Comments on: Google truly is fickle

By: Simon

Simon — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 11:58:35 +0000

Thanks guys for all the help and support.

By: rowan

rowan — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 03:57:22 +0000

i am glad to see you have other faithful readers looking out for you. i hope stephen’s suggestions help!

By: elliot

elliot — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 19:42:06 +0000

Don’t worry, I’ve got you bookmarked.

By: Stephen Ward

Stephen Ward — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:49:04 +0000

Another important thing you can do to verify that this is indeed the problem Google is encountering is to set up your site on Google Webmaster Tools. Once you've verified ownership of the site, you should be able to see any crawl errors in explicit detail. In general, Google does a wonderful job of communicating with webmasters about their site's status in their index; you just have to know where to look.

By: Stephen Ward

Stephen Ward — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:42:26 +0000

Considering I do search engine optimization for a living, I think this is a fine opportunity to repay the help you gave me a few weeks ago.

I ran some preliminary checks on your website. Your code’s fine. I know your posts, so I don’t think any of your outbound links would be causing problems. However, when I browse to your site as Googlebot, I get a 412 error.

To see what I mean, install the Firefox User Agent Switcher extension and import this user agent list into it. Then, select Tools -> User Agent Switcher -> Googlebot 2.1 (New Version). This basically tells any website you visit that you’re Googlebot and to display the requested page as such. SEO experts use it to make sure you’re site isn’t cloaking.

It’s likely the problem has something to do with your switch in hosting service. You should contact your web host ASAP to get it corrected. After Google hasn’t been able to see your site for awhile, it might drop it from the index altogether.

I hope this helps. Don’t hesitate to ask if you need any more assistance.