Why has my website disapeared from Google?  There isn't even a cached
snapshot of it anymore (www.icon.co.za/~lusthof).  In the last couple
of months I was #1 with a couple of keywords (eg. "Franschhoek
Accommodation"), and on about page 6 with more general keywords (eg.
"Franschhoek").
Like most people, I try to optimize my PR, and read up about how to do
it.  I am also aware of the risk of 'overdoing' it and getting
penalized, so I have been cautious and don't think I have done this. 
Even if I had, would this explain why there isn't even a cached
snapshot of any of the pages on my site?  I understand that sites can
mysteriously disappear for a while, and yet it still shows on the
Google directory: http://directory.google.com/Top/Regional/Africa/South_Africa/Provinces/Western_Cape/Franschhoek/?tc=1/
, but without a PR.

Have I done something wrong?  How do I get my site back on to Google? 
Should I resubmit my site?

Hi there, 

Firstly, your site is clean, attractive and functional. It appears to
be devoid of any techniques which Google and other search engines
frown upon. However, I believe the culprit is a single link at the
bottom of your home page, which leads to Car Rental South Africa,
which has a page of links:

Car Rental South Africa
http://www.car-rental-south-africa.net/partner.htm

Here and elsewhere I have answered many queries involving either a
drop in Page Rank or removal from the Google index. In every recent
case, the website in question is linked to from a link exchange
scheme.

I guess that Google identifies them by seeing certain phrases within a
page full of links. The Car Rental link page uses phrases such as:

"Free link partnership"
"free exchange of hyperlinks"

Google uses link popularity as one factor in determining the ranking
of websites in the search results. It has become quite common for
websites to try and manipulate this and receive more visitors - by
deliberately creating links between different websites. Sometimes this
is achieved via a commercial enterprise that promises better search
rankings, and sometimes it is done by a sole webmaster offering free
exchanging of links.
  
Google's information for webmasters includes:  
  
- DON'T participate in link exchanges for the sole purpose of
increasing your ranking in search engines.
://www.google.com/webmasters/dos.html  
  
Google frowns upon any form of artificial linking, and tries very hard
to stop it from affecting search results. Websites that try to fool
Google can be penalised by a reduction in ranking, or even removal.


Remedy
======

Remove the link from your home page, and request that the Car Rental
site remove their link to your site. Then resubmit your URL to Google
and wait until the next refresh of the Google index, which will
probably occur at the end of this month. If your site is not
reinstated, email Google at help@google.com and explain what you have
changed, and ask to be reinstated.


I'm sure I have identified the problem. I strongly doubt it is related
to your use of Google Adwords, as one commenter has suggested below.
Please ask for a clarification if you need any more help with this.

Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga

---

Clarification of Answer by robertskelton-ga on 05 Nov 2002 19:29 PST

Regarding Google Directory - the listings are sourced from dmoz.org
and not the Google index. Even when a site has been removed from the
Google index, it can still appear as a Google Directory listing.

---

Request for Answer Clarification by lusthof-ga on 05 Nov 2002 20:46 PST

Hi robertskelton-ga 

Thanks for quick reply.

Yes, the car rental link is a free link scheme and I will delete it. 
However, I ask myself the question if this can really be the reason as
I have checked and the Car Rental company itself is still on Google,
as are 6 other links from the same 'scheme' that I checked out.

I would still like to know whether this would lead to deleting the
site altogether (ie. not even a cached snapshot anymore), or would
Google simply penalize my PR?
Regards
Dieter

---

Clarification of Answer by robertskelton-ga on 06 Nov 2002 15:54 PST

There are two other possibilities:

1) Website unavailable when the GoogleBot visits. This would have to
happen more than once before GoogleBot decides that your site no
longer exists.

2) You may have used software such as Web Position Gold to check your
ranking at Google - I'm sure many sites have been penalized for this
without them being aware it was against Google policy. If you have, an
email to help@google.com can get you reinstated.

DON'T: "Send automated queries to Google in an attempt to monitor your
site's ranking."
://www.google.com/webmasters/dos.html

Otherwise, all I can think of is the small chance that the culprit is
a Google glitch:

A technical glitch on our side may have caused us to 'miss' your site.
In crawling more than 3 billion pages every few weeks, our system
experiences hiccups from time to time. Again, this is a transient
problem, and your site will likely show up in the next index. Please
be patient with us during this period, as we are not able to modify
our index by hand to add sites missed in this way.
://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html

lusthof,

Not to worry, your website hasn't disappeared from Google. If you do a
Google search for "Franschhoek" you will see that your website has top
billing as a "Sponsored Link" over on the top right hand side of the
page. See:
://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=Franschhoek

I suspect that whenever you paid a fee for a sponsored link on Google,
your site was moved from the normal search result pages to the
Sponsored Links boxes which always appear on the first page of the
search results for the keywords you sponsored.

-- Ron

It's also worth noting that sometimes Google's web bots will, for a
variety of reasons, be unable to access your website when it comes
time to update their index. Often, this could be the result of an ISP
problem or related internet outtages or errors. It's happened to me
before.... Just because your website might go down doesn't mean that
the ISP will notifty you about a temproary problem. Anyway, if this is
the case, submit the URL to google again and wait for the next
googlebot to hit your site :)