I Sense a Disturbance in the Force...

[NetWorth]

Yesterday I noticed that all 60 of my WP Sites have either been de-indexed or pushed from the 1 st 2nd or 3rd page to the 10th page? I have watched sites bounce around before but normally it's a site or two not all of them at once. I figured this morning things would be back to normal but that's not the case. When exactly should I start freaking out???

Thanks,

NW

[NetWorth]

If anyone out there can help me out or if you have had the same experience I would really appreciate some kind of response and or input. I'm trying to stay calm(because I have seen rankings bounce around before bet never every site at once!) but there was a lot of work and money that I have put into these and to see all of them drop the same day at the same time is a little unnerving.

[TomBond]

I've had the same thing happen.. Check your webmaster tools account for each site and it may give you an indication why.

Most my site are one pagers with a Adsense heavy theme on them. I'm going to revert them all to the standard Wordpress theme (no adsense) and ask for reinclusion.

[nettech]

Sorry but I got to ask the obvious questions,

Have you interlinked the sites?
Are these 'proper' sites or just 1 pagers?
Are they all hosted on the same server?
Have you engaged in anything you should't have?
Have you tried to build links too fast?

I wouldn't panic just yet but I'd certainly be very concerned!

Zaheer

[paulgl]

The first thing you should ask yourself is,
"Are my sites worth anything in value to a visitor?"

Is it unique, valuable content, or just nonsense rehashed.

I could not possibly keep up with 60 sites.

Paul

[Zeus66]

Originally Posted by paulgl

The first thing you should ask yourself is,
"Are my sites worth anything in value to a visitor?"

Is it unique, valuable content, or just nonsense rehashed.

I could not possibly keep up with 60 sites.

Paul

This is correct. Think like someone working for Google who reviews sites. If you have nothing but nonsense just to fill up a page of content, you're asking for de-indexing. If your content is genuinely useful to the visitor and isn't just a bunch of duplicated stuff you got somewhere else or scraped from Yahoo Answers, etc., you'll be ok.

Remember, Google's stated goal on their own site is to give the user the best results and the best experience. Follow their lead and you'll stay in their good graces.

John

[NetWorth]

I thank all of you for your input... This is why I love this forum! To answer some of the questions.

Many of them are 1 pagers... (However even those with 5 or more pages were hurt badly)

No black hat techniques were used.

They were all with the same hosting company

I didn't back link to quickly or purchase backlinks

All content was original and beneficial not garbage.

Some of them were interlinked. I had 5 sites on a specific products withen a clothing brand so if they were about the same brand they were linked but others were not.

They have adsense on most of them but not all.

Some were not monetized at all

When I start rebuilding them them will they come back quickly (3 to 5 months) or will it take a year before google reconsiders them?

What is my best plan of attack from here?

Thanks in Advance
Aaron

[GeorgR.]

Originally Posted by NetWorth

Yesterday I noticed that all 60 of my WP Sites have either been de-indexed or pushed from the 1 st 2nd or 3rd page to the 10th page? I have watched sites bounce around before but normally it's a site or two not all of them at once. I figured this morning things would be back to normal but that's not the case. When exactly should I start freaking out???

Thanks,

NW

did you interlink them? By the way..how should we know? We dont know your sites...

[NetWorth]

Hey George...
If you read my above post only 5 of them were interlinked and I was just looking for a little advice as to whether or not any of you have had the same experience.

As to...

"By the way..how should we know? We dont know your sites..."

If you don't have some constructive criticism no need to comment... Others have offered plenty of ideas and speculation that I greatly appreciate!

[GeorgR.]

We can WASTE time with speculations or "ideas"...but this is not constructive.

I said that because sometimes a quick look at a site has all the answers already. You could have the ***iest adsense site and wondering why you got problems - but how can someone know without knowing your sites?

[dburk]

Hi Aaron,

If your websites are all on the same host you may have suffered from a network outage during the last crawl. If your link building techniques for all of your websites are basically the same, then it could be a recent algorithm change.

The bottom line is that if it is affecting all of your websites then you need to be looking at what they all have in common.

[cashcow]

Adsense is a pretty big footprint, so if one of your sites came under suspicion, Big G can easily find the others whether you have linked them together or not.

If for some reason, your sites got a manual review, then I am willing to bet that a 1 page site is a big red flag for the reviewers. I could be wrong, but that's what I'd do if I were Google.

Just my 2 cents.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by cashcow

I am willing to bet that a 1 page site is a big red flag for the reviewers.

Actually, there are a lot of valuable 1 page sites, typically reports and such. Some of these will have an Adsense block along with useful info. I would post some examples but I'm tired of "Groundhog Day" topics and I don't want to start yet another one along the lines of duplicate content, building links too fast or .info domains.

But, to get to the original question...

If sites were visually inspected this inspection is typically 30 seconds or less and based heavily on the look of a site. Content doesn't seem to be considered at this stage although it may be used to put together a list of sites to inspect (ie looking for Yahoo Answers, Wikipedia and other commonly scraped content). It's also very likely if there's something that links the domains, such as an Adsense or Analytics account or the same hosting/domain information, they'll be bulk deindexed with no visual inspection at all.

The bad news is that if this is what happened, getting the domains reindexed will be next to impossible. It's even likely to be next to impossible for the poor person who buys them after you drop them and they're deleted from the ICANN domain registry. It sucks, but that's the way the IM ball bounces for those of us who don't have 7 figures in Silicon Valley venture capital money.

As for what to do, watch them closely over the next few weeks to see if they come back. If the problem is caused by hosting problems or something like that rather than a manual penalty deindex your domains will come back. Just treat things normally, get links, add content and so forth (I'm taking you at your word you weren't doing anything bad). If the sites aren't back in the index within about 4-6 weeks, setup a webmaster tools account for one of them and see if that tells you anything. You could do this sooner but my inclination is to wait and see.

[NetWorth]

I would like to thank everyone that took the time out to comment. They have reentered the realm of the living as of this morning but thanks to the comments from the crowd here I will be altering some of what I do in hopes of providing a little more piece of mind against something like this happening in the future.

Thanks!

[Groovystar]

60 websites? Geez, I cannot even keep up with just one! Or do you mean 60 pages all connected to 1 site?

Glad to hear they are all back where they should be though

[jacksonlin]

My SERPs are jumping up and down like crazy too.

My sites are not 1 page sites.

At minimum there are 20 pages, so you're not the only one that has this issue.

Others care to share?

[cashcow]

Actually, there are a lot of valuable 1 page sites, typically reports and such. Some of these will have an Adsense block along with useful info.

Yes, I do agree with this but I was thinking that maybe something like building a bunch of sites in small amount of time, or certain elements on the site might flag a manual review and then one of the things they would look for might be if it is a 1 page site.

Do you think that's probably not the case, though?

I'm just thinking out loud because it seems that there has been quite a few threads about people with lots of sites getting most of them de-indexed and have a 1 page (or just a few pages) seems to be a common theme.

BTW - I don't necessarily think a 1 page site isn't of value either, it just depends on what is on it.

[thebitbotdotcom]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

It's also very likely if there's something that links the domains, such as an Adsense or Analytics account or the same hosting/domain information, they'll be bulk deindexed with no visual inspection at all.

That is a very good point. I am sure that this phenomenon is fairly widespread. Couldn't you just see the engineers at Google looking at a report that queries a parallel between adsense impressions and links saying: "Look at what these fools are trying to do."

[howdo-i]

Google has deindexed several of my sites at some point. One domain had been indexed for about a year then deindexed for 2 years. It's now been indexed again for a year but I can't get anything to rank in the serps. Yahoo yes, Bing yes, Google no. You just can't rely on Google.

[joetheseo]

Originally Posted by howdo-i

Google has deindexed several of my sites at some point. One domain had been indexed for about a year then deindexed for 2 years. It's now been indexed again for a year but I can't get anything to rank in the serps. Yahoo yes, Bing yes, Google no. You just can't rely on Google.

I've never had a site completely de-indexed from the SERPS... That means a human came to your site, determined it was not worthy of being on Google SERPS, and manually de-indexed it?

Something tells me there's more to this story...

FYI : Google Traffic > Yahoo and Bing Traffic