Google indexing question

[EmmaFlower]

My site has 24 pages of which all of them were indexed by google and I rank well, however, in the past week they have all been un indexed but my pages are still showing when I search them,
any ideas why this might be?

[fizzbird]

My site has 24 pages of which all of them were indexed by google and I rank well, however, in the past week they have all been un indexed but my pages are still showing when I search them,
any ideas why this might be?

Hi Em
Not your football site then, that seems to be doing ok #3 for "fotball on tv" with loads of pages indexed

[EmmaFlower]

Hi Fizzbird, yeah thats the one, in google webmaster tools its showing that none of the pages are indexed!

hmm maybe its just a glitch, I will just keep an eye on it

[fizzbird]

Hi Fizzbird, yeah thats the one, in google webmaster tools its showing that none of the pages are indexed!

hmm maybe its just a glitch, I will just keep an eye on it

probably a glitch yeah, give it a slap

[Brendon]

Have you modded the XML sitemap recently? I'm seeing it as an indexed object, which indicates that it's broken... That could certainly cause the drop in indexing etc

[fizzbird]

Have you modded the XML sitemap recently? I'm seeing it as an indexed object, which indicates that it's broken... That could certainly cause the drop in indexing etc

I have a few xml sitemaps indexed and it doesn't stop anything else being indexed. Intuitively I'd guess the opposite?
As was pointed out, pages are indeed indexed

[EmmaFlower]

Brenden why would that indicate that its broken? sorry i'm fairly new to this. It is the same as it always has been, and has always managed to rank quite well with all the pages indexed for at least 5 months maybe more now.

Fizzbird, i'll give it a slap, stoopid stoopid sitemap!

[Brendon]

>> Brenden why would that indicate that its broken?

XML is a very strict protocol, and any deviation whatsoever from perfection breaks the whole thing. I'm always deeply suspicious when I see them indexed as an object - it may well be an irrational fear, but it always makes me wonder if it's really being processed correctly, because intuitively, I'd expect that information to be simply sucked into the G machine, not indexed and presented as a search result to the outside world.

The reason I mention it is that there are persistent reports of sites tanking after introduction of, or mods to an XML sitemap. It directly influences the crawl control process, and if it goes wrong that would effectively stop your site being crawled.

I also notice that your sitemap has 2 entries for the default page, one for "/" and one for "index.html" - those are directly equivalent, and they both deliver 200 error codes, so it's also possible you've introduced a dupe content / canonical struggle issue into your G rankings, which could also cause problems.

Of course, it's also possible you never really were deindexed, just that you saw some odd data from a deviant datacentre, or a loot of your pages have been pushed into the supplemental index, where you can still search for them directly, but they are unlikely to be returned for a more general query.

Confusing, isn't it?

[EmmaFlower]

ok thanks...

I understand about two words that you just said

i've had no drop in clicks through google, and i've updated the sitemap numerous times as the site has grown and it's never been an issue before. I guess I'll just keep an eye on it ey

[Brendon]

Ah, this is the info I was trying to get

>> i've updated the sitemap numerous times

OK, so you have modded the sitemap. If traffic hasn't dropped off, it probably is all fine then, and you are just seeing odd results. I'd keep an eye on your traffic though - you sometimes see this kind of indexing problem before it becomes widespread across all of Google, and your traffic disappears. That said, don't fret about it though - so long as the traffic holds up, what you saw is irrelevant

>> i've had no drop in clicks through google

That's the important bit. That would suggest that whatever you are seeing, it's not making much difference. If you want to really understand SEO, you'll need to do some research on how SE indices are compiled, and how they decide what results to actually show. Google, especially, is a complex machine. There is no such thing as "the Google index" any more, but several smaller subsets covering different stuff for different reasons. When you see odd results for a search you make, its often that your request has hit a test dataset, or a datacentre that is in the middle of updating, making it seem that "Google has gone haywire"

[fizzbird]

Fizzbird, i'll give it a slap, stoopid stoopid sitemap!

Usually works - who needs any technical jargon?

One thing about the sitemap issue though, I stopped using the "last modified" bit a while ago as it's quite easy to get out of date with this (unless it's automated?).
I figured that having a sitemap displaying inaccurate data could lead to problems.

I've not seen any detriment as yet?

[shakir]

My site has 24 pages of which all of them were indexed by google and I rank well, however, in the past week they have all been un indexed but my pages are still showing when I search them,
any ideas why this might be?

Dont worry.. same happens to me 3 weeks before.. now my site slowly coming back... just continue ur promotion will be OK

[websurfer]

if you have removed your pages from index, than it will not effect quickly, it will take some times to remove it permanently, also your pages might be removed for some data center of google.