My site (www.pvcstrip.com) was listed on Google and found with the
keyword search "pvcstrip" three days ago, but it is not listed there
now.  How come?  NOTE: I am NOT asking you how to submit my site to
Google.  I've already done that and it was listed there.  I am asking
how come it was there and now it's not.

Hi there,

There was a time when you just submitted your website's URL, waited a
month or two, it appeared and that was that. These days the process
can be more complicated, especially when it comes to Google.

Freshbot
--------

When you submit your URL to Google, some time in the next month or so
the Googlebot will pay your site a visit and index most or all of it.
When the entire main index is refreshed (typically at the end of each
month) your site should appear and stay there. Sometimes you have to
wait until the following main index refresh for it to appear.

Google also has Freshbot - it looks at websites which typically have
constantly changing content. If you see any Google search results with
a date beside them, that is when Freshbot last visited them - my guess
is that the listing for your site had a date beside it, because it was
found by Freshbot.

It appears that your site was found by the FreshBot, and is now going
through an unstable period which often occurs to newly listed sites.
One of the most common queries I receive here (and elsewhere) is why
does my site disappear, then reappear, then disappear? The following
comes from GoogleGuy, a Google search engineer who often answers
queries posted at WebMasterWorld:

GoogleGuy: Everflux and Fresh Crawls
------------------------------------

If your site is new, or hasn't shown up in google for long, it may
because our "fresh crawl" (which runs each day) was finding your site
instead of our main crawl (which runs about once a month). Our "fresh
crawl" is a newer feature, and we're still experimenting with which
pages to crawl, how deeply to crawl, etc. We even reserve the right to
(gasp!) not do a fresh crawl on some days because we're doing tests or
reviewing new code. Someone wrote in recently and said "my site got in
google three weeks ago, and you've dropped me four times!"  Nope, it's
just that we don't always crawl the same pages in our fresh crawl, and
we don't always crawl to the same depth. As we do a full crawl of the
web, we find most of the sites from our fresh crawl and put them in
our regular index. My advice on our fresh crawl is to view it as a
nice "bonus" on top of google's deep index. Users can always search
our full index, but sometimes we can serve up even fresher pages as an
extra nicety.

The rest of the discussion is at:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/6339.htm

Basically, if your site is picked up by freshbot one day, but not the
next, the site's listing reverts to its normal listing. If your site
didn't previously have a regular listing, it disappears. Here are some
more opinions at WebMasterWorld:

Google also has what we call the fresh-bot, also nicknamed "minty". It
crawls much more frequently, but not as deeply. It is used to update
pages in the index which change often. After a freshbot crawl you site
may appear for a few days with an updated listing, called a "fresh
listing". However, if the freshbot does not return within a few more
days, your "fresh listing" will disappear, and your listing will
revert to whatever it was during the previous deep-crawl, meaning the
one at least one month ago. If you have never had a "previous" deep
crawl, then your site may disappear. If the fresh bot returns to your
site, your fresh listing may re-appear. Therefore, during the first 30
to 59 days of a site's life, it may drop in and out of Google's
results page.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/6743.htm

When we do a new fresh crawl, it currently replaces the last fresh
crawl. And again, we do experiments from time to time, so different
crawls may visit different pages. (GoogleGuy)
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/6339.htm

My site is new and isn't in the Main Index yet, but was in for a day,
due to fresh bot crawl 3 days ago. freshbot came back this morning
(whew), grabbed some pages, but I'm nowhere to be found... The point
is that pages found by freshbot have an unsure life in Google's index.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/5196-3-15.htm

Search Strategy: searching WebMasterWorld for "freshbot"


This is a huge subject, with thousands of people guessing at what is
going on, and rare instances of someone like GoogleGuy giving
semi-official answers. Feel free to ask for a clarification if you
want me to dig deeper on any aspect of my answer.

Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga

---

Request for Answer Clarification by neal1027-ga on 27 Dec 2002 03:02 PST

Your answer is a guess, not an answer.  You say that yourself at the
end of your "answer".  I paid for "Google Answers", not "Google
Guesses".  If you cannot answer a question (or there IS no answer to a
question), don't substitute a guess for an answer--especially not when
charging someone for it!

---

Clarification of Answer by robertskelton-ga on 27 Dec 2002 07:17 PST

Not everything in this world is black and white. The knowledge that
comes directly from Google is typically vague and allusive (very
prudent in my book). In this instance, short of a direct answer, an
eductated guess is valuable. A description of what occurs, coming from
GoogleGuy, is of much value, considering that his thoughts are
semi-official. I believe my educated guess as to why your site showed
up momentarily is accurate. I have no idea how many Google Engineers
there are, but they do not work here at Google Answers. Google
Researchers are independent from the search engine processs.

Unless Google publish the algorithms of their search engine, an
absolute answer is impossible. The opinions I have offered are the
finest available, and almost, and most probably, correct.

I received a guess, not an answer.  And not even a good guess.  But it
was expensive!

On a scale for "guess work" 1-10, where 1 is poor, the "guess" in
answer to your query was 9. A very good "guess" indeed.
You ought to give the reply time to be proven, as the researcher says,
at the end of each month, ie, before your site is included in the new
index proper.
Which can take several updates, depending on how many quality links
point to your site will determine the speed of inclusion in a new
index.

neal1027,

I am sorry that you were not happy with your Answer, however, there
are some things of which you should be aware:

1) Quite a number of Customers have posted Questions here on Google
Answers which are nearly identical to yours;
2) The price you paid for this information is the price that you
yourself indicated you were willing to pay for this information;
3) The reasons robertskelton gave you ARE the correct Answer to your
Question, and you did not receive a "bad guess", you received an
EXCELLENT Answer; and
4) In my own opinion, robertskelton is one of the best Researchers you
could get for Answering Questions like this one.

Please remember that, while you may not "like" the Answer to your
Question, in order to receive information that will help you to
maximize the number of people who view your website, I am sure you
would prefer a correct Answer -- rather than one that sounds good, but
is not correct.

You may want to take a look at a question nearly identical to yours,
also Answered by robertskelton:
http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=123552

Best Wishes for increased traffic to your website,

aceresearcher