I am pulling my hair out!!! What did I do to get Slapped in the Face by Google???

[sam770]

One of my sites deals with children, babies and motherhood...
The site is about 1 years old and it is growing very nicely with traffic, all the content in the site is 100% original, high quality and relevant to my niche.
I am using AdSense on this site and I also use some Amazon affiliate links.

However, a few of my hot pages all of sudden got cut from Google's index while most of the pages are still crawled. This drastically cut the volume of traffic to my site and I simply don't know why Google did this?????

EVERY LITTLE PIECE OF CONTENT IN THIS SITE IS LEGIT, NO SHADY STUFF, NO TRICKS... SIMPLY NOTHING!!!!!

Can someone tell me what could be going on here?
Did someone here experience something similar and can tell me what to expect now?

Again, just to make it clear, the site is not sandboxed, most of the pages on my site are still coming up in the search results, only a few of my hot pages where completely cut out of the Google index for no reason...

Appreciate your input...

Sam's Wife

[Bill_Z]

Are you saying that some pages got deindexed? Or simply they are not ranking anymore for their keywords? If you think they are deindexed, when you do a search for yourdomain.com/whateverpage it's not showing in search results? If it shows in search results, it's still in the index.

When did this happen?

Have you changed anything recently?

Do you actively build links to the site?

[RylanClayne]

Hey Sam770 do not worry. The fact that your site is still indexed usually means that your 'hot' pages are probably experiencing what is commonly known as the google dance.

I would continue doing what you are doing, build good content and continue your SEO activities as per normal. Its very possible when your pages come back they will actually be in a better position than they were when they left. I would concentrate less on worrying about this and more now on building new 'hot pages' and even building more sites if that is indeed your objective.

[sam770]

The few hot pages did not only lose their rank for the keywords they completely disapeared from the search results, completely gone!
I haven't done any big changes, the pages remain the same and the link building is very slow without any bigger changes, only quality links, no mass automated stuff or anything like that...

Originally Posted by Bill_Z

Are you saying that some pages got deindexed? Or simply they are not ranking anymore for their keywords? If you think they are deindexed, when you do a search for yourdomain.com/whateverpage it's not showing in search results? If it shows in search results, it's still in the index.

When did this happen?

Have you changed anything recently?

Do you actively build links to the site?

[sam770]

Thanks for your support Rylan, I sure hope that you are right!

Did you go through this type of scenario with a site that was not sandboxed and showing up in the results apart from a few pages that were completely gone from the index?

Originally Posted by RylanClayne

Hey Sam770 do not worry. The fact that your site is still indexed usually means that your 'hot' pages are probably experiencing what is commonly known as the google dance.

I would continue doing what you are doing, build good content and continue your SEO activities as per normal. Its very possible when your pages come back they will actually be in a better position than they were when they left. I would concentrate less on worrying about this and more now on building new 'hot pages' and even building more sites if that is indeed your objective.

[onlinebizgiant]

Never ever rely on Google if you like to have constant traffic, I was in Page 1 for some keywords for months and I suddenly saw I am nowhere, then I completely turn out from Google. So in my experience we should control our site not Google.

[sam770]

Thanks for this comment,
So what effective ways do you suggest to get a decent amount of free traffic without optimizing the content for Google?

Originally Posted by onlinebizgiant

Never ever rely on Google if you like to have constant traffic, I was in Page 1 for some keywords for months and I suddenly saw I am nowhere, then I completely turn out from Google. So in my experience we should control our site not Google.

[JRemington]

Originally Posted by sam770

Thanks for this comment,
So what effective ways do you suggest to get a decent amount of free traffic without optimizing the content for Google?

The point is really that relying on this traffic is risky.

If you sell your own products you use advertising to get traffic, if you like.

For your business model, it relies on Google to deliver traffic. So unless you have great link-building techniques and a syndication network, presence on facebook and twitter and a good email list, you'll always be at the mercy of Google.

See if you can incorporate some of the above into your site.

[davemiz]

check out this page for tips on your situation:
Google Penalty Check | Google Penalty Recovery Advice

i found good stuff in there.

[DudeAndy]

I recently had a similar problem, one of my websites started to de-index from Google. Turns out my robots.txt was blocking search engines. So if you think you are clean and did nothing illegal, maybe you did something wrong.

[NicoleBeckett]

Originally Posted by sam770

So what effective ways do you suggest to get a decent amount of free traffic without optimizing the content for Google?

There are all kinds of things you can do, like:

1. Getting your articles syndicated (meaning you'll need high-quality articles that people will want to re-publish on their own sites, not just any ol' thing)

2. Publishing guest posts on popular blogs in your niche, or writing guest posts for popular websites in your niche (like SiteProNews, if you're in the IM niche)

3. Joining forums and becoming a valued member of the site (this is also a great way to build relationships with other site owners in your niche/related niches, so that you can help your efforts in #1 and 2)

4. Sign your blog up for RSS feeds for added exposure

5. Start collecting subscribers and build an email list


As you're painfully learning right now, when your entire business depends on Google's whims, the bottom can fall out in an instant. Yes, keep optimizing your content for good keywords, so that you can get bonus traffic from the search engines. Just make sure you're doing plenty of other things that get eyeballs on your name, your link, and your expertise - rather than just search engine spiders.

[jamesquin]

Originally Posted by sam770

One of my sites deals with children, babies and motherhood...
The site is about 1 years old and it is growing very nicely with traffic, all the content in the site is 100% original, high quality and relevant to my niche.
I am using AdSense on this site and I also use some Amazon affiliate links.

However, a few of my hot pages all of sudden got cut from Google's index while most of the pages are still crawled. This drastically cut the volume of traffic to my site and I simply don't know why Google did this?????

EVERY LITTLE PIECE OF CONTENT IN THIS SITE IS LEGIT, NO SHADY STUFF, NO TRICKS... SIMPLY NOTHING!!!!!

Can someone tell me what could be going on here?
Did someone here experience something similar and can tell me what to expect now?

Again, just to make it clear, the site is not sandboxed, most of the pages on my site are still coming up in the search results, only a few of my hot pages where completely cut out of the Google index for no reason...

Appreciate your input...

Sam's Wife

I've had this several times with sites and every time the ranking has returned.

[Andrew Maule]

Build more websites to diversify your risk.

[zaco]

I am not an expert but try to check the backlinks for the hot pages, maybe a competitor posted your links in suspicious websites to take you down "conspiracy theory" lol but it might happen..