You’re not blocking their bot with some plugin or the htaccess file are you?
Thanks for the reply pizdin_dim.
” You’re not blocking their bot with some plugin or the htaccess file are you? “
Unfortunately, I don’t think so. At least one of the sites expeiriencing this problem has no plugins activated. I’ve never modified the htaccess files, so they probably didn’t cause the sudden drop from the Google index. Is there something WordPress or my host (Dreamhost) could have done to the htaccess files that could cause these problems but that I would not have otherwise noticed?
Again whats really puzzeling here is that Google webmaster tools says the site is indexed, but then searching directly for bowdoingourmet.com or site:bowdoingourmet.com gives 0 results.
Interestingly, searching for cache:www.bowdoingourmet.com prodcues a cached copy of the site, showing that Google has crawled and processed the site.
I also found that the sites are dropped from the other major search engines.
What else do we think could be cuasing this problem?
“I also found that the sites are dropped from the other major search engines.”
That’s a worry. Have you looked at your domain’s access logs to see the last time googlebot, msnbot and yahoo slurp visited? It may give you (or your host) a clue about what changes may have occured prior to that.
I haven’t encountered this type of a problem before so I’m not sure what else to suggest. Have you contacted the search engine people and asked why?
I dont understand, why doesnt anyone have a solution to these problems?
I’ve posted on webmasterworld and google webmaster forum and no one knows the answer to this issue of google dropping pages from search results.
This is extremely frustrating when you have 30 posts on your site and only 4 appear on search results.
That’s funny – I just did a Google search for “bowdoingourmet.com” and you’re number one.
“Bowdoin Gourmet” also gives you as number one.
I *will* say this, though. You only have *one* incoming link. Anyone with *any* SEO experince at all will tell you that putting up a site is not going to give you instant results. Or rather yeah, it will – a new site always gets ranked highly, but over time, it will quickly fall as others take it’s place.
If you want to *keep* your high rank, you need to do some marketing. Popping a website online isn’t the only thing to do – and if you think it is, then you’re going to get a wake-up call real fast.
I would recommend starting with Jill Whalen’s High Rankings website. This is one of the number one people out there for SEO, and she provides her information for free. Eat it up. There’s more to ranking than putting up a page and crossing your fingers.
Have you talked to Google about the issue? Drop them an email and see if they reply. They have on occasion.
