Why Websites Disappear from Google

Google has always been strict when it comes to their search engine results. Millions of websites try to rank on similar keywords, but only the ones that do everything right get to the top.

Not to mention, if you use black hat SEO techniques, and Google notices it, your site will not rank on Google anymore. In fact, it may disappear altogether from Google.

As a webmaster, you should therefore be careful when pushing forward with the techniques you are using. But, that’s not the only reason your website can disappear from Google. There can be many other reasons for your business not being found on Google.

Let's explore how to check if your business is on Google, and reasons why a website can disappear from Google you should avoid.

How to check if your site has disappeared

If you start blogging, you have to know a lot of things. This can help you tackle the issues when they happen.

To confirm that your site has disappeared from Google, you need to do a Google search using the specific keyword below.

site:domain.com

So, if your site is www.example.com, then you need to search in Google.com using the keyword mentioned below.

site:www.example.com

You can check your site is accessible at other parts of the by using VPN as there a few free VPN options available online.

If you see no pages of your site, then your site is, in fact, deleted from Google search.

However, if you see that some of your high ranking pages are not there, then they might be taking some time to be updated there.

Reasons why your site can disappear from Google

There can be many reasons for your site not showing up correctly on Google. Let’s go through them one by one.

1) Google Penalty

The number one reason for your site disappearance can be Google Penalty.

Google is very rigorous when it comes to ranking websites. They do not rank sites that do not match their criteria anymore. The first biggest wipe happened after the Google Panda update that took place in 2012. They removed most of the websites that were ranking highly by using black hat techniques. Almost all the high ranking sites lost a lot of traffic.

Google invests time and effort in making its search engine more reliable and accurate. This means that your site can get delisted in the recent update. You may want to check the new update and figure out what went wrong. You can make changes to your site according to the latest update and see if your site starts getting listed or not.

2) Is your site down?

Before you jump into the conclusion, try to check out whether your site is running. Sometimes, if your site is down for a long period, the search engine fails to re-crawl it and hence see a partial disappearance from Google. This means that not all your pages will appear on the search as the site has been down.

To solve this problem, you need to connect with your website support and see how the problem can be fixed.

3) Check if the search engine can crawl your site

Google generally crawls a website multiple times. If it is not able to do so, it will simply ignore the site. If your site is not appearing on Google, then you should also check out whether your site is crawlable or not.

The easiest way to check it is from Google Webmaster Tools. Go to the tool, and then fetch your site as Google bot. If it returns success, then your site is crawlable, and the problems lie elsewhere. If it failed to do so, then you need to check your robot.txt and see if it is blocking Google bot or not. If you see it is blocking, then you need to enable it.

4) Low-Quality Links

At the core of the Google search engine is linking. Websites actively seek out to get links from high-authority sites to improve their online presence. Many websites think that linking is all they need to do. This results in linking low-quality inbound links.

Fiverr is one of the marketplaces where you can get a bunch of these links to your site for 5$. Please do not do it! If you did, and then you see your site suddenly ranking down, then you need to stop buying those services and re-think your linking strategy.

Initially, these linking work great as it makes Google see you’re a website with great link potential. However, these strikes your back completely after some time as Google access the situation from a better position.

5) Check if your site is hacked

Hacking has affected more websites than you will ever think. If your site is hacked, it might not show on Google. There can be two reasons for it. The first reason is that the hack itself has stopped Google bot from accessing the site. Another reason is that Google itself has delisted the site because it appeared hacked.

Google cares about its users and hence do not want them to visit a hacked site. To safeguard the user, they remove the site from the Google search engine.

The reason behind your site getting hacked can be either plugin/theme vulnerability or simply the web host that you are using. That’s why it is always recommended to research the web hosts and then go for the best one according to your budget.

As a webmaster, it is really hard to find out if your site is hacked or not. This is because the hackers can use obfuscated code to hide the vulnerability on your site. The best approach is to either revert back to a healthy backup or hire a security expert that can remove the malicious code and vulnerability from your site.

Also, it would help if you were self-aware that Google will take time to rank your website. You may also lose some ranking as other sites may have pushed their effort for the ranking on particular keywords.

Conclusion

Finding your site disappeared from Google is a heart-breaking experience. As a webmaster, you should not panic and try to find the actual cause behind it. If you think that the above points helped you to find the issue, then do not forget to comment below. You can also check out the Google Quality Guidelines and try to follow it for your future endeavor.