Hi,

I'm have a strange problem with my Spanish web directory & community
site (http://www.viva-almeria.com) and would really appreciate some help.

Problem summary
---------------
- Google recognises aproximately 5000 pages on the site.
- I noticed recently that a large proportion of the pages were recognised by Google as links, but no longer had the title / text etc.. (and thus no longer showed up on any searches)

What I did initially
--------------------
At one point it got down to just 400 pages being properly indexed, so I searched around on other forums and e-mailed Google.

Google said that this was due to the pages being dynamically generated. It's true that the pages are generated (and end in a
.php) BUT the pages had been fully captured before AND the pages don't have variable parameters (just, say
www.viva-almeria.com/ShowPage_P188.php). Thus I don't think it was this.

Advice in posts on forums has seemed hit and miss, as follows ...
- Some said that this just happens comes & goes.
- Some siad that Google would only pick up a certain number of pages depending on how highly rated the site is (but then my page rank hasn't gone down and the pages indexed suddenly started dropping).
- Some said that page redirects could mean a site was penalised and less pages cached.

I did have redirects on the site (this was because pages often get added and deleted, so when someone tried to access a deleted page I redirected them to the home). So I removed these and replaced with pages saying 'sorry no longer exists', a link to the home and the NOINDEX and NOFOLLOW set to let Google know this page should no longer be recognised.

After a few weeks, this seemed to do the trick and the numbers started rising steadily again (2000 out of 5000 properly indexed).

It's still not working
----------------------
However in the last few days it's taken a turn for the worse again (down to 1500 two days ago and yesterday down to 800) and I can't think why.



If anyone reading this can help, any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Mike

No idea, but I'm in a similar situation...

on doing a site: search for www.short-story.net I get 174 pages (many without title & description, which is fair enough in most cases). Trouble is, Google seems to have removed my main page. Index.html doesn't exist on their index any more. I have no idea how/why, as it was there 2 weeks ago!

Originally Posted by Marc Timberlake

No idea, but I'm in a similar situation...

on doing a site: search for www.short-story.net I get 174 pages (many without title & description, which is fair enough in most cases). Trouble is, Google seems to have removed my main page. Index.html doesn't exist on their index any more. I have no idea how/why, as it was there 2 weeks ago!

This is penalty for sure.
Reason in most cases - big amount of very similar pages, or structure of site is very similar to link directory, everything is automated (Add your link, Full link details, Add your comment and so on).
With your site - really strange, but it seems you've got under this new filter, guilty in second reason.

there is quite a few pages on the site, but no two pages are the same. It is purely a short story site, and not a link directory in any shape or form.... in fact I think there's only around 20 links on the site (and the link pages appear in the Google index)

It's really quite odd

Originally Posted by Marc Timberlake

there is quite a few pages on the site, but no two pages are the same. It is purely a short story site, and not a link directory in any shape or form.... in fact I think there's only around 20 links on the site (and the link pages appear in the Google index)

It's really quite odd

I saw your site, I understand you. But the situation is the same - your site have been penilized. What for - nobody knows exactly, I just said you my ideas. Maybe will pass time and your site will be back. But if you will see, that all your pages disappeared from index at all - it's a big problem. I afraid you will have to rebuild all your site on other engine.

About pages, that are the same - for Google there is no need for pages to be absolutely identical, to be marked as "similar". Enough that structure looked like. That's it. You have "add your story" page, you have "link exchange" phrase and so on. Weird, but we see the fact.

I've emailed them a couple of times, but no answer yet....

The rest of the site is still indexed by Google, it's just the main page that has vanished from their listing