Site just will not be reincluded in Google's Index
-
I asked a question about this site (www.cookinggames.com.au) some time ago
http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/38488/site-indexing-google-doesnt-like-it
and had some very helpful answers which were great. However I'm still no further ahead. I have added some more content, submitted a new XML sitemap, removed the 'lorem ipsum...'
Now it seems that even Bing have ditched the site too. The number 1 result in Australia for the search term 'cooking games' is now this one - http://www.cookinggames.net.au/ which surely is not so much better to deserve a #1 spot whilst my site is deindexed?
I have just had another reconsideration request 'denied' and am absolutely out of ideas/. If anyone can help suggest what I need to do... or even suggest how I can get feedback from the search engines what's wring that would be fantastic.
Thank you
David
-
Hi again, Keri,
Thanks for all your analysis.... I think the pages you found on archive.org are the root of the problem - this was when the domain name was 'parked' at WhyPark... I think that's where Google gave it the original penalty - not fair IMO but at any rate I have confessed my sins in this regard ages ago to no avail.
Thanks for the content tips too - I'll fix them up now (there are 5 games currently on the site btw - not sure why you couldn't see them).
Thanks agin
David
-
FYI, I don't know if something's up with my browser (I have issues with Flash at times), but I can only seem to find one game on the site. The links page just has "page content here" as a placeholder, and there's a typo on the cooking mama games page. Those might be signals of lower quality content, but certainly nothing to get you banned.
I browsed as Googlebot via the SEOmoz toolbar and didn't see any problems.
Looks like the site had a lot of duplicated content on it in the past before you bought it. Pulling a couple of phrases off the pages of the wayback machine (http://wayback.archive.org/web//http://www.cookinggames.com.au/) shows hundreds or thousands of sites indexed for the same phrases. I don't see anything that looks like hacked pages on this one though.
-
I hear you - I suspect content quality could go up quite a bit with creativity, some work on the design/layout, etc. Having "more unique content" than competitors is quite a bit different than having an amazing resource that every parent wants to share with their friends because it's so phenomenal.
Re: the domain name - sadly, that might mean you need to slog through every link you've acquired and get rid of it, just to earn the clean slate Google seems to be demanding.
Good luck David!
-
Did Google give any type of answer with denied -- like it's an automated penalty and not by hand? That's some of the feedback that they are starting, and gives at least a hint about the type of penalty.
I see you at least got picked back up in Bing, which is at least a little help.
-
Thanks Rand - appreciate the response.
Trouble is with going the path you've described, the value is in the domain name itself. I'd scrap the site in a heartbeat but I'm hoping to take advantage of the EMD because the search volume is massive - 2,240,000 exacts (that's why CookingGames.com sold, domain name only, for $300,000 a couple of years ago).
Regarding content - look it's about cooking games so it's quite hard to write much authoritative stuff about 'Dora is Cooking', if you know what I mean! I already have more content than all of my competition and am reluctant to spend much more time on it if it's all in vain.
No easy answers, hey? But thanks again all for your consideration.
Cheers
David
-
Hi David - there's only a few things it could be, since you've filed for re-inclusion and not gotten back in:
- On-site spam/manipulation
- Cloaking/redirect stuff
- Backlink spam
I think, like others who answered above, the third one is the most likely. This leaves you with two options - try to get all the manipulative links removed entirely (apparently, Google doesn't think as of your last re-consideration you've gone far enough) or redirect the site to a new domain and start over with SEO.
If I were in your position, I'd probably do the latter, just because even if I could clean everything up, it might take months or even years for Google to review and agree to lift those penalties.
One last thing - it's also possible that Google's keeping the site out of the index because they don't think there's enough unique value in the content. You could try making a more unique, useful site and see if that helps/works, too (I'd probably recommended this anyway for a future version).
-
Hi Keri,
Thanks for the note - answer is no I still have no idea. Those links that Nemek mentioned I traced back to when i bought a 'manual directory submission' service a couple of years ago.
I have actually used this service many times before for various sites to no detriment (in fact when I used the service for cookinggames.com.au it was one of 5 sites in that order -0 the other 4 were unharmed)
Anyway I confessed my sins to Google, named the submission service, explained that IU'd learnt my lesson and requested reinclusion. Denied.
I'm at a complete loss... I've now requested reinclusion about 6 or 7 times now, each time after attending to something or other that might be the key.
I remember about 6 mths ago Matt Cutts posted a vid where he said one of the priorities at Google was going to be giving more specific feedback about things like this. Can't come soon enough for me...
Thanks again
David
-
Hi David,
Did you ever request reinclusion, and have you learned anything more about why Google is still not letting you in their index? I see the site is still not there, and wondered if you could give us an update and if there's anything more we could do to try to help.
-
Hmmm - yeah I see those links. Thanks for pointing them out.
What do you think I can do about them? I have no idea how they got there - whilst I have had an SEO work on this site I've never had a problem with any other sites they work on.
Shall I just acknowledge to Google I recognise these are crappy quality links?
Thanks again
David
-
Yeah, it looks like you got hit with a penalty for back-link quality. A bunch of links is from a group of domains very similar domains (link+word.info) all hosted on one IP. Probably you got slapped for link manipulation.
-
what is the site URL
-
Well the second question is the key! But Google will not tell me despite my pleas. Check the site for yourself - it's no masterpiece but not that bad either.
And re JC Penney - no the SEO guys I used briefly are pretty good with no problems on other sites. Even JC Penney only got kicked down the ranks nor de-indexed.
Thanks
David
-
Oops sorry about that - try this link:
http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/38488/site-indexing-google-doesnt-like-it
(think other link was in 'My Questions' or something)
-
First, the SEOmoz link you posted is 404. Second, why are they denying you re-inclusion? Third, what is on your site that is so bad?? There must be some really spam type content or linking.
Did you hire the J.C. Penney SEO team? LOL
-
Oops!
We can't find the page you're looking for!
You should repost the link or post the url of your site.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Will 301s to Amazon Hurt Site?
We have 155 podcasts and in many we have affiliate links to Amazon. But I recently found out that one of the two products we are promoting is no longer available. I now have to fix many podcast descriptions. My thought is maybe to build a link like: financiallysimple.com/camera and 301 it to the Amazon product. That way if the product changes, I simply change where the 301 points. Simple. BUT my question is does that bouncing people offsite immediately hurt us? Are there any other options that will accomplish the same goal?
Technical SEO | | jgoethert
Thanks!1 -
My Website's Home Page is Missing on Google SERP
Hi All, I have a WordPress website which has about 10-12 pages in total. When I search for the brand name on Google Search, the home page URL isn't appearing on the result pages while the rest of the pages are appearing. There're no issues with the canonicalization or meta titles/descriptions as such. What could possibly the reason behind this aberration? Looking forward to your advice! Cheers
Technical SEO | | ugorayan0 -
Google Not Indexing Submitted Images
Hi Guys! My question isn't too dissimilar to one asked a couple of years ago, regarding Google and image indexing, but having put my web address into a Google image search, I get a return of 15 images, so something isn't right. 5 months ago I submitted our 'new' site to Google webmaster. We have just moved it onto a Shopify platform. They (Shopify) are good at providing places to add titles and Alt tags and likewise we fill them in (so that box ticked!) However I have noticed over the last couple of months that despite 161 images being submitted, only 51 have been indexed. Furthermore and as I said earlier, when you put our site, site:http://www.hartnackandco.com into Google images, it only returns a total of 15 images. Any suggestions and help would be wonderful! Cheers Nick
Technical SEO | | nick_HandCo0 -
Why isn't our new site being indexed?
We built a new website for a client recently. Site: https://www.woofadvisor.com/ It's been live for three weeks. Robots.txt isn't blocking Googlebot or anything. Submitted a sitemap.xml through Webmasters but we still aren't being indexed. Anyone have any ideas?
Technical SEO | | RobbieD910 -
What can i do to get google to visit my site more often
Hi, i am having serious problems since i upgraded my website from joomla 1.5 to 3.0 We have dropped down the rankings from page one for the word lifestyle magazine, and we have dropped down in rankings for other very important words including gastric band hypnotherapy and i am starting to regret having the site upgraded. i am finding the google is taking its time visiting my site, i know this for two reasons, one i have checked the cache and it is showing the 2nd july and i have checked articles that we have written and they are still not showing. example if i put this article name in word for word it does not come up, Carnival Divert Ships In The Caribbean Due To bad Weather this was an article that was done yesterday. in the old days before the upgrade that would have been in google now. these problems are costing us the loss of a great deal of traffic, we are losing around 70% of our traffic since the upgrade and would be grateful if people could give me advice on how to turn things around. we add articles all the time. each day we add a number of articles, i was considering changing the front page in the middle and having a few paragraphs of the latest story to get google to visit more often. i know this would look messy but i am running out of ideas. any help would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Website is not indexed in Google
Hi Guys, I have a problem with a website from a customer. His website is not indexed in Google (except for the homepage). I could not find anything that can possibly be the cause. I already checked the robots.txt, sitemap, and plugins on the website. In the HTML code i also couldn't find anything which makes indexing harder than usual. This is the website i am talking about: http://www.xxxx.nl/ (Dutch) The only thing that i am guessing now is the Google sandbox, but even that is quite unlikely. I hope you guys discover something i could not find! Thanks in advance 🙂
Technical SEO | | B.Great0 -
Google Not Indexed WWW name
Here is my domain - http://www.plugnbuy.com . When i see through "site" google not showing with WWW index but the same when i do without WWW.. it is showing in search. So yesturday i changed the setting from GWM to preferred domain as a WWW appear but today still not showing anything... Please help..
Technical SEO | | mamuti0 -
Google Has Indexed Most of My Site, why won't Bing?
We've got 600K+ pages indexed by Google and have submitted our same sitemap.xml's to Bing, but have only seen 100-200 pages get indexed by Bing. Is this fairly typical? Is there anything further we can do to increase indexation on Bing?
Technical SEO | | jamesti0