"My Site Disappeared From Google!" - Da Horror

One of the most horrifying experiences you can have as an internet marketer is watching your website pull a “Houdini” and completely disappear from Google’s search results. This can lead you to a frantic search on Google (or any other search engine) for answers as to why “my site disappeared from Google”. Hopefully I can offer some helpful insight and possibly even set your mind at ease about this situation, which I have experienced many times in my 4 years of internet marketing. Now I don’t claim to know as much as some SEO experts out there, especially when it comes to the mathematical complexities of Google’s search algorithm, nor do I know the fullness of the “secret sauce” combination of elements that Google uses to determine search rankings. BUT, one thing I do know is simply this—crap happens, and it’s not so much the fact that it happened, but rather what you’re going to DO about it from this moment forward, that matters. If your site was once indexed by Google but now it’s gone, you may want to ask yourself some basic questions about what may have caused the change in the way Google views the importance of your site. Truth be told, if Google does not esteem a website as important, they will darn sure not index it or rank it to any significant degree. So, in an effort to help kick-start your mind and get those SEO gears turning, I’ll offer a few questions for you to consider:

1. Did you check past page 1 of the search results? Sometimes your site didn’t actually “disappear” from the search results—you may have gotten bumped down in the rankings, and now you’re on page 2, or 4, or 10, or even lower. I personally consider my site as having disappeared if it’s not on page 1, because hardly anybody looks past page 1 when they’re performing Google searches anyway. So even if your site got bumped to page 2, this is still not a very encouraging prospect due to the potential of absolutely zero visibility, but at least it’s better than being completely de-indexed.

A note before I go on: One thing I can’t stand is a bunch of stupid little SEO tools that show your rank, your competition’s rankings, your backlink count, your competition’s backlink count, etc…it’s all a freakin’ waste of time. Bottom line, if you’re not on page 1 of the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages), you’re basically a non-factor. You’re really not even in the game. So write content and backlink your anus off until you get on Page 1 again for your targeted keywords. And how will you know when that happens? When you see your site on Page 1 again. I don’t mean to sound insulting, but it’s just the truth. That will save you a lot of time with pseudo-detective work that really doesn’t contribute to your productivity.

2. Did you go out and get a whole bunch of crappy links in a very short period of time? Sometimes Google will put you in the “holding tank” when you accumulate a lot of backlinks (especially low-quality backlinks) in a very short span of time. Some call it being in the “sandbox”. Whatever name it goes by, it means that you are all of a sudden invisible in the search results. Now this is all very relative, based on the age of the domain of your site, based on the age of the site content itself (i.e., how long ago it was published to the Web), based on the total amount of content on the site, etc., etc. Lots of factors go into how Google judges whether the links you’re getting (and the speed at which you’re getting them) are legitimate or not. Long story short, it’s better to accumulate links on a slow & steady basis, although it’s a huge pain in the butt to do so.

3. Did you make any major changes to the layout, content, usability, etc., of the site? Sometimes the algorithm has to do a little “shuffle” as it gets used to the new structure of your site. The bots will crawl it again and find something totally different, so naturally it will have to recalculate a lot of ranking factors when this happens. I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me. I would change the links on a blogroll, or delete a post from a blog, or add an extra product page to a site, or change the order of links on a menu, etc., and it would just vanish from the SERPS. Then, a couple of days (or weeks) later, it would surface again, many times in a better position than before. Don’t sweat the small stuff…just let the algorithm do its job. If your focus is on building a quality site, it will work out better for you in the long run.

4. Are you obsessing about this one site because it’s the only one you have? This can surely lead to over-tweaking and trying to adjust every little thing on your site on a non-stop basis, which keeps the bots in a constant state of confusion. My personal philosophy (and you can take it or leave it) is to build WIDE. I mean tons of sites. Part of this is due to the fact that I just don’t like to pay attention to one thing for too long of a time (I’ll get bored otherwise). Nowadays, I’ll build a blog with several pages of content, let it sit there for a few months as I build other sites, completely forget about it, and then revisit it once it’s aged and has gained trust with the search engines due it its age. There’s a WHOLE lot that can be said for just good old-fashioned patience in this game.

Sorry that I didn’t give you any overly-technical checklist of site tweaks that you can perform to keep your site indexed by Google. One thing is for darn sure—slow and steady ALWAYS wins the race. One site I had disappeared after being number one for a very competitive term…at first I was bummed out, but then I decided to not do ONE SINGLE THING about it. In about a month, it was back on page 1, and has been there ever since. The bottom line to what I’m saying is that the more experience you gain in internet marketing, the more you realize that you shouldn’t sweat all this small stuff. Just remember—quality backlinks still rule the day, tons of content is better than a small amount of content, and patience is KING. Delivering actual value on your site will always come back to bless you in the long run.