed things, I do agree they that they have changed in the last 10 to 12 days. What I do not know.
Google are meeting a lot of competion from MSN in the last few months. MSN is currently listing sites far better on site information in relation to the subject of the site....Google not as good. From what I have seen happening over the last week, maybe Google has taken a step a bit further in the wrong direction.
We took a drop from #1 to around #30, I made a new site map and submitted, and came up to #12
I have also noticed google , if search for your 1 main keyword, has dropped many sites down, but if u run a search on a combination of 2 keywords (10 combos) those tend to be ranked higher than before.
There have also been substantual changes in Hot bot, lycos, dog pile, altavista...with little in most others rated in the top 20 search engines.
Personally I wouldnt be making any serious changes at this stage, but sit back for a few weeks..they will change them again lol

registered · Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 4:30 am

Have you tried the Poodle Predictor?

http://www.gritechnologies.com/tools/spider.go

I've always found this site helpful... Wink

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 4:57 am

mrix wrote:

I lost my index page Google 5 rank? to 0? Strange thing though my other pages are staying ranked...

Hrm... That is odd!

I just checked your homepage on my 'Popularity Checker' and it comes back with '0' backlinks on Google.

http://www.lenon.com/modules.php?name=Popularity

However, when I checked it manually, it show 381 backlinks.

http://www.google.com/search?&q=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.sea-fishing.org

My 'Popularity Checker' makes use of Google API Search...

http://www.google.com/apis/

..and Google PR values are basically a result of backlinks, so maybe that's why it dropped to '0' -- because that's what Google Web APIs is reporting. What I can't figure out is why it comes up with 381 backlinks when you do a manual search...

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 5:17 am

Yes I noticed that also
Cheers
mrix I most definately have those backlinks and even without the rank I have kept keyword positions?

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 1:16 pm

Please notice that the index.html is not listed at all.

People forget that if the googlebot cannot traverse the page because of coding problems, it will drop it from the index. This is where compliance is so important. The best thing you can do is get a copy of Lynx and use that to browse your domain. This is how Google and other bots see it.. as TEXT.

Non-compliant pages tend to confuse the bots and they get "stuck". When this reaches a certain point and the bot can find no original content, it will merely drop the index. It will concentrate on pages that it can analyze without serious problems. The time it takes for the bot to achieve a page analysis also has an impact. If the bot is analyzing a single page and it takes over a certain amount of time to scan it, it will ignore that page.

Remember, if you have bad jabascript code, that alone is enough to kill a google index in that the bot can get stuck and well.. then that is that.

Next, I wanted to mention that Google is doing more work relative to sites with maps. They are really starting to frown on sites without them. While setting this up is a huge pain in the butt for Nuke, it is something that from a developer point of view we should really be looking at as a baseline feature. As Google and others go down that road more aggresively to filter the kiddie sites with no original content from those that do actually offer original content, this will become more important.

Google is also expressing that they have issues with sites designed not for content but those that just want a high popularity in the search index. A huge number of backlinks with no content is seen as abuse and they will ban you in a heartbeat if they think that is what you are doing. Again, publish original content and have a compliant site and all of these issues solve themselves.

I wanted to mention that while some like to configure the robots.txt to block /modules/ that's not a good idea. If you want to block access to specific modules and links, identify them specifically. Also if you are not blocking Googlebots from anything, remove the reference completely from your robots.txt.

I suspect the non-compliant functions on your homepage are part of this, but more, I suspect that having no original content is also contributing. Finally, because Google is changing the nature of their bots and their algorithms that probably is contributing as well. In closing, I want to finally mention that Google is really concerned about sites that target them for a ranking and that employ pagerank type software. My search engine contact at DMOZ is telling me that google is now actively looking for pagerank tools on websites and is de-listing all that employ them. They actually give a warning about this now at their "about" page. I would be careful not to employ tools that analyze pageranks as you could find yourself in that group.

Just a heads-up.
Steph

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 2:02 pm

Quote:

that google is now actively looking for pagerank tools on websites

I dont quite know what u mean by that....
Using a page rank tool to scan SEs to find your rank (I do know from experiance if u use these and hit Google around the 1000 times in a 24 hr period ...say scan 10 search parameters for the top 100 ranks from the same ip)
OR do u mean a page rank tool as part of a web site? can u give an example?

Quote:

some like to configure the robots.txt to block /modules/ that's not a good idea

I have been, over the last 9 months trying stuff, then purposly killing our ranking try new stuff, getting back up to top 1 or 3. the default robots.txt is next to useless for effective SEO...from my playing the /modules does effect how a site is indexed and what is indexed.