Submit Your Article Forum Rules

Results 1 to 9 of 9

Thread: Gone From Google

  1. #1
    Junior Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
    Posts
    2

    Gone From Google

    I created a web site for a small fishing reel repair business. Everything going along smoothly. Google rank ALWAYS in the top 7 when searching on 'fishing reel repair'. Checked this AM and the site is gone. Search results from other search engines that do not use the Google technology are the same. What happened?

    Thanks in advance!

    Reel Dealer

    www.jlreelservice.com

  2. #2
    WebProWorld MVP minstrel's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
    Location
    Ottawa, Canada
    Posts
    2,553
    You're not gone - you're still in the index with a PageRank of 4.

    Read through the threads in this forum about Google updates... the Google search engine results are in flux again and pages are moving up and down. If you ranked well before, be patient - you should come back in a bit when Google finishes tinkering...

  3. #3
    Member
    Join Date
    Dec 2003
    Posts
    57
    You got Scroogled, that's for sure.

    It's probably not your fault, and there's probably nothing you can do. But for starters, I'd delete all "meta name" lines in your headers. The eight meta lines on your home page show excessive repetition for your keywords; some of the others are confusing (like the one for "robots"), and Google does just fine with sites that don't use metas at all.

    I'm not saying it will help, but it won't hurt either. You have nothing to lose.

  4. #4
    I dissagree with nothing to loose, he has a lot to loose if he removes them since some search engines are only meta......

  5. #5
    WebProWorld MVP minstrel's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
    Location
    Ottawa, Canada
    Posts
    2,553
    Your meta tags are not a problem in terms of search engine ranking. There are a couple that are unnecessary but they're not hurting you. Your DOCTYPE declaration isn't complete but again that won't affect search engine ranking (it just means that browsers will default to "quirk" mode which is probably fine anyway).

    The page has good content. Links look fine.

    I don't see anything obviously wrong here. As I said earlier, it's probably just the Google shake-up. Hang on for a few days or a couple of weeks and you'll probably see your site come back again.

  6. #6
    Junior Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
    Posts
    2
    Thanks everyone for the input. It's interesting, really. If you search on 'fishing reel service' the results are what I would expect and what I've been experiencing for the last year or so. The results for 'fishing reel repair' however are the exact opposite and the majority of Google referrals in the past were using that search criteria.

    What's missing from the <DOCTYPE> tag?

  7. #7
    WebProWorld MVP minstrel's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
    Location
    Ottawa, Canada
    Posts
    2,553
    Quote Originally Posted by ReelDealer
    What's missing from the <DOCTYPE> tag?
    Yours looks something like this:

    <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional //EN" >

    It should look something like this:

    <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

    I'm not suggesting this is a major issue, though...

  8. #8
    Junior Member
    Join Date
    Jan 2004
    Posts
    1
    minstrel wrote: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> "
    but even tag validates even without the http part at w3c.
    we have the first part on all our pages and they validate with most validators

  9. #9
    WebProWorld MVP minstrel's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
    Location
    Ottawa, Canada
    Posts
    2,553
    Hmmm... That's a very interesting observation, ArchieH.

    W3C tells us we need that second element and then when it's omitted they tell us it's fine without it...

    I find that "passing curious" but not entirely shocking...

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •