Hey folks, anyone have any thoughts on what's going on with the handsonwebhosting.com site?

If you enter into google "handsonwebhosting" it no longer pulls up our page. If you enter "handsonwebhosting.com" it pulls up our site in the listing.

If you enter "Hands-on Web Hosting", it brings up our Billing/Support section first and has links on there, but NOT on our main domain.

It's like the "handsonwebhosting.com" domain has been dropped from google as being the main result page.

We have more than 248,000 references to "handsonwebhosting.com" according to google search results.

Anyone have any thoughts?

It's seems Google believes billing.handsonwebhosting.com is more accurate for the search term "handsonwebhosting"

I had to read this a couple of times because it doesn't add up.

Hmm.. could it be that this is one of the side effects of centralizing the operation using WHMCS? A lot of companies out there build their business around highly integrated WHMCS, so perhaps Google considers this to be the main hub, if most traffic/clients, heading straight to the application page for support/contact management?

He feels handsonwebhosting.com should be the first to display in results when searching for "handsonwebhosting". Instead it shows "billing.handsonwebhosting.com. I would have to agree it is kind of weird.

I just tried at least a dozen webhosts with and without the .com extension in Google - all but one showed the .com as number one in both instances and that showed as number 3 without the .com

Hmm. The only thing I can think of is billing.handsonwebhosting.com is just ranked higher in Google's index, but it still seems weird that handsonwebhosting.com doesn't appear in the search results at least after billing.handsonwebhosting.com if that's the case.

The issue is that for the past 10 years, if someone typed in "handsonwebhosting" or "handsonhosting" or "hands-on web hosting" or combination there of, our main site "http://www.handsonwebhosting.com" would show up on the top of the list. This is still true for Bing and Yahoo.

Up until just the other day (between 1 and 3 days ago), google now no longer shows "www.handsonwebhosting.com" as the number 1 spot with our regular site links etc listed below it. Instead, http://billing.handsonwebhosting.com is now listed in the number one spot.

www.handsonwebhosting.com (the main page) no longer shows up in ANY result unless you specifically type in the name that way. It does still display folders within the site, and subdomains, so it's not as if the domain has be blacklisted, but just the home page (index.php) no longer shows on the search results.

No changes have been made on our end have been made. The only thing I can even remotely think about is that Artashes put a link on the TalkFreelance.com website the other week and it's not a "nofollow" link. Since it's at the bottom of the page, Google MIGHT think it's a purchased link.

That's the only thing I can see different happening over the past 6 months. Artashes, maybe we can turn that into a graphical link instead of a text link? Not sure.

We will do what's necessary, Conor. Shoot me an email if you'd like to confirm that.

I always thought "Powered by" pre-text would be seen as adding value, not deducting it, like "Sponsored by".

Hello,

I'm not sure if this is the reason but your robots.txt file is referencing every search engine but not saying where they can access. Even if this isn't the problem it's always good to add the command. Try and replace your rotots.txt file with the following:

Edit: I am checking other websites robots.txt file and most do not have the allow command so that can't be the problem

Jack

Hello Jack,

Thanks for taking a look. I had actually just modified the robots.txt just an hour or so ago removing two directories that I had a DISALLOW statement on (but the folders are actually removed now).

I've added it in for good measure.

I also used webCEO and noticed that the main index.php file has been removed from the current search engine and also on ask.com. Bing and Yahoo still show it as active.

Thanks for having a look. It's a little more than frustrating knowing that I didn't do any major changes (as you can see in a google cache). I did notice that google hasn't cached our home page since Feb 2nd, so I re-uploaded a new site index and XML to see if that will spark them into gear.

No problem at all.

I see well I hope it works for you.

We have been trying to get to the first result on Google for a competitive keyword. Yesterday we were on page 1 (4th result) and now our site has completely disappeared. This isn't the first time this has happened either. If only we knew what Google is up to.

Jack

Google has re-included the "www.handsonwebhosting.com" domain name in the SERPS. I filed a petition with google also asking if maybe there was an error, and 5 days later I'm now included again.

The internal sitelinks haven't repopulated yet, but at least there's SOME progress.

Just thought I'd share an update here as to what is going on.

Great to know Google reacts to such reports quite efficiently.

Thanks Google. I know you're reading this.