When Sites Get Dropped

Have you ever suffered pages, even an entire site, dropping from Google?

At the beginning of October I wrote about a site that totally vanished from Google and I suspected Duplicate Content Filters.

The background - I'd published a one page website for a customer and then about 60 to 75% of the page content was duplicated onto a local business directory. A short time later, the new site vanished from Google. I checked links in, did some links building etc, but week after week I couldn't get the site listed again.

It was then that I discovered the directory listing. The text on the listing was changed, which didn't take too long, then it was left for time to take it's course.

A couple of weeks later and Google had cached the new version of the directory page and magically, the new site had reappeared in the listings.

This teaches us 2 important lessons:

1 - don't copy someone else's text - make sure your text is original, no matter what it takes.

2 - if you are creating a listing somewhere - use new text! You might be doing more harm than good if the directory is older than your website.