Don't Upset Google

If you have read the earlier posts you would know that the sites traffic was going well. I had managed to build the average days unique visitors up to 100 or more per a day. 

Some how I managed to upset Google recently

Google and other search engine results account for about 50-60% of my visitors. For some reason over a two week period the number of visitors dropped to 60 a day , then 40 then 20 ... at the end there were a few days when only 10-15 people visited the site. Something was wrong.

I did a search for some of the more successful articles and product listings of the site, I found nothing. I then did a search of my site using Google and a generic key word found on most of the pages...only  about 20 hits. Because I was specifically searching my site via Google I should have found over 500 hits, at least one for each page on the site.

OMGWTF - Google had been de-listing my pages and because many other search engines rely on Google they were reducing the frequency of their spider visits to index my pages too.

This is why it is essential that you have Google Webmaster Tools set up for your site. There is a help link and a request form for this very scenario. I don't know what I did wrong, I don't think I broke any TOS set forth by Google and it appeared that the de-listing was automated. The help link provides a form where you can request "reconsideration" for indexing by Google.

They check out you site and re-list it as appropriate. They don't tell you what the problem was or provide any feedback but they do act pretty swiftly. I find the lack of feedback worrisome as it could happen again and I still wouldn't know why.

As the moment the site is starting to recover, It is back up to about 60-70 unique visitors a day. I think it is about 2 weeks since the site was re-indexed.