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How to Tell
If Your Site Has Been Dropped From the Google Index
Dropped Versus
Not Ranking Well
Many people think
they have been banned in Google when in fact they just are
simply not ranking well, or in some cases their sites have
never been in the index at all. There is a big difference
between getting a few searches a day from Google and being
dropped entirely. If your statistics programs show that
your are getting any Google referrals at all, then in my
experience this means your site has not been banned. (It
may have a penalty which prevents it from ranking better
than it could, but referrals mean it has not been banned.)
To find out if
your site has been dropped from Google, type your URL into
the Google search box. If your site is in the index, you
will get back a message that says:
"Google
can show you the following information for this URL:"
If your site
is not in the index, you will get a message that says:
"Sorry,
no information is available for the URL".
Even if you get
the "Sorry" message, it may not mean your site
has been banned. Some other reasons your site may not be
indexed are:
- Your site
is new and has not been found yet.
- You have a
small site with few links, it may have just not been included
in the latest round of updates.
- Your site
may also have been dropped if it was down when Google
tried to crawl it last.
- Some people
have had their sites dropped due to technical issues with
their web host. In this case changing host can sometimes
help.
- I had one
small hobby site on a free host that got dropped, and
at first I could not figure out why. The site didn't have
anything dodgy on it, it had a DMOZ listing and some nice
links from authority sites. Upon further investigation
I realized that the free web hosting site itself was dropped
from Google for some reason, and my site just got dropped
along with everyone else's.
If your site
is new, you may just need to get more links in order for
Google to find it.
If your dropped
site was previously indexed, but had code that violated
Google's webmaster guidelines, then there is a good chance
that your site was banned for spamming. Even if this has
happened, it may still be possible to get reinstated. Just
clean up anything dodgy, and then wait and maybe you will
get back in. It might help to add some new content pages
and get some links from trusted sources. You can also send
an email to Google support with a reinclusion request. In
this email you would explain what you did wrong, what you
cleaned up and politely asked to have your site reincluded.
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