My Site Is Gone!
Yesterday your site was in the top 5 results in Google for your keywords. Today your site is nowhere to be found. You spent the last week building new links to your site. Did you overdo it? Did you "break the rules"? What happened!?!
First, take a deep breath and relax.
Good.
Now, let's talk about why this happens, why you usually shouldn't worry about it, and when you should.
Why Your Site Disappears
Especially when your site is new, it is not at all unusual for it to be ranking very well one day, and then disappear from those rankings the next day. This is especially true after you do some link building to your site.
Here's a scenario:
1. You build a brand new site (or go back to work on a site you haven't done anything with for a while).
2. You start building links to that site.
3. After a few weeks your site jumps into the rankings for the keywords you're working on. Yes!
4. Another week or two later it disappears from those rankings.
It's at #4 that most people freak out, but you really shouldn't. That's because of #5:
5. A few days later your site pops back into the search results, often in a better position than it was before.
If you're not doing anything spammy or evil, #5 is very likely to follow #4. Let's talk about why.
Why Does Google Do This?
It might seem like Google's goal is to give you a heart attack, or at least put the fear in you, but it's really not (though those two things might be side effects of what they are doing).
What's happening is what's commonly referred to as the "Google Dance." You see, Google has a massive index, which it updates on a daily basis as it discovers new links and makes adjustments to old links, removes dead pages, etc. But because Google's index is so huge, it takes a while to recalculate all of the ranking information for your site in among all of the others.
I'm not sure why Google doesn't keep a static version of the search results up while making these adjustments, but they don't. Perhaps it would require too much overhead, so it's just easier for them to do real-time updates like this. Whatever the case, these updates mean that your site will jump around in the result list, often disappearing altogether for a couple of days, until Google finishes its little "dance", at which point your newly acquired links will often make your site appear even higher up in the results than it was before.
When Your Site Doesn't Come Back
If your site does not return to the position it was before (or at least on the same page) within a few days (at most 3 in my experience), the next step to take is to make sure that your site is still indexed by Google. To do that, go to Google and do a site search on your domain name, like this:
site:jonathanleger.com
Replacing, of course, jonathanleger.com with your own domain name. If Google returns a list of your site's pages, then you're probably fine. If it doesn't, that means Google has decided that something you did was bad and has removed your site from their index altogether.
Coming back from being deindexed is tricky, and is beyond the scope of this blog post. More often than not your site will still be indexed even if it doesn't come back into the rankings.
Why Didn't My Site Come Back?
The primary reason this happens is that you got too many links too fast and then stopped getting links altogether (or slowed down a lot).
You see, if you get a huge number of links to your site all at once and then stop growing your links, Google will rank your site well for your keywords pretty fast for a while. But once it sees that your links have stopped growing, it assumes your site's popularity was short lived and drops it back out of the rankings again.
That makes logical sense. If a site is suddenly popular because of some big event that happened which caused it to get a lot of publicity, it makes sense to keep that site high in the rankings for the duration of that notoriety. But once the jets cool off, it doesn't make sense to keep the site ranking so well.
That's why it's important to grow your links slowly over time. If you tapper off your link growth (or just get a small number of links over a long period of time), then Google doesn't usually drop your site out of the rankings like that.
So instead of getting 1,000 links in one week, getting 10 a day for 100 days will keep your rankings stronger for a lot longer! If you've chosen your keywords carefully, your site is likely to hold its position until a competitor comes along and gets more links than you -- in which case it's time for you to go back to work and go through this experience all over again.
Summary
Google will often drop a site from the rankings if you get too many links too fast and then stop growing your links altogether, so be sure to grow your links slowly over time if at all possible. But even if you do everything right, Google will "dance" for a while after you grow your links, bouncing your site around in the search results for a few days before it settles back down.
One more point: once your site has been established for a while (usually six months or so of steady link building), the dancing tends to stop happening so much (if at all). At that point your site can usually sustain short bursts of big link additions without Google going crazy on you. In the beginning though, you just have to expect this kind of bouncing around.
Please post your thoughts and questions in a comment below.
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September 22nd, 2010 - 17:30
This has happened to me also and it doesn’t matter whether I back link a lot or only put up a couple… the pages either jump around, disappear altogether, or come back higher than before.
No rules when it comes to Google.
September 18th, 2010 - 14:41
I have a different site I did nothing spammy but it droped out of everything including my own hosting what happened here?
September 16th, 2010 - 19:11
Thank you for explanation Jonathan, what does the Google Dancing mean.
I see it happen with my site as well. It was at position #8 of Google, but after that it was disappeared, but site:mydomain.com is still shows me results from the G SERPs.
Vitaly
September 14th, 2010 - 18:34
Well, I have definitely had this happen. My son laughs at me because I get so upset when my site disappears. He always calmly says “it will be back.” And he’s right.
I guess it is consistency for the long haul. Links, good content consistently will help your site to boost its ranking.
September 14th, 2010 - 18:29
Well, this is a great post. I know I have been in that position several times of wondering where my site went. One day it’s doing great, the next day – GONE.
I’m glad to read this as a reminder that we need to keep building links consistently. Sometimes, the more I work at it, the lower my site goes:-( Oh well, have to keep going.
September 12th, 2010 - 15:39
Thanks for that. Started this process 2 days ago and been worrying massively over it. I’m all new to this website thing and your article has put my mind at rest
thanks again
September 10th, 2010 - 09:38
Jonathan,
Thanks for explaining the “G-Dance” for us. You laid it out clear and precise and I’m feeling better already:)
I’ll wait to see what happens and I’ll let you know the results after the dance is over:)
Cheers from Wyo!
September 9th, 2010 - 20:08
…Ah, yes, the infamous Google dance. I know it firsthand all too well!
Daniel.
PS It was sooo fustrating; anyone else feel this way? Now I don’t worry about it too much.
September 7th, 2010 - 06:49
Thanks Jon,this advice could really help me in the future!
September 4th, 2010 - 10:10
I dont know how to react when you are having a good PR on Google one day and the next day you wake up to find that it has reached a zero. It is shocking but thank you for pointing out what might go wrong when we encounter this problem.
September 2nd, 2010 - 21:49
Thanks for the post. I had a website drop in rankings for #4 to #86 and it took 3 weeks to get back in the top rankings to #1. So sites disappearing for awhile in Google is actually a good thing. Thanks
August 26th, 2010 - 10:04
Hi Jon,
This is really good to know. Especially because it would really freak me out if this happened to me without this understanding.
I have also always had the mentality that doing a little bit at a time is better than massive amounts at once. It’s just more natural that people will link to a site over time and not all at once.
The only time it is “natural” to have many links at once is if a big newspaper or magazine covers a site. In that case, it would be natural. But I believe that Google can also see this since links from a great source like a newspaper are quality links.
All the best,
Eren
August 6th, 2010 - 14:44
Google just did this exact thing with my site. Went from 100 uniques/day to 10.
I have no idea what happened and can’t figure it out. Does anyone have additional advice?
August 3rd, 2010 - 16:00
Honestly though–people really don’t understand SEO too well.
You need to understand that Google almost wants these websites to be run by the people who own the business.
Which means your link-building and back-linking needs to be CONSISTENT.
You cannot have 500+ links on week 1, and then 0 links for 3 consecutive months. Yes you may be 1 on the SERP, but not for long (unless your keywords are uncompetitive which is something else)…
August 3rd, 2010 - 07:32
You are spot on Jonathan. I had the same “symptoms” -my site moved up, up,up then gone! I could not understand where it went or whether I had crossed some line with the big G. A few days later it reappeared, at a higher position…….ahhhhh now I can relax ……I think.
August 1st, 2010 - 22:27
Jonathan, thank you so much for this clear explanation!
July 27th, 2010 - 03:27
Hi, John,
I think most webmasters had this expierience mostly without knowing these facts. So, thank you for that post.
I had this clue with one of my sites in March and it keept dancing around ´till June. But I didn´t stop link building and you could watch how the rankings slowed down spinning. After all, now it gained better rankings than before.
Most people think, the quality of links is important – well, it is if you want to get the most out of less links. IMHO more important is the diversification of link sources as well as targets. I had da non blogging site with more than 60% of deep links, when it started the dance. Keeping up link building did not stop the dance, it was getting even worse. This started to slow down somewhat wenn I started getting links with high trust to the front page. The dance stopped after the deep link / front page link ratio was in normal spheres. So, don´t only see the link source.
July 24th, 2010 - 01:32
great and useful advice, I will more carefull to manage my website. Thank you
July 23rd, 2010 - 07:39
This google dance happened to me too. but it is just temporary. within a week my website came up again at google search page
July 21st, 2010 - 16:51
Great stuff as usual Jon. Now if only you could release a program that would address this …..
July 21st, 2010 - 13:57
Stumbled.
July 21st, 2010 - 12:06
Hi Jonathan,
As always I find your posts very informational and psychology helping all INTERNET marketing rats.. like me.
I had this “heart attack” when one of my sites showed up 1st page, on a “mortgage – something” keyword.. and I thought WOW thats was easy.. then it disappeared and dropped to a page 3-4.
Working it up was a long link building process.
July 21st, 2010 - 11:28
I long ago learned not to panic if and when a site vanishes. I used to try and go all out with adding new content, building new links and so on but over the years I have found that if I have built a quality site and built quality links to it, the site will almost always reappear shortly afterwards if I just hold my nerve.
July 20th, 2010 - 19:48
yes, that what happen to my site, my site even not index by googleeee..
July 20th, 2010 - 18:53
If you have time (who does that’s why we use automated software that google hates) build links slowly with quality content. Speaking of software this is for Jon since you are a software developer. Build a software for blogs that allow users to make comments on each others sites. In other words its like your blog networks ; whoever joins must make comments and social bookmark the others sites to create activity. This way traffic builds virally on each “money site not donor site” and everybody is happy including google.
What do you say?
July 20th, 2010 - 18:45
This scenario has happened to me more times than I can remember, and in almost every case, the site always came back higher in rankings than when it dropped. The key to the whole game is patience. I don’t even build a site without figuring that its going to be 6 months before it can see some good steady adsense or other affiliate commissions come in. Its like building a house, build the foundation right and over time the whole thing will eventually come together. Thanks for the reassurance Jon!
July 20th, 2010 - 17:32
This happened today and although I was expecting it; it’s still uncomfortable to watch I have to admit. Nice to know it can happen to anyone!
July 20th, 2010 - 16:01
So that’s it. I have been wondering why one of my pages made #1 on page 1 of google for a keyword, stayed there for 2 weeks then went to #11 and has been there ever since. I think you point made sense. Should look to do something about that. Thanks for the tips.
July 20th, 2010 - 15:07
Very useful post, I once found one of my pages had dropped in rank, I thought I had got a google slap, so I created a whole new page and linked it to the site with a new url and started link building again to the new url toget around the percieved google slap only to find that after 3 or 4 days the old page came back in a better position and now I know what happened and why. Thanks
July 20th, 2010 - 14:22
Hi Jon
You explain this so well and the truth is the best way to get links is organically so that it is a natural occurrence. Google will not penalize you in this way. Buying links that are likely to come from spamming sources will cost you in the end.
Michelle Jayes
July 20th, 2010 - 13:44
Hi, Jon:
I was referred here today by Mason who is a fellow member of mine at the SSWT forum.
I had asked about why my site was gone from page 1, spot 2 last week. As you detail in your article it went “poof” and was gone. lol.
My question to you is how do we know which link building method produces the fastest result, as far when they show in G?
I usually perform the following methods on NEW site for link building:
1. article marketing (1 or 2)
2. a press release
3. guest posting (1 or 2)
4. do follow blog commenting
Which of the methods mentioned above, should I stay away from on NEW sites, so that I don’t get too many links, too fast?
Cheers,
Missy
July 20th, 2010 - 12:23
Hi Jon,
Thanks for mentioning about the duration of link building and explaining what happens when you just saturate a site with links over night. I think to many people fall into that trap, especially if they use a software tool, they just blast out hundreds of backlinks overnight and then leave it alone after that.
If the site doesn’t get sandboxed, and does rank high for the chosen keywords, it will soon drop out of it’s position when no more backlinks are applied.
Slow and steady is the way.
July 20th, 2010 - 11:03
Yes, mine too. I bought links ( 1.000) and the seller did it in 7 days. After that my site disappear. Sad.Can we draw it back?
July 20th, 2010 - 10:55
Very good point about people building links to their sites too fast.
I think they get very enthusiastic to start with, and then get tired. the site drops and they take it as “proof” that whatever they were doing does not work, and move to the next thing.
July 20th, 2010 - 09:30
Thanks for this John.
In addition to all your tips, this is yet another gem.
Alex
July 20th, 2010 - 09:21
Great done on the email customisation! When i got it i was like “How could he possibly know that this is EXACTLY what happened?!” And there was no way i wont read the article after that!
Matches my experience as well for many of my sites.
July 20th, 2010 - 09:03
Thanks for the good info, Jonathan. Taking baby SEO steps right now!
July 20th, 2010 - 08:57
Jon,
Interesting article. I don’t worry so much about the Google Dance because I’ve always been building my links slowly using link networks such as yours and other marketers.
Best!
Welly Mulia
July 20th, 2010 - 08:48
This “G dancing” happened with my site all the time. There was even time when pagerank really dropped to zero and fortunately. It has risen up days after. I got mad during that time and I have been asking on forums what happened with it and they all just say it was penalized.
July 20th, 2010 - 07:31
Great post John, this is just happen to me several time and now i can undertant better google dance.
thank!
July 20th, 2010 - 07:27
Its wake up call for me John
I just crawling into SEO. Thank you for the info
July 20th, 2010 - 07:17
Jon, I’m so glad you posted this — I get asked this question all the time, and now I can just point people to your post which explains it better than most. Thank you!
Gene
July 20th, 2010 - 04:47
Well explained Jonthan,
one of my sites just got wiped out including ALL EZinearticles linked to it?! It’s still indexed but nowhere to be found.
Couple of Ezinearticles had organic top 5 ranking (well happy about that), for the kw which was linking to my site. and then site went down dragging my EZA articles.
Huh…….
Any thoughts on this one?
Cheers
Alan
July 20th, 2010 - 02:46
The ‘Dance’ is especially pronounced and almost invariably happens to ‘new’ sites. We find that ‘Domain Age’ makes a BIG difference here.
For sites that are 2 years or more in age then we find that they are not so affected by the ‘Dance’, unless we do a really big link push.
July 20th, 2010 - 02:23
Hi Jonathan,
You touched on penalties earlier.
We have a website that had been ranking #1 – #5 for about 2 years for pretty much all the keywords we could muster. Back in March, all those rankings disappeared.
The site was not de-indexed, but some form of penalty imposed beacuase any search returns positions that cycle between #40 and #70. Only the url in full appears at #1 and the url without the tld comes back on page 2 which was at #1 as well. Every other keyword under the sun appears between#40 and #70.
We have removed every link that we had the power to remove, and fixed a minor problem on site and posted re-inclusion requests to Google. They have reviewed the site but 3 months on, the site is still penalised.
We are clueless as to what is causing the penalty as all links we created are now down, and the site is whiter than white in our opinion unless we have missed something, especially when you compare it to the competition.
Do you have any ides as to what we can do next?
July 20th, 2010 - 02:08
Very interesting post, thanks for the information presented. I will will get link for my site slowly.
Thanks!
July 20th, 2010 - 01:59
Good one Jonathon, the google dance is one for someone with 3 left feet! One of my sites is in and out of the rankings like a Yo Yo,
I do my SEO for it now, according to the phases of the Moon!
July 20th, 2010 - 01:58
As always, great post Jonathan. Thanks
July 20th, 2010 - 01:37
Hi Jonathan,
Thank you for positng this great information, you probably save a lot of people from having heart attacks
Jeff
July 20th, 2010 - 01:35
I totally agree that the google dance can be a headache. I have some sites experience the google dance since they appeared in the index. It amazes me that the same sites can dance around for more than 4 months when I’m not really doing any indexing at all.
Google can be very difficult to read. I realise that the more sites you have the better your chances of making it. If I only had one site and it kept dancing I would think google was being very mean indeed. Thankfully, with more sites I can see that some sites and some keywords just fair better even though you might be treating them (link wise) the same.
Good post Jonathan. It’s always great to read your observations.
July 20th, 2010 - 01:24
Very well put.
July 20th, 2010 - 01:15
Great common-sense type of post, Jon! One of the first lessons to learn in this game is to remain calm and give things some time. More often than not the hiccups sort themselves out, as you mention. But when just starting out, it can be heart-stopping if your site suddenly does a disappearance act overnight!
July 20th, 2010 - 01:09
Another problem with link building is the so called black hat methods.
If google suspects this you could lose your rankings. I had a friend that was buying lots of backlinks to his website. His site would be on the first two pages of google for 2 or 3 days then disappear to page 100 or more.
This would go on each time google did its so called dance. To solve the problem he made should that the companies he was using to build links were not using spamming or any other black hat methods.
He went to google webmaster tools and went to “site reconsideration” and wrote a detailed letter to google as to what he thought he was doing wrong, what he was going to do to fix the problem and that he follows all of googles guide lines.
Three days later his website was back on the first two or three pages of google and has remained there for over a year.
July 20th, 2010 - 00:18
as usual – it looks like a post such as this arises opinions and emotions. Jon has always steered people in the right direction knowing when to stay clear of harm, just stick to his advice and be smart about building links directly to your money sites! nuff said
July 20th, 2010 - 00:07
Hey, good post… Its a common worry of a webmaster
July 19th, 2010 - 23:45
Great information. Thanks for all
July 19th, 2010 - 23:44
Thanks for the post. This happened to me when I tried to build too many links at once. You should also advise people not to click on the Google links themselves, as this will lead to the same situation.
July 19th, 2010 - 23:27
I would preferred to build the strong links before getting the low quality links to gain the trust from Google.
Link diversity is very important. I used to do link building for one of my site, even thought i do link building slowly but in the end the site ranking drop dramatically, it took more than 6 months to back to top 10, after i start diversified of links from a variety of source.
There are many way to do link building, Blog comments, free/paid directories, forum dropping, profile building, linkbaiting, bookmarking, recip links, paid links, guest writing, article, press, using Squidoo and other content aggregators, microsites, buying domains, redirection, article writing, whatever …..
July 19th, 2010 - 23:19
Oh yeah! I remember the 1st time I experienced the google dance palooza. I started emailing around to find out what was going on. It took about a week for my site to show back up.
Thanks for the reminder.
July 19th, 2010 - 23:12
Jonathan,
Great post. Thanks for your insight on this.
Any suggestions on how to get out of the Google Sandbox?
Thanks & Blessings,
John
July 19th, 2010 - 22:45
You got our attention even just by reading the e-mail subject, so well done on that one.
Your explanation is quite logical, and you’re right. We are sometimes so focused on ourselves that we tend to forget all the nitty gritty of running such a massive index as Google does, and it’s a good thing to be reminded indeed of the efforts that they do make in presenting us with valuable search results.
Thanks for a good article. Do keep up the good work.
July 19th, 2010 - 22:11
i was just about to get lose my mind because one of my blog lost its ranking on serp’s….
i didn’t do anything wrong with it, i just do a few link building by commenting on 8 high PR blog….. complete white hat method of course….
and bam! all of a sudden those blogs gave me like 500 backlinks…
you know what happen next… the so called google dance….
thanks for the post… really useful info jon… keep it coming…
July 19th, 2010 - 22:09
Good post, I just discussed this topic last day with my colleague.
July 19th, 2010 - 22:07
Hi John!
This is very true especially when you’re new to SEO. When you get excited with ranking the first page and suddenly, you become addicted in building links you get deindexed.
Google dance has been there for a long time and this shocks every newbie in the industry.
Thanks for the interestig article which I can send your article page link to my clients so they better understand because sometimes they panic no matter how I tell them not to because it’s normal.
cheers!
July 19th, 2010 - 21:58
I am with you on that link building strategy. It has to appear natural, and spread out over time. You are in this business for the long haul so, link building should be an ongoing process.
July 19th, 2010 - 21:57
Answering some questions:
If I could get 4,000 links a day and sustain that forever, wouldn’t that be ok? The consistancy of your link building is what is key, correct?
Absolutely. As long as you can sustain the growth, the more the merrier!
There is another scenario. Lets say you don’t come back after 6 months. Lets say you have 4 web sites in very close niches all ranked very high. What is the “G” decides to cut that in half? and rank 2 of them at #100 or worse.?
That sounds like a penalty to me. Perhaps Google decided the content was too similar, or discovered the same owner dominating multiple results and did a manual penalty.
I wondered if Google is still suggesting that a webpage should not have more than 100 links on one particular page. It used to be on the Webmaster Guidelines, but it’s not there any more. Any idea why they removed it?
That was a very old guideline, and with sites like Wikipedia having vastly more links than that per page, it just doesn’t make sense to be so limiting anymore.
I am fairly new to all this and am building some sites which only need around 100 backlinks to ‘beat’ their competition. How would you approach this? Do say ten links a day and keep going for how long? Obviously after 20 days I’d have plenty of links (in theory).
I would only do 3-5 links per day for 6-8 weeks. That gives you around 200 links, so you should easily beat the competition, but it’s a slow enough progression that you won’t get pushed down by Google.
What about sites that are already well established. Say…over 5 years of successful linking and surviving the google dance. Is it still ok to continue link building and providing consistent daily content?
Absolutely! Please don’t let my post make you worry about continuing to grow your links. My point was just the opposite! Get more and more and more — just know that you might bounce around a bit. But a well established, 5 year old site shouldn’t have problems.
Good re-fresher but you suggest 10 links per day would it matter from which sites? (high Page rank related sites) or any site?
My 10 links per day suggestion was just a theoretical for a 1,000 link growth pattern over time. It doesn’t matter how many links you get, as long as it’s long-term and consistent. And no, the PageRank doesn’t matter as long as the page the link is coming from is indexed in Google.
What’s your opinion on Pinging to get indexed?
It still works pretty good for blogs, but the best way to get indexed is get links on pages that are crawled often — whether those pages are your own or another site.
July 19th, 2010 - 21:55
Thanks for the advice Jon. This happens to me all the time, sometimes the site is gone for 2 weeks before it returns. Wish Google would speed things up, right?
July 19th, 2010 - 21:38
Yeah, it was a bit confusing at first, but now I don’t even give it a second thought. Even with sites that I haven’t done any new backlinking on, it’ll suddenly drop 30, 50 or 70 positions, then a few days later, back up where it was (more or less). I’ve given up trying to figure out Google. Even their keyword tool results and number of results found don’t make sense a lot of the time, when you dig in and look a little deeper.
July 19th, 2010 - 21:32
Thank you Jonathan,
I sure needed this post. It has helped me a great deal. That thing you called the, Google Dance”, has had me dancing as well. What you described is exactly what my website is going through, so now I know. However, there is a twist. My website has shown to have lost every single backlink ever built, but they did show back up , in about two days.
Thank you, and God bless
July 19th, 2010 - 21:19
That’s the way any topic should be presented, simple straight to the point and helpful
Cheers
Nigel NZ
July 19th, 2010 - 21:07
I agree that Google rules, though variety in sources of traffic (twitter, facebook, youtube, email lists, forums, etc…) is always a good thing. Timeliness matters too, something relevant today may not be relevant one year from now. Oil spill now should bring up the BP spill, and 20 years ago should have brought up the exxon valdez spill.
July 19th, 2010 - 21:06
This might just sound like a spam comment but what an absolutely great post. I learned more from this than from all the junk advice that flows into my inbox every day.
Tried the “site:” with a site I was worried about and yes it is still indexed.
Thanks again for the great info.
Chris.
July 19th, 2010 - 21:00
Great article as usual, the Google dance can get the adrenaline running for a couple days for sure.
July 19th, 2010 - 20:37
Thanks for this post Jonathan. This has happened to me in the past. It is a bit worrying at first, but when it has happened a few times, you sort of get used to it.
It is comforting to know that this happens to others as well, so you realize that it is not just you that is being singled out by Google.
Your post also explains why rankings drop after a while. One sometimes works hard to get to the top, only to drop down after a short while. Now we know why!!!
Thanks again,
Barry
July 19th, 2010 - 20:23
There once was a man called Jon
Whose thoughts were always spot-on
His advice is great
And timely, not late
So that’s why my site is gone!
July 19th, 2010 - 20:14
Dear Mr. Jonathan,
I love the post very much!
My sites went into google dance these days..
even until now.
I really do hope they will come back very soon.
Regards,
Tanady
July 19th, 2010 - 20:04
I have a plug-in called Rank Tracker that keeps track of my keywords that I specify and let’s me know if they go up or down by sending me an email and telling me where that keyword is now.
Well let me tell you I have one busy postmaster. I’m getting email’s day in and day out telling me where my site page for that keyword is ranking.
Most of the time I don’t take the time to check where it is, but sometimes I do.
It was a revelation to me as how volitile these things are.
July 19th, 2010 - 20:03
What’s your opinion on Pinging to get indexed?
July 19th, 2010 - 19:58
Jonathan,
Thanks for bringing clarity to the controversial Google Dance. You have confirmed what I suspected.
July 19th, 2010 - 19:52
Good re-fresher but you suggest 10 links per day would it matter from which sites? (high Page rank related sites) or any site?
Love your apps
Many thanks
~Mike
July 19th, 2010 - 19:50
Thank you Johnathan for the simple, easy to understand explanation. I have seen the step #4 and #5 for a while now thanks for giving us the why.
Al
July 19th, 2010 - 19:45
Great post,
it happened to me also,
site just was gone..
Then afetr a while came back
Thank you for a great post
July 19th, 2010 - 19:40
There’s alot claims out there right now how to get your site index in google PR3 or PR4 in about one week time for any keyword you choose no matter which site your site is competing against. One claim show 6 millions website competing for the same keyword and their site got rank in 9 day PR4. It’s been my experience you need to grow your site slowly & right, build quality back links, and stop with all of this flash in the pan traffic generation tactic, I think alot guys & gals will get slapped by big G (goolge) I also think that this the hottest thing going in IM right now is(traffic) everyone & their Brother is selling you some underground traffic technique that google dosen’t know about, and people are buying in up like adwords campaigns 6 yrs ago, hey whatever more power to them, but I prefer the Smith & Barney old fashion way just EARN IT. My site ranking will stay the same or grow long as I work it the right way building quality back links. My site is slowly on the move I get temped somtimes to try some of these tactic but I come to my sense and remember it not a race that I’m in, it’s longevity that I seek, remember the tortoise & the hare and who won in the end well that’s me that’s the big picture to win at the end.
July 19th, 2010 - 19:28
I had a 2 month old site that dropped off the face of Google for 6 weeks. Talk about freaking out! It came back at number 3 and I now have a double listing at 1 and 2.
I was building 30+ links a day at the time. I wasn’t pinging them so Google was finding them at their leisure which seemed to work. I wonder if I pinged them the site would have come back sooner? I just kept building links and adding some content here and there and one day I saw adsense revenue and that’s how I found out it was back.
It was a good lesson to learn and if it happens again I know not to freak (although that’s probably easier said than done). Patience is not one of my best qualities.
July 19th, 2010 - 19:26
thanks a lot Jon. Before, I think that my site is banned by google and I was frustrasted about that. thank
July 19th, 2010 - 19:18
That is what just happened with my current site, and i believe it will keep happen in the future.
When you build up some links, you can not achieve google top position in instant. i have seen it many times, my page drop from page one and it back to higher position than before, drop again and back again……..
July 19th, 2010 - 19:17
The same happened to our site when first starting out. Combined with the best spinner, building more links steadily and we have the ranking we wanted. Just stay consistent and don’t let the day to day fluctuations drive you crazy.
July 19th, 2010 - 19:16
Hi Jon
thanks for that post. I’m glad that I think the same way as you do on this as there seems to be that much difference of opinions on these seo chat forums it’s crazy.
Thanks again for the post.
Cheers
andrew
July 19th, 2010 - 19:14
Great post, Jonathan! I’ve never paid too much attention to the Google rankings, and didn’t know what the term “Google Dance” referred to. I’m glad to have this information in case I discover it happening to me… and especially the info about building links slowly being the best way for preventing big problems.
July 19th, 2010 - 18:57
Thanks Jonathan: This will be a nice resource to point people to before they panic!
July 19th, 2010 - 18:55
Another great post from the MAN!
It’s good to know that all the ups and downs in the rankings will stop eventually.
Keep the great info coming jon
Mark
July 19th, 2010 - 18:49
Thanks for explaining in details the various steps behind google’s thinking and analysis.
It sure makes sense now and slow and steady seems to be the best option.
How about when there is a new product launch coming up within 2 weeks. What do you suggest is the best strategic to rank your site on page 1 without getting sandboxed or even danced out for 3-4 days (when the launch is on)
cheers
My
July 19th, 2010 - 18:48
Hi readers posters Google fans far and wide – love the way Google works with your site or not its definitely the only peoples search engine game in town – I like most in the early days thought once I could take what Google did or did not do with my sites or not – then I slowly realized I was hearing folks offline say stuff like well “go and Google it” – I’ve never heard anyone say go and yahoo it – or go and Bing it – get my drift here looks to me Google rules… likes to rule where we all end up on the web… so save the pain play the Google game – huh? – one thing we all know sooner or later – Google as a Search Engine wants to be the best search tool on the planet – Google’s mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Cheers Jonathan
Phillip Skinner
July 19th, 2010 - 18:48
Thank you, Jonathan, for explaining this – clear and concise! I’ve heard others explain this, but only partially. Your explanation was very thorough, and you provide a link-building strategy that makes sense.
I wont be so freaked out the next time I “dance” with google.
All the best,
Julie
July 19th, 2010 - 18:45
I had several sites “deindexed” from Google because of the infamous Squidoo spammer (a few years ago) and the dreaded payperpost penalty. I kept the sites and continued to build links. It took some time, but they were “reindexed”.
Did I panic? Yes. Did I lose a lot of income, yes! What did I learn? Do not put all your eggs in one basket!
Great post as usual.
July 19th, 2010 - 18:36
What about sites that are already well established. Say…over 5 years of successful linking and surviving the google dance. Is it still ok to continue link building and providing consistent daily content?
Or do we just leave it alone once you have placed top rankings after each dance.
Paul
July 19th, 2010 - 18:33
Thanks for the well constructed article Jonathan.
Quick question for anyone who would like to advise me please! I am fairly new to all this and am building some sites which only need around 100 backlinks to ‘beat’ their competition.
How would you approach this? Do say ten links a day and keep going for how long? Obviously after 20 days I’d have plenty of links (in theory).
If I stop at this point would I be penalised and maybe lose any ranking position in the longer term – maybe just ‘top up’ the number of links with a smaller amount on a regular basis?
Any advise would be appreciated
July 19th, 2010 - 18:32
Remember too that it isn’t just one Google dance. It is several. Google replicates itself several times, and those independent servers run their own algos for rankings. It would not be unusual for a new site owner to be looking at one set of Google results and a friend to be looking at another from another location, and those two sets of results would likely be entirely different. The newer the site, the more likely this will happen.
July 19th, 2010 - 18:31
I have seen some of my sites deindexed by Google when their Interns take a look and notice that its primary purpose is to promote one affiliate offer. If the site is around a general niche topic, they don’t seem to mind. Thank goodness for Yahoo, Social and Bing traffic.
July 19th, 2010 - 18:29
I suppose its still possible that you can get sandboxed by doing blackhat methods. Looks like slow and steady wins the race when it comes to Google.
July 19th, 2010 - 18:27
A first-rate and very levelheaded education on a nontransparent process of keen interest; much appreciated.
July 19th, 2010 - 18:27
Thanks Jon for explaining the “Google dance”. Your post included great information. Right on target. I like your style of delivery. Easy to understand.
July 19th, 2010 - 18:22
I certainly leant that it can take at least 6 months to really have your site settle down in the rankings.
Certainly one of my first sites used to be all over the place, but with some very cautious drip feeding of links, it is slowly climbing one place at a time.
July 19th, 2010 - 18:18
Hi Jon,
Awesome article! This article should be required reading for all of my SEO clients. Mostly importantly, I agree with the consistent and steady approach towards link building. It worked 10 years ago, and it’s still working today.
I wondered if Google is still suggesting that a webpage should not have more than 100 links on one particular page. It used to be on the Webmaster Guidelines, but it’s not there any more.
Any idea why they removed it?
July 19th, 2010 - 18:18
Everyone experience this. Google want to play with us and he maybe want to test out mental with using Google Dance
July 19th, 2010 - 18:18
yep thanks for this post jon, i don’t like that google dance, i agree with you if we do link building slowly it will make our SE ranking safe from google slap.
July 19th, 2010 - 18:16
That’s what always makes me nervous about my own {new} site. We’re actually an old site that moved and we were unable to 301 to the new address. Naturally we got a link burst over the first few weeks because everyone linking to the old site {Quite a few pages} was switching their links to our new address so they would work, since the old one was deleted. In addition, because of the deletion we had to do some promoting on related sites just to get traffic flowing again. We have some google presence again but I’m always nervous that now that links aren’t coming in so fast anymore we’ll get dropped.
July 19th, 2010 - 18:16
My site is 2 years old and it still happens! I know it does, but worry every single time! As always Jon, you are right and providing the information we need to hear and learn.
July 19th, 2010 - 18:12
Thanks Jon. You’ve set my heart at ease right now. I have just put this new website last 2 weeks and only started building links the following week. On the weekend I was at #6 page 1 of Google! And I thought Goodness!!! I cracked it! Guess what this morning, the site is completely gone! Not even in the top 500.
But using your advice I just checked, the pages are still indexed. So I will for Google to finish her dancing.
Cheers
Mike Ross
July 19th, 2010 - 18:08
All valid points, though I wonder why it is that we have to keep repeating them time and time again for people to read. Not suggesting that you *shouldn’t have* post the article, not at all – unfortunately it ‘does’ need to be continually repeated – because for some reason many people think that this will have changed since the last time it happened to them (or that it would only happen to someone else).
Simple principle: good content, valid links, relevant keywords = solid rankings. Google dance or not.
Once again, you say what many others can no longer be bothered saying… well written as always.
- Paul Barrs
July 19th, 2010 - 18:00
I agree on what you say about the google dance thing. But I disagree when you say “So instead of getting 1,000 links in one week, getting 10 a day for 100 days will keep your rankings stronger for a lot longer! ” .
Google does not penalize your website for getting too many links. If you get the 1000 links in one week, google or the algorithm counts them slowly over time. That’s why some links appear at different times after your link building. So get as many links as you can!!!!!! Google knows that they are some spammers/scammers out there who will ‘google bomb’ other innocent webmasters’s websites with links from bad neighbourhoods just to destroy their hard work. Therefore, google bombing or getting massive amounts of links to a website does not trigger any google penalty or whatsoever. Therefore if you get 5000 links in one week, google will just count the links slowly, thats it!!
My theory is, just get as many links as you can that you need in order to rank no.1 on google and move on, maybe later on, after a while you can check your stats and your keyword rankings, and if need be, then get more links to maintain position one.
More links more money. Less links less money. Its all bout relevant anchor backlinks!!!!!
July 19th, 2010 - 17:59
Great post! I’ve had this happen to me, start link building but if you stop there goes your ranking. For me there is no excuse because I have a new link building service. Time to pump up my other sites.
July 19th, 2010 - 17:58
Great post John, I remember the first time it happened to me, I was sooo freaked out!
July 19th, 2010 - 17:57
In a lot of cases when a site is new and get dropped from google because of the “google dance”, people just freak out and stop their link building efforts all together.
But the exact opposite should be done. If your site gets dropped or de-indexed you should build links faster than you did previously. This is kind of like a test from Google and if you pass, your site will be a little stronger.
Great Article
Coen
July 19th, 2010 - 17:55
I’ve had this happen once before. Not fun…
I got your Instant Article Factory just in time before the price increase. It’s pretty cool. Wish I caught the Best Spinner at $47.
Great work and thanks!
July 19th, 2010 - 17:54
Hi Jon
This can be really scary the first or second time that it happens to you. But it is quite a normal occurence with search engine rankings. At this stage I have not had the misfortune of having my site de-indexed, and each time I have had a site drop down the rankings after I have done some work to it, it has come back even higher usually within the next week. Not only does it happen in Google, but Yahoo and Bing do it as well.
So, usually after I get over that ‘holy c..p’ reaction when one of my sites drops down the rankings considerably, I know that it should come back even stronger quite soon.
July 19th, 2010 - 17:45
Most people talk about “their site” but google ranks the “page” depending on the keyword being optimized and the site structure.
if you are well optimized and your site is regularly updated and optimized for at least a 100 keywords then you should be fine with only a handful of quality backlinks
Forget being the # 1 guy for a single keyword because you’ll get no traffic.
July 19th, 2010 - 17:44
Getting deindexed is why I don’t like doing much automated link building. Some services spam links everywhere instead of dripping them, and get you in trouble.
July 19th, 2010 - 17:41
Truth is, it’s not so much a penalty as it is a filter. Unless you’re seriously and blatantly trying to abuse the system, Google will not systematically penalize or ban you from their results for having duplicate content.
July 19th, 2010 - 17:40
Nice post Jon. Some of my sites have also danced a lot but they seem to stabilize for some time and then start dancing again. It keeps going on..
July 19th, 2010 - 17:39
Great article Jon! I recently experienced this same issue with my new blog. If only I had seen this article a week before now
Anyway, thanks for the fantastic information.
Chris
July 19th, 2010 - 17:38
Patience is a virtue, especially with SEO! This is an interesting post Jon and one of the key points is steady link building not a huge one off attack. If you want your site to be ranked and stay there you need a plan for your SEO. One that rolls out over a period of time and then goes into a maintenance phase. Done properly other sites will link to you naturally which will keep things moving. Thanks for all the great advice on your site.
James
July 19th, 2010 - 17:37
Ha! I HATE when this happens! Most of my sites come back within a few days. I have one now that was ranking in the top 5 for about 2 months then I added a few pages of content and now it ranks around position #60. I have been slowly adding links and know that one day it will be back up where it belongs.
July 19th, 2010 - 17:36
Thank, Jon for another reassuring post. There’s so much back and forth and misinformation out there – it’s good to hear this information from what I consider a very trusted and credible source.
I’ve noticed the same Google dance occur with local map listings, but there seems to be no control over that other than continuing to establish links to your business’ primary site.
Thanks again!
July 19th, 2010 - 17:36
John,
Stellar advice as always. I agree with you about steady link building. I use your 1 Way Links service and set the “Post Speed” at 1 per day. This seems to make more sense to me that running through the blog network as quickly as possible.
I was going to ask, do you have a post on Link Wheels…I think they used to work well, but maybe not so well now. Just wanted another opinion on the matter.
Cheers,
-Rusty
July 19th, 2010 - 17:35
Great post Jonathon! We’ve all experienced this at one time or another.
It’s a good point to mention that ranking your site is a slow process and can be rewarding if done with that mindset and that it’s not an overnight success but takes time.
Keep up the good work!
July 19th, 2010 - 17:34
There is another scenario. Lets say you don’t come back after 6 months. Lets say you have 4 web sites in very close niches all ranked very high. What is the “G” decides to cut that in half? and rank 2 of them at #100 or worse.?
July 19th, 2010 - 17:33
I have seen this happen to me and every time a few days later my results come back better than they left – so far touch wood I have not had one not come back..
Roger
July 19th, 2010 - 17:33
Great Post! I had heard that if you grow links too fast it could be costly. You have explained it in great detail and made it easier to understand. Thanks
July 19th, 2010 - 17:33
Thanks Jon,
If I could get 4,000 links a day and sustain that forever, wouldn’t that be ok? The consistancy of your link building is what is key, correct?
Frank
July 19th, 2010 - 17:32
Not to put words in your mouth, but I think one of the main things to keep in mind when link building is to keep it looking as natural as possible:
*Link Velocity – The rate in which you acquire links
*Link Diversity – Where those links are coming from (blog comments, bookmarks, articles, forum posts etc)
*Link Volume – How many you have
Google isn’t omniscient (as many in the industry think), but they clearly aren’t stupid either.
July 19th, 2010 - 17:32
Nice title, it really makes me shock… This scenario always happen to me for 5-10 of my site. Its exactly like that.
“But once it sees that your links have stopped growing, it assumes your site’s popularity was short lived and drops it back out of the rankings again.”
Since I bought 1waylinks, I hope it could fix this problem…
July 19th, 2010 - 17:31
“Coming back from being deindexed is tricky, and is beyond the scope of this blog post.”
I’d really be interested in your thoughts on this topic. Three months ago I had a site that had been ranked for 18 months which was suddenly deindexed. I have tried twice to get it reindexed, but to no avail.
July 19th, 2010 - 17:30
Thanks for the info Jonathan, nice blog article. Google can give you a mild coronary every now and then.
July 19th, 2010 - 17:28
Hi Jon,
I’m glad you decided to post this. A lot of times people think that all their efforts failed, or that they’ve been “blacklisted”, or any number of other negative scenarios.
Then…BAM…it’s back again! Wasted time and unecessary stress.
I just wanted to say that this happens a lot with articles that people submit to article directories, blogs and other publishing websites.
Just be patient and use the time (you would spend trying to figure out what happened) in other ways – like writing more content or creating more pages!
Cheers,
Allen Graves