Website Out of Service?

If a website is out of service, even just temporarily, Google may de-index the website.

Many business owners would think that Google and other search engines would not remove out of service websites from their indexes, but instead give the business owner more time to resolve any technical or business issues with the website.

According to Google, this may not be the case as there appears to be a penalty for having a website out of service.

Question from B. Schwartz:

I’ve been having problems with downtime from my hosting company (am moving tomorrow as this is the final straw) and I’ve now practically disappeared from Google. I was in 3rd position for 5 of the more popular searches for my business and now – nothing.

Vanessa Fox of Google replies:

If the host is down when Googlebot tries to access your pages, then those pages may disappear from the index until Googlebot can crawl them again. In webmaster tools, do the pages you want indexed appear in the crawl errors section? If so, then Googlebot was unable to access them. If you are moving the site to a new host and the pages are available the next time Googlebot tries to access them, then you should see them in the index again soon after that.

So Google may remove websites from their front page if your website is not accessible at the time Google’s robot (or bot) checks your website for updates.

Vanessa goes on to say:

You’re right that requesting reinclusion is only for sites that have violated the guidelines. This isn’t the situation in your case, and there’s no need to contact us to let us know that your site has moved and is available again, as Googlebot will keep rechecking for it automatically. Googlebot will try a few times before the pages drop from the index. As for how long it takes for a page to get back in once the site is back up, that really depends on a number of factors, such as how often the site is crawled in general.

SEO Advice

Once your website goes offline, it is like having to start all over again from the bottom…

About Covertise

• Covertise hosts client websites on best-in-class servers that are under our control.
• We do not host client websites on \”shared hosting\” accounts which are located on low-end servers with hundreds or even thousands of unrelated websites with an equal number of owners and operators. One bad apple does spoil the barrel.
• Your business website must be managed and hosted in a \”good neighborhood\” without any crowding or overselling.

Contact Covertise for more information.

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