Why would my product pages no longer be indexed in Google?

[ebacltd]

Our UK site has 72 pages in our sitemap. 30 of them are product pages which take a productid  parameter. Prior to 1st Feb 2011, all pages were indexed in Google but since then all of our product pages seem to have dropped from the index?

If I check in webmaster tools, I can see that we have submitted 72 pages and 42 are indexed.

I realise we should have some better url structuring and I'm working on that but do you have any  ideas on how we can get our product poages back into googles index

http://www.ebacdirect.com

[alfredopalconit]

example http://www.ebacdirect.com/product.php?productid=4

now, see this on google

"With its more traditional Mahogany finish this 6200 will fit into the most traditional home."

it looks your content is a duplicate with almost 6,000 other pages.

this could be the main reason why most of your products are no longer indexed

[AlanMosley]

Alfrado is correct
I assume you are selling though somesort of franchise and you product content is supplied to you.
You need to create original content for them all.

Also sitemaps should not contain every page, they should only contain your most impoartatnt pages. see whitboad friday with Duane Forrester from Bing, still on seomoz front page

If making orginal content for all pages is too hard, have some summery pages from each category and get them to rank.

while your proiduct pages used to be in the index, they probably did not rank well asn theyy were duplicates, but they would of been usefull for linksculpting, only pages in the index can be used for link sculpting

[Dan-Petrovic]

It may take some time, but you better start making a move on your content. Think about what else you can bring into your product descriptions that other sites don't have (apart from rewriting descriptions). Providing additional data/value could be the easier way out - especially if you have data floating around or can collect it using your current traffic through surveys etc.

[ebacltd]

Thanks Alfredo,

The content was actually written by us. The other 6000 links are duplicated from ours. We are the manufacturer of the product and we wrote the product descriptions. I find it ironic that the original author is penalised and dropped from the index when the 6000 pages contaiing duplicate content manage to stay in the index.

I can update the content but its very frustrating.

[ebacltd]

Thanks for your comments. As well as rewriting descriptions, I have a couple of things in development that should help e.g customer reviews etc

Just frustrating...

[Guest]

This post is deleted!

[Dan-Petrovic]

Yes it is. Going through this whole thing myself with a few sites.

[KeriMorgret]

Hi Ian,

I see there are some 40 URLs with product in the URL from your site that are indexed in Google. Can you share with us how you were able to get those back in the index and any tips you may have learned from the experience? If you have a good writeup, do consider submitting to YOUmoz as well.

Thanks!