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HELP!! My websites were "down" for 6 months!!

by beel
6 replies
I hope this is in the right forum. I have several different websites that I developed over the past 10 years which generate passive income. They are all clean, legitimate sites with good content and incoming links that took years to build up. In the spring, I started a well paying job around the same time I did some housekeeping on my server - this is why I didn't realize this issue sooner.

The "spring cleaning" resulted in a deleted file which caused two of my sites to no longer be able to access the database server - thus they have been timing out or returning errors for the past 6 months. Obviously, I know this is really bad, but how bad is it? I have fixed everything now and they are back online, but am I totally screwed regarding google search results and rankings? Is there any hope for a comeback? I am so upset, especially because Google Webmaster Tools never send any kind of email notification that there was an issue. I know I cannot blame Google, as this is DEFINITELY my fault for being completely negligent for so long. I am just hoping that with some time, these two sites will eventually be able to work their way back up the ranks. They were both on page 1 results prior to this incident.

Has anyone had this experience before?
#months #websites
  • Profile picture of the author Sarevok
    Lol.

    I understand you're upset chief.

    Now, I can't tell you the longterm effects, but I can relate to this.

    Recently, one of my autoblogs (don't hate) had about 40k pages and had TONS of traffic and making a lot on adsense.

    BUT, with 40k pages and tons of code, my server company kept yelling at me.

    It wasn't worth upgrading server at this time (I have lots of other sites and sites I drive lots of traffic to).

    The point is that there are now 40k pages in google that are now "missing". (I took down the addon domain).

    So, it's been about a month now, and google still lists the sites, and I still have my pagerank, even though the site is missing.



    Now on to advice I can give you: Start building backlinks to your sites. This will help "wake it up" in terms of search engine acknowledgement.

    In any event, I feel your pain.
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  • Profile picture of the author magicmarcus
    contact your host or get a programmer... often times database issues can be fixed really quickly... unless you deleted the whole database.

    for the rankings... get a yahoo directory listing to the main site... should help you get spidered again... if google liked you before you should be up again over time.
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  • Profile picture of the author ashbaxter
    Do you have your sites verified in Webmaster Tools? If not, that's a quick and easy way to make sure that Google is crawling your pages, especially since you have so much content.
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    • Profile picture of the author beel
      Thanks for the replies. The sites are back up and running and my server is fine, do I don't think I need to contact my host or get a programmer. It was a simple mistake that was overlooked because I know longer rely on these sites for my income -- thank god. I would be flipping out right now otherwise.

      I have updated all of my sites in Google Webmaster Tools, added them to Bing Webmaster Tools, and have updated to all the most recent software, done some cleaning up, added a page or two of new contact. I am not sure what else I could do at this point but wait.

      I suppose I am curious if anyone else has done this sort of thing before. Has waiting eventually proved successful? What sort of timeframe are we looking at? Is there even a way to tell? Probably not, just looking for some additional info and insight while I sit back and wait.

      Thanks again for the responses.
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      • Profile picture of the author Fredbou
        If your rankings were good previously then there's no reason to think that they won't climb back to where they were.

        Google's algorithyms don't change that much. A good site will always be a good site in the eyes of the search engines.

        The people that scream the loudest about search engine victimisation are those who have the most to fear. I've been doing the search engine thing for 15 years and have seen the tricksters come and go, using nefarious methods to get good rankings. It works in the short term, but in the end the good guys win, lol!
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  • Profile picture of the author murtuza
    if you know the urls within your pages that you had before and you can start linking these urls again with few articles they might get back. Start posting content and start getting deep links as soon as you can as if you have your previous urls live your previous links will already be pointing there and this should pretty much get your site on track. This is my view...
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