Ok... I am enjoying my BluDomain site, but for some reason Google has removed my URL entirely from the search engine.

I don't spam, I have changed anything other than switching to BluDomain

I now have to verify my site, and ask for forgiveness (I don't know what for)..but since the site is flash and redirected to some sub-folder, I can neither edit the meta tags or add a verification html code for Google to see.

Anyone had this problem or know of a solution??

Well, I didn't know that I had the problem either until I saw your post. Searches in the past brought my site up at the top of the search, now I'm not listed at all.

I'm still in the top five when you just search my personal name... and the top when you search my business mane. Doesn't seem to be affecting my blu site.

If you're saying you changed hosting companies that could be part of the problem. There is something with redirects in terms of hosting that can be problematic. Depending on how the process was handled to move your site, Google may be looking at you as a new site. Part of it has to do with spam sites, illegal sites, and other 'bad' activities that Google tries to protect the mass searchers from.

It's a good and bad thing. As stated, if not moved correctly you could be in a world of hurt. There is a ton of info regarding this under SEO information.

That is EXACTLY the same situation I am in. I was top of the search for "Joshua Hudson," "Joshua Hudson Photography," "Dragonfly Digital Media," "Dragonfly Photography;" and I was on the first page for "Wedding Photography Butler" and "Wedding Photography Pittsburgh."

Now I don't exists on any listing ANYWHERE. Not even 30 pages down at the end.

deewaltguy wrote:
Well, I didn't know that I had the problem either until I saw your post. Searches in the past brought my site up at the top of the search, now I'm not listed at all.

I didn't change hosting. But BluDomain requires you to redirect to their subfolder on my hosted site. (So instead of directing to www.URL.com to the basic "index.hml" it now has to look at folder MADISON/index.hml)

cordellwillis wrote:
If you're saying you changed hosting companies that could be part of the problem. There is something with redirects in terms of hosting that can be problematic. Depending on how the process was handled to move your site, Google may be looking at you as a new site. Part of it has to do with spam sites, illegal sites, and other 'bad' activities that Google tries to protect the mass searchers from.

It's a good and bad thing. As stated, if not moved correctly you could be in a world of hurt. There is a ton of info regarding this under SEO information.

I recommend using Webmaster Tools: www.google.com/webmasters/tools

There is a lot of useful information to help your site perform better.

/asim

Tried it.. here is the problem. They suggest to log in. That requires that I "verify" that I am owner of the URL. THAT requires I either put meta code in my html (which I can't do with bludomain) OR I put in a special html page on the site (which needs to go to a special folder I can't identity).

So, I am stuck until Bludomain can call me and help me fix this...and they are living up to their notorious reputation of not returning e-mail.



asimsoofi wrote:
I recommend using Webmaster Tools: www.google.com/webmasters/tools

There is a lot of useful information to help your site perform better.

/asim

Actually, you can place the HTML code in your Bludomain site.

Here's how...Login to your admin panel and click on "edit statistics tracking code."

Place the analytics code within the statistics code box and save.

Go back to Google Analytics and verify.

Done.

I'll give it a try. Hold on .

You can easily download your "index.html" from your main folder. Open that up in a text-editor, and you can change:
-title, metadata, description, other items

Then save it (make a copy of the original if you're not sure about it), then re-upload that file and overwrite whats in your main folder. I would do this for all of your pages (like blog, proofing, etc).

Never had a real problem once I tweaked the above. Always on the top pages.

Nope..didn't work...says the following--

Last attempt Jul 18, 2008: The verification meta tag is in the wrong location on the page. It must be within the first <HEAD> section of the page.

Ok..I found that I was finally able to get the verification html for Google to work (after an hour).

It says that my crawl is just fine and nothing is wrong...I just disappeared. That must have something to do with the new code for bludomain flash though.

So in essence it is a redirect of sort (not exactly host but a redirect non the less). This is always tricky. You are taking the right steps to get you where you belong.

Yes...bludomains program is in a subfolder of the main htdocs folder (where index.html is usually kept.).

So for me it would be "... /madison" where my URL directs to find the "index.html."

It really sucks that I had an average HTML site that was popping up pretty well on the Google, and now I have a more professional site but the only proof of my existence on Google is through everyone else's site. That really sucks.

You would think that BluDomain would have all of this kind of stuff anticipated and at least a reference to it on the FAQ page.

Google will also penalize sites if you use non-recommended techniques for SEO optimization. Have you hired any company to do any SEO work for you recently?

sboerup wrote:
Google will also penalize sites if you use non-recommended techniques for SEO optimization. Have you hired any company to do any SEO work for you recently?

Having the same problem as DM. As for me, I hired localpull.com.

Do you think that Google's penalizing me for that now?

-m

Penalizing comes into play when you use what they call Black Hat techniques. Some are more obvious than others; for instance, placing text on your page(s) that is the same color as the background to populate the page with keywords. Another is when you repeat words far too many times.

Google suggest that your page be worded for human reading and not search engine reading. Being a part of a site that simply uses a list of sites to link to can be a no-no too. However, it depends on the site.

There are far more details to the above than what can be explained here. I strongly suggest hire an SEO expert and/or picking up a book on SEO work. It's not an easy process to understand though. It can take several months to move up in the page ranks too.

Just like there are photographers much better than others, there are SEO pros better than others. Even more so because SEO is a constantly moving target.

Peace,
Cordell

I didn't do any SEO other than suggest URL site on their Google page. Otherwise, I have just been letting the site do all the work. It was working pretty well and then BOOM! It was all taken off the internet search.

Now that I have access to Google Webmaster tools, I have more questions because it says that everything is OK, but my URL came up "Err 404" in their last bot scroll (July 12th)

The only thing that has changed is that the new BluDomain site is up. So something is weird.

I have definitely been reading for a few weeks now and I am just as confused on a good SEO strategy as before. (although I understand what you are saying now).

The problem is that there is almost no good way to evaluate SEO businesses and even harder to determine the ROI for the amount of investment.

cordellwillis wrote:
Penalizing comes into play when you use what they call Black Hat techniques. Some are more obvious than others; for instance, placing text on your page(s) that is the same color as the background to populate the page with keywords. Another is when you repeat words far too many times.

Google suggest that your page be worded for human reading and not search engine reading. Being a part of a site that simply uses a list of sites to link to can be a no-no too. However, it depends on the site.

There are far more details to the above than what can be explained here. I strongly suggest hire an SEO expert and/or picking up a book on SEO work. It's not an easy process to understand though. It can take several months to move up in the page ranks too.

Just like there are photographers much better than others, there are SEO pros better than others. Even more so because SEO is a constantly moving target.

Peace,
Cordell

DragonflyDM wrote:
I have definitely been reading for a few weeks now and I am just as confused on a good SEO strategy as before. (although I understand what you are saying now).

The problem is that there is almost no good way to evaluate SEO businesses and even harder to determine the ROI for the amount of investment.


Like there are known "experts" in the field of photography, there are known experts when it comes to SEO. You will obviously pay for the big boys and girls. Finding the ROI is another story I believe when I last checked into one of the upper end guys the cost started at $3k. That does not include the fees you may pay for things like Yahoo directory submission (human submission as opposed to auto crawlers).

It's tough but doable.

Possibly the most likely explanation is that google just does stupid things quite a lot of the time and probably has nothing against your site in particular. I've put sites up that disappeared before then reappeared, then disappeared, then eventually, *eventually*... ended up being reasonably highly ranked. For no reason at all. And I've had others that have gone on quickly and with no fuss. Google is just a hissy prima donna who has a lot of bad days. You can SEO and tweak like crazy, or you can wait, possibly a long time, for your site to just reappear. Unfortunately you'll never know what fixed it.

Well, I was reading on the Google sites, and I put one of those robots.txt files in via their suggestion. Hopefully that will make it easier to find me again.

It really sucks that I had an average HTML site that was popping up pretty well on the Google, and now I have a more professional site but the only proof of my existence on Google is through everyone else's site. That really sucks.

You went from an html site to a flash site. Google reads html well and uses the information contained in the html to index your site... Google doesn't read flash well, IF AT ALL, but that's changing in the near future. All it has to go by is the meta-data, meta-keywords, etc., plus any html that might be on a "splash" page or sometimes on the index page. Most likely you got dropped because in the "eyes" of the search bot you went invisible.

My splash page is HTML

www.dragonflydigitalmedia.com