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Can 404 Errors Get You Sandboxed??

by seolearner09
11 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi

I recently lost all my rankings for an almost 100 page site (over a dozen keywords on page one). My site is still indexed, however, the pages checked so far are on the very last page. Even typing my domain name into the search box, does not produce a result.

I looked in my Webmaster tools, and found one 'soft 404 error'. This seems to be in my 'contact us' page.

Can one 404 error cause a website to be sandboxed (if this term does really exist!!)??

Any help much appriciated.
#404 #errors #sandboxed
  • Profile picture of the author webber1
    Hi mate no this would not be the reason. I have several sites with soft 404s. This not the reason why it has disappeared. It will be something else...most likely your linkbuilding technique...
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    • Profile picture of the author seolearner09
      Originally Posted by webber1 View Post

      ...most likely your linkbuilding technique...
      This may perhaps be likely...... possibly...

      For about 12 months, my link building for this site was pretty much consistent across the pages I was targeting (about 20-60 links per week). The backlinks were varied, however, more weight was with profile type links.

      About 2 months ago, I added some blogroll links to the site (from 2 sites). One was from a homepage PR 4 and one from PR 7 home page. The PR 7 homepage blogroll link was removed by the website owner about 3 weeks back (he made major changes to the site, with most of his pages now returning 404 errors).

      At the same time this blogroll link was removed, I added another blogroll (from a PR 2 homepage site) to my site. However, this blogroll link has almost 2000 pages indexed, and my backlink count in Yahoo explorer (in firefox- SEOquake) shot up like a bullit within 10 days.

      Funny thing is, I have another site that is about 2 months old, and I used this same blogroll link site to add links to my new site (about 2 months old). This site seems also sandboxed, as it has been on the very last page now for about 2 weeks (after dancing initially for a few weeks as I also add other types of links- articles,profiles,blogs etc).

      Like you say, it may be this sudden influx of linkbuilding for these two sites. All my other sites are fine (so far!).

      However, I don't want to guess what the problem could be. It could perhaps not be the linkbuilding, maybe my affilate links on the pages (which are all nofollow) after a manual review. Maybe my competitors did something, could be anything.

      I would like it to be the linkbuilding, as I will then know to keep it balanced and consistent like my other sites, but how can one be sure!
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  • Profile picture of the author DireStraits
    Originally Posted by seolearner09 View Post

    Hi

    I recently lost all my rankings for an almost 100 page site (over a dozen keywords on page one). My site is still indexed, however, the pages checked so far are on the very last page. Even typing my domain name into the search box, does not produce a result.

    I looked in my Webmaster tools, and found one 'soft 404 error'. This seems to be in my 'contact us' page.

    Can one 404 error cause a website to be sandboxed (if this term does really exist!!)??

    Any help much appriciated.
    This is unlikely to be the reason.

    How old is your site, and what is the strength of your competition?
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    • Profile picture of the author seolearner09
      Originally Posted by DireStraits View Post

      This is unlikely to be the reason.

      How old is your site, and what is the strength of your competition?
      Hi

      The site is about 15 months old.

      Strength of competition for some keywords is low, and took me about 1-3 months to reach the top positions (1-5).

      For some keywords, competition is strong and took me about 6-9 months to get to page one.
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  • Profile picture of the author reddiep
    This is unlikely. Over time, if google can't find a page that was previously indexed, that page's url will be removed from the index.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jonathan Beaton
    Without knowing any other facts, I would say it is 100% was your link building campaign.

    If your amount of inbound links shot up quickly and they came from area that Google already determined to be a bad neighborhood, that is enough to get banned.
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    • Profile picture of the author seolearner09
      Originally Posted by SpendTooMuchTimeOnline View Post

      Google already determined to be a bad neighborhood, that is enough to get banned.
      The backlinks were not coming from bad sites. These were sites with all unique posts on them and there seems to be no indication or signals they were/are bad sites.
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      • Profile picture of the author paulgl
        Asking this question is like asking if I leave my unicorn out in the snow,
        will it get sick. Since there are no unicorns....

        Websites return 404 errors all the time. It's not a big deal, unless
        it's pages you swear are there and now they are really gone.

        Unicorns exist in the sandbox.

        Paul
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        If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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      • Profile picture of the author Jonathan Beaton
        Originally Posted by seolearner09 View Post

        The backlinks were not coming from bad sites. These were sites with all unique posts on them and there seems to be no indication or signals they were/are bad sites.
        Blog networks are next on Google's spam hit list. Just because the content is "quality" does not mean the links are good.
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        • Profile picture of the author seolearner09
          I have had a 'Robots.txt file' in my adsence account (site diagnostics) saying the URL is blocked (the reason being the robots.txt file). The last crawl attempt is the same day my rankings disappeard. I do not have any robots.txt file in my website (in any directory)!!!

          Now I am really confused!!
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  • Profile picture of the author First Hundred Dollars
    Yeah I agree it's the you way you build your links. Must be in with a bad neighborhood. It happened to one of my sites last year. I was in hurry to build links and it worked at the start but eventually Google caught up with me.
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