Website dropped from Google #1 to Bumblef**nowhere - My Story

[BigG95]

This is what happened to 5 of my websites, just recently:

All of them had Google Page 1 positions, one had been on Page 1 No.1 for almost 2 years now.

One day 2 weeks back, my #1 site disappeared off of google, as well as 4 others.

There was no change in yahoo and bing.

After checking Webmaster tools, I saw, that Google Bot could not find my robots.txt anymore.

Robots.txt unreachable, but it was there. They are all wordpress sites and wordpress has a virtual robots.txt.

What the heck?

As google started to deindex my sites, I frantically posted in google forum, wordpress forum and here.

I also contacted my host.

After days in agony I kind of found out what happened, not why, but what.

For some reason my host blocked google bot. They removed the block, but I still had one site google bot would not access.

I asked my host again to backcheck and they did.

Here is their email:

A check of the logs shows that Googlebot was re-banned by an automated system. This system was removed as it was obviously malfunctioning.

Weird part, though:

Out of despair, I reentered my sites in Webmaster Tools as www.mysite.com (I had them as mysite.com)

NOW some of the www. robots.txt files google bot could read, while it still could not find the robots.txt for the mysite.com.

Except for one site, where Google Bot could not find the robots.txt neither on the www. not on the mysite.com.

Anyway, I just checked and google bot accessed all now and I am waiting to hopefully see them back up soon.

Google -by the way- suggests to enter the site in webmaster tools as both, www. and mysite.com. But don't forget to set a preferred one, because if you don't, they will treat them as 2 different sites, which means duplicate content, big NO NO.

[goodmast3r]

Never heard that kind of thing. I think you should change your hosting. That's a very strange behaviour

[BigG95]

It is indeed, I am with Hostgator, been with them for years and they were really helpful, they probably just had a bug in their system.

Unlucky me

[goodmast3r]

I'm with HostGator too. Never had that problem before. I change my mind, you should stick with them

[jacked]

Who is your host? That is horrible service, I wouldn't let something like that go.

[BigG95]

I am with hostgator, as I said, the only reason I posted this is, so you know what to look for, should this ever happen to you. If I had known, what I know now, I would have contacted my host right away, instead of trying to figure out what went wrong for days.

[jrafique]

I just recently moved my sites to hostgator and one of my script stopped working. That script is still working on other hosts but not on hostgator.

I had a more than one hour session with hostgator customer service representative. But he could not resolve the issue.

I am certainly now going to change the host and searching for some new and reliable. Might be some VPS hosting.

[BigG95]

Well as I said, I've been with Hostgator for years and this was the first time I had issues. If it happens again, though, I will most definitely move. I heard good things about bluehost.

[yukon]

I've been with Hostgator a few years, all is good.

The only sites I use are Wordpress sites, never had a problem that wasn't my own fault. One time I screwed up a database hosted on hostgator, the live chat support had my site up & running in maybe 15min. max. They have awesome support.

[BigG95]

@yukon. I have to agree 100%, they were very helpful. I have no clue why it exactly happened or how, but it did, and it wasn't fun!

[seoFool]

Hi,

Change your host. Evaluate and forecast your lost income from this screwup and threaten to sue them if they don't compensate you that amount. If they don't compensate you, sue them in small claims court.