Sometimes Pages Just Disappear

In my previous post we discussed what happens when the “home page not indexed” warning lights go on.  Today let’s talk about the fact that sometimes your pages just disappear from Google.

This happened last week with a client.  Their rankings just tanked, particularly for a niche term that we had been working on.  This coincided with some of their competitors losing top rankings for terms they had dominated for several months.  The category is a bit spammy so my first reaction was “Google Penalty”, which set off a bit of a minor panic (at least in my head).

Less than a week later all of the rankings are back.  I then remembered that sometimes your pages do just disappear from Google for whatever reason.  Usually we see this with new sites.  Some people call this “The Sandbox Effect”.  In almost all cases these pages find their way back into the index, especially if you are building good inbound links.

So the moral of the story: if you think you are getting smacked around by Google my advice is to relax, breathe, do some yoga, trust the force, watch some Ronald Reagan movies, have a smoke, whatever. Don’t think twice, it’s all right.