Have we been penalised?

[mou]

Hi

Having recently started with SeoMoz tools, I've started a link building project with a guest post strategy.

One of the terms I've been working on 'property in spain' has been making steady progress.  From nowhere to mid page 2 on google.co.uk

I checked today and our homepage masainternational.com (where the links were pointing to) has disappeared completely  from the results.

Just not sure what's up.  Could we have been penalised?  I've not bought any links or done anything shady.

Any ideas?

Thanks guys

[THB]

I see you mid-second page on google.co.uk

Doing a site:masainternational.com shows that you are still indexed.

All looks good to me unless I'm misunderstanding.

[SimonCullum]

Hi Simon

I currently see your homepage ranking in 30th position on a Google UK non-personalized search.

Rankings do fluctuate constantly, there are so many factors as to why they do, such as different data centers, different locations, constantly changing strengths and weaknesses of sites, just to name a few.

As you are still ranking on the 3rd page and appear to have over 4,000 pages indexed by Google, I very much doubt you've been peanalized in any way, a penalty would cause your rankings to drop further than from the 2nd page to 3rd page.

Try searching again, from different browsers, even different locations, try exact and broad searches.  Chances are you'll see your site coming up again as it is still there.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

[mou]

Thanks

Maybe a premature panic then. Maybe a local issue?  I've checked from two locations (home and office) and it hasn't showed today and homepage is still not showing for me.

I guess I'll have to wait and see bites nails

[THB]

"Maybe a premature panic then. Maybe a local issue?"

Combination of both We've all been there.

[mou]

put toys back in the pram

[SimonCullum]

Can't blame anybody for caring about their site and business That's a great thing.

Have another search tomorrow, clear out your browser cache first and chances are all will be back to normal as others can see your site ranking just fine

[THB]

Agreed.  Search engines geo-locations tools are based off IP address, so if your work, for example, has a server located in another country, that could throw off your results.  Take my server at work, it's based in the US while I'm in Canada.

I usually check things like that on my Blackberry to get a non-biased result (usually).

Another thing to keep in mind is if you're logged into a Google account your results could also differ as Google will try and serve you biased results based on your browsing preferences.  You can also append &pws=0 to any given Google search results URL to disable personalized results, ie. http://www.google.ca/search?aq=f&gcx=w&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=property+in+spain&pws=0

So, logout and append the &pws=0 as shown above to ensure you are getting the most unbiased results possible (of course, you're still going to be geo-targeted by Google, but unless you have several proxy's, there's nothing you can do).