8 replies to this topic

[TroyT]

I added a dropdown menu on a site, which listed all the business's services as links to individual pages on the site. Shortly after, the site was de-indexed and from the looks of it, not just Google. Bing and Yahoo too. Immediately removed the dropdown. That was 6 days ago but site is still de-indexed. Desperate. What can I do?

[Jill]

Check your robots.txt file. Sounds like you're probably blocking them. Either that or you have noindex, nofollow in a head meta tag.

[TroyT]

You were absolutely right - Robots file to blame. Removed now. Thanks a million.
Sigh. Is it just a case of waiting now for the next spidering or is there anything I can do to speed things up? Is the site likely to suffer any ill-effects because of the time it's been blocked?

[Jill]

You were absolutely right

Of course I was

You'll have to wait, but it shouldn't take long.

[TroyT]

So do you think my dropdown menu is probably legit enough to re-instate?

[torka]

Absolutely. Sounds as though it would make it easier for visitors to quickly locate the exact page they're looking for, which is a good thing. And it would also make it easier for spiders to locate all the interior pages, as well, which is another good thing.

IMO, anything that makes your site more visitor-friendly is almost certainly something you want to do.

--Torka

[Jill]

So do you think my dropdown menu is probably legit enough to re-instate?

Because your problem had nothing to do with the menu, then sure.

But have you figured out why your robots.txt file got changed? Make sure the program you're adding doesn't do that by default.

[TroyT]

Sheer carelessness on my part. I have a subdomain for test versions of the site. Robots file should have been there. Doh! Do you reckon rankings will kick in where they left off or - horror of horrors - am I looking at another slow climb?

[Jill]

There's no reason why it should be a problem, but you'll know for sure over the next few days.