Hi all,

I would like to bring up something Google related as I would like some guidance with what I consider a serious problem

3 weeks ago my website went offline for 7 days without warning. After I contacted my hosts technical support I was told it was due to an unpaid bill. No invoice had been sent out, they hadnt emailed me to request payment. Instead they just turned my site off as a way to inform me I had to renew my account.

I immediately paid to renew my account but still the site was not reactivated for 3 days.

When I regained access to my FTP etc I find that they have deleted everyone of my sites files and the user database for our message board. I had backups for both of these but that isn't really the point. Should they have been allowed to delete my files without warning?

As if that wasn't a headache enough, (the site going down just days after an album launch) I now find that my Google Placements have been hijacked by holding pages from the webhost.

Search for "izzy stradlin" in Google.com

My site used to sit at No. 2, as you can see it is now a holding page for "The-Haven.net", provided by Streamline and completely unrelated to Izzy Stradlin in general. To further prove the point, do a Google search for Chopaway.com (my site). The number 1 result is now "The-Haven.net" with the main page of my site not even being listed.

I having been arguing with my host about this, my site is losing a serious amounts of traffic (which I have monitored daily since the site launched using Google Analytics). The host is denying any error and says I should take this up with Google, who I'm sure couldnt give a toss about my small site.

Still, I feel cheated and would like some guidance. Were the hosts well within there right to turn off my site without warning? Have my results been hijacked or is it coincidence that Google has decided to drop my site and replace it with my hosts holding page?

Please advise If people here feel this is worth me pursuing then I would certainly be tempted to take it further. However if people here think I should just let it go I might just take your advice, Im sure Google will list my site back at the top soon enough.

Cheers,
Will

Your host hasn't actually hijacked your spot in Google results, but it wasn't coincidence. Because the site was down temporarily the last time Googlebot visited the site it found those holding pages. I'm guessing the host was redirecting your pages to the holding pages.

Should they have been doing that? Probably not. I think there were better ways for them to handle the situation. They are within their rights for closing your account. I'm sure it's in their terms of service that it's your responsibility to pay. Still I think they could have at least emailed or called before shutting the account down.

I would try talking to them and see if you can set something up with them so this doesn't happen again. If you're not satisfied with them you might want to move to another host.

It sounds like they didn't handle things the best way, but I don't have their side of the story to know. They might say they did try to email and call and you never responded. I'm not saying they did, just that I don't know.

As long as the site is back up Google should find it just like they did the first time. I won't guarantee you'll be ranked #2 for the same phrase because so many things can change, but if you don't find your self at #2 again it's not necessarily the hosts fault. There could be a lot of reasons for the change.

I hope that helps some.

You're right. Google won't care. As far as they're concerned, this is a matter between you and your host.

Your host was well within its right to shut you down for non-payment (it happens all the time), although they should have given you warning. I've been in your boat though, albeit not with a host, so I can't find fault.

Bite the bullet and pay whatever they want to put it back up for now, and make sure you pay them on time, even if they don't send you a bill. If it happens again, get a new host.

At any rate, your result hasn't been hijacked in all likelihood.

You've already been given good advice. I don't know any of the juicy details, and really don't care to, but plenty of hosts have a grace period. On the other hand, you tend to get a better deal by prepaying for a year of service, which saves a lot of headache.

If it took three days after you paid to get your site back up, that's not acceptable.

When I click your page in the search you linked to, I get a holding page. Is your site back online? Did your host 301 your URLs to their holding page, or...?

I would contact your host and ask them to do a redirect of the "holding page" to your main (index.php or index.html) page. This should restore the traffic in the short term. Be sure you send them the URL of the page listed in Google, or they will probably scratch their heads and disregard your email.

After Google spiders your site again, your site will probably be back to it's former glory. But, be prepared for a month or two of being shuffled up and down the results. That's just what happens when a page is "temporarily redirected" and then restored (at least that's been my experience).

I agree with all that has been said, just wanted to add that once you are live again you can help GoogleBot to come visit a little quicker by submitter each URL or at least each landing page to Google Here.

It is also helpful if you change something on each page you submit, in hopes of forcing Google to Re-cache.

Forcing Google to re-cache is just a theory out there, I don't necessarily think its very effective. However, submitting the URLs with some fresh keywords in the "comment" box will get you crawled.

Good luck
Baby
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Submitting your site to Google will not get them to visit your site faster. Submitting URLs to Google is a waste of your time. It does nothing.

Also if you took the time to read what's on the page about submissions you would see that even Google says you don't need to submit more than the top level page in your domain. Even that's a waste of time. If you add a link in your forum signature and make a few posts they'll find you faster.

Bummer of a situation Will.

The only thing I notice about this situation that intrigues me is: if they are willing to "re-open" your account and take "back-pay" for hosting services, they had the obligation to return the hosting account in it's former state. They also would owe you for any revenues they collected during the use of your traffic. The reason would be: they charged you for the server time while they redirected your traffic to their paying pages.

Another point: Whether you were late on payments or not, if they charged you for dead server time they should also have returned the server to you with files intact.

Obviously you can forget about recovering any revenues or satisfaction from these guys. If they truly were negligent in communicating with you prior to the shut-down I recommend the following:

a) Switch to a reputable hosting company that has more humane tactics for getting paid.

b) Remind them that their prehistoric collection tactics will be reported on in forums related to hosting.

The issue is if he has a tag telling Google to come back in say...30 days, then submitting the URL will bring a visit fairly quickly. I use this for updates, and usually see a visit in 2 or 3 days.. try it out.

I suggested submitting landing pages because lets face it Google doesn't always crawl what it should..and that would get them some exposure especially if they have already been de-indexed.

Yahoo is easy, just refresh your sitemap...and boom get crawled.

I don't suggest resubmitting your sitemap to Google...I lost ground in SERPs the time I had to do that. Updating it is good, but hardly ever brings a crawl.

Anyhow, doesn't hurt anything... Try it and see for yourself.

Google ignores the tags telling them to revisit. They only listen to the ones telling them not to revisit. Google might be visiting your site every two or three days, but it has nothing to do with you telling them to.

Google crawls sites based on the links it finds. Unless you've built an uncrawlable site they'll find your pages.

I'm not saying it will hurt for you to submit, but it's not helping either and they're are better ways to spend the time.