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I have set up this simple blog, which is about travel from a girl's point of view. The site is based on a Wordpress template and the content is pretty straighforward.

When the site was launched on the 1/09 , a 'travelettes' Google search would bring the site at the top position and with an average of 3000 visits in the first two weeks, the site proved popular enough.

Recently, Google has taken the site out of its index and I have no idea why. I have checked if the site had been hacked and didn't find anything suspicious, nothing in the database, no spam ... A test with Google malware diagnostic tool returns negative...

The only odd thing I could find was the 'Top Search Queries' which returned a number of sex related or 'nokia' queries??!!!

Should I mention that I haven't used any particular tricks to improve rankings? Altogether, this is a very simple blog...

What sort of procedure could I try in order to identify the problems? Can you think of any reasons why the 'Top Search Queries' returns these odd results and how to fix this? Are there any sort of tools I could use to assess the site's 'health'?

Thanks in advance?

4 Answers 4

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Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools. It should be able to give you any hints as to why it was de-indexed. Also, if you have used any 'black-hat' SEO tactics it could have resulted in de-listing, there are a variety of reasons.

Regarding the top search queries, this indicates spam, but you had said you didn't detect any on your site so not sure where that would come from.

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  • No, I haven't used any specific tactics, also the site's already on Webmaster tools, this is where I got the 'Top Search Queries' from... So , according to the queries, it may be spam after all... I need to have another look. Akismet didn't detect anything, and the comments are clean...
    – slimbuddah
    Sep 29, 2009 at 13:36
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referrer_spam explains what you are seeing in your logs. Now as far the Webmaster tools that is a +1.

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  • i've now installed the Bad Behavior plugin bad-behavior.ioerror.us it actually keeps a log of blocked refferers sites, fingers crossed, i hope it's the solution. finding out will surely takes a few days...
    – slimbuddah
    Sep 29, 2009 at 17:56
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I just confirmed that I can't find your website anywhere in Google's index either. Its kinda strange that they would remove you for no reason (ie. spam/shady tactics).

Here are a list of common reasons why people's sites "disappear" from Google's index. Let us know if ANY of these sound even remotely familiar.

http://www.bigoakinc.com/seo-articles/banned-by-google.php

Good luck!

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  • Thanks for the link. I had a look and could actually find a potential problem. When working on the site, I had set up a demo site and totally forgot to remove it, it's something I've never quite worried about before as I would sometimes go back to the demo site to test some updates. Maybe Google considered that to be 'duplicating content'. The robots.txt file wasn't allowing crawlers though, so I'm not sure that's the reason. In any case , it's out now...
    – slimbuddah
    Sep 29, 2009 at 17:17
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i can see that you use google analytics for the site. try going to http://google.com/webmasters - you have http://www.travelettes.net/ probably already added there - check if there are no messages from google to you.

try to apply for site reconsideration.

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  • i've been there but Google messages are pretty cryptic, they basically state that they've reviewed the site and if they find that the site is ok, they'll index it again...they don't give any reasons or directions, although I did explain the problem as clearly as I could when requesting reconsideration...
    – slimbuddah
    Sep 29, 2009 at 17:52

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