How to tell if you have been penalised?

[digitalclubb]

Hey Guys,

Something is seriously going on with the SEO on my website and it's become business critical.

We were ranked first on Google for phrases like 'Advertising agency Cambridge' and all of a sudden we have been dropped, not even ranking.

To me this screams a penalisation but I can't understand why. I have never paid for links or done anything out of the ordinary that would get such a negative impact.

Is there a way to check if a site has actually been penalised and find the reason?

What would be the best course of action to appeal?

Has anyone experienced something like this and have a timeframe for resolution?

Thanks,

Gareth

[digitalclubb]

After further investigation, it appears to just be the homepage that has been removed.

All other pages are still visible in search results, can anyone help shed some light on this situation with their experience?

[stevecounsell]

What is the URL of the Home page?  Are you certain it's been removed from the index?

try searching in Google for SITE:http://www.YOURHOMEPAGE.com/INDEX-NAME.HTML

Steve

[digitalclubb]

www.honestideas.co.uk

Checking site index, everypage is present except for the homepage.

I have never done anything black hat so I am incredibly confused as to why it's been dropped from the index and what I can do to get it reindexed.

Cheers

[AlanMosley]

i have sen this before, it has always come back.

[stevecounsell]

Hey,

I see you have a Wordpress Site so your "Home Page" could be called anything. What are you expecting to see as your home page?

Just the domain name I guess.

Of course the actual page you are looking for may be indexed in another name. Maybe take a look at how is your home page created.

Not that helpful. sorry...

[mou]

this is weird.  Same thing happened to us (homepage gone, rest ok) over the weekend and I've just seen another thread to the same effect.

Interesting to see how this pans out.  Hopefully a temporary rumble

[digitalclubb]

Very strange.. I find it incredibly bizzare as I haven't done any major SEO work and as you say, it just happened that over the weekend the homepage went.

Perhaps a Google bug or a major reshuffle? I am just struggling to come up with an answer.

[KeriMorgret]

Have you verified your site in Google Webmaster Tools? Google will send you a warning there sometimes if they see something really bad.

[digitalclubb]

Hi,

Yep its all verified, sitemap was all in place, no crawling errors, 301 redirects in place.

Talk about pulling your hair out, how can Google just drop the homepage without any prior warning or error.

Ugh

[KeriMorgret]

I see your homepage is back in the index in Google when I do a site: search, and in google.com it's showing up on the first page for a search of Advertising agency Cambridge from California.

Did you figure out what happened and why you got back in? Or just celebrating that the page is including again? Glad to see it's back in there!