Home Domains What To Do When Your Site Gets Dropped From Google

What To Do When Your Site Gets Dropped From Google

by Mike Sullivan

Do you have any domains that don’t seem to be indexed in Google?  Maybe they were at one time, but then for some reason they were dropped.  Maybe you have a site parked or a mini site with duplicate content.  Maybe you’re violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.  Perhaps you just purchased a name from some else and they were previously de-indexed for one reason or another.  It’s happened to me on more than one occasion.  But what can you do?

Step one is to review your site to see what may have caused this.  Usually, the reasons are obvious as outlined above.  Once you’ve done that, you’ll want to contact Google for reconsideration of your site.  This is done by submitting a Reconsideration Request form at Google.  But first, make sure you add and verify the site in your Google Webmaster Tools account.

When submitting the request, it’s important to be honest and provide evidence of the situation and corrections you have made to the site.  Let Google know if recently purchased the domain or if you have corrected issues, and include URLs where possible.  These forms are reviewed by a team of actually people that will check your submission.  Any dishonesty will get your request discarded.

I’ve heard reports of seeing improvements in a few days but in most cases it will be several weeks before you start to see improvements.  Good luck, and let me know how it goes.

Related Articles

15 comments

Sri October 29, 2010 - 7:13 am

Few months back, I purchased Caribbeans.org and at that time, the previous owner had it parked at WhyPark (pun unintended).

The site had a few WhyPark pages indexed at that time. After transfer to me, I setup a social networking site. Subsequently the site got de-indexed.

When I noticed this a couple of months back, I added and verified the site’s URL in Google webmaster portal and submitted a request. The site is back on the Google index now with my content and at a very good position, next only to Wikipedia. Surprisingly, all this while the site was in the top 5 positions on Yahoo and Bing.

Reply
Mike Sullivan October 29, 2010 - 7:16 am

@Sri, that’s great to hear. How long did it take before you noticed results? I have an Amazon affiliate domain that is not indexed in Google, yet ranks well in Yahoo and Bing. Different set of standards, for sure.

Reply
Sri October 30, 2010 - 1:55 am

@Mike,

The request was accepted within one month of application. I do hope it will grow to be a popular social network for Caribbeans. I am using WordPress platform and BuddyPress plugin.

Google doesn’t take kindly to affiliate sites I believe, which I would say is plain business logic. If I were selling ad spots why would I let the leads go elsewhere?

Reply
Mike Sullivan October 30, 2010 - 3:03 pm

@Sri, One month is reasonable, all things considered.

Reply

Leave a Comment