Sites Dropped From Google

The saga of why the Mortgage Rates site so suddenly dropped from Google continues, but may be getting closer to a resolution.

Yesterday, I searched Google for half a paragraph of text from the home page and was surprised to find 18 results. All very similar to my own site. Even more surprising, my site wasn't there - not until I clicked the 'show similar sites' link.

Right above my site was a directory listing that linked back to my site. The text it had used to describe my site basically consisted of 50% of my home page. I've already described my problems when the content of a web site was duplicated by a directory.

Looking at the page, it was cached in Google, but grey barred. Thanks to the weekend's PR export and my look at the Latest Page Rank Update on Saturday, I was able to conclude that the page had first been cached in the previous 8 days - my site was dropped 5 days ago.

So that's who I'm blaming (for now) for my site's fall from grace and the loss of a large part of our daily income. The reaction here was that we demand that the listing is removed or changed, but that assumes there are contact details on the site; that the person will actually respond; they will respond quickly and Google will pick up the changes ASAP. If the page is favoured above our own page, it's likely that it's new but long term Google will put weight on that page and having a link out of it will be a benefit.

My solution was to reword our entire home page, take the chance to tidy a few pieces up and just make it look different from the other 18 I've found. Then wait for Google to come visiting and hope we are back where we were.