Webmasters/Site owners Help

Our goal is to return highly relevant results for every query. Search results are returned from our search index. Our search index is constantly evolving as content is added and modified on the web. The changing content, as well as updates to our ranking algorithms, can cause URLs to change position in search results and possibly be removed, though this is less likely.

We understand that these changes can be confusing. If your site is well-linked from others on the web, it's likely that we'll add it again during our next crawl. While we can't guarantee that any page will consistently appear in our index or appear with a particular rank, our Webmaster Guidelines offer helpful tips for maintaining a crawler-friendly site. Following these recommendations should increase the likelihood that your site will be consistently displayed in our search results.

If your site isn't appearing in Google search results or if it's performing more poorly than it once did, take a look at these steps to identify and fix potential causes of the problem.

• Do a site: search

  When a webmaster tells us that his or her site has fallen out of our search results, we often find that it's still included. To quickly determine whether your site is still in our index, just perform a Google site search for its entire URL. A search for site:google.com, for instance, returns the following results: http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site:google.com Note that you shouldn't include a space between the site: operator and your domain name. The Site Status Wizard lets you check the index status of your site and also tells you if your homepage was accessed recently by Google.

  If your site is displayed as a result when you perform a Google site search for your URL, then it's included in our index.

  However, if your site used to be indexed and this is no longer the case, it may have been removed for violations of our Webmaster Guidelines. Review the guidelines and then, once you've fixed any issues, submit a reconsideration request.

• Verify that your site ranks for your domain name

  Do a Google search for www.[yourdomain].co.uk If your site doesn't appear in the results or if it ranks poorly in the results, this is a sign that your site may be penalised for violations of the Webmaster Guidelines. If we find certain problems with your site - for example, malware - we'll let you know via the Message Centre. You should also review your site against the Webmaster Guidelines. Once you're sure that any problems have been addressed, submit a reconsideration request.

• Alert us to your new content

  If your site is very new, we may not know about it yet. Tell Google about your site. One way to expedite Google's discovery of new pages is to submit a Sitemap. Even if your site is already in the index, Sitemaps are a great way to tell Google about the pages that you consider most important.

Crawling is how Googlebot discovers new and updated pages to be added to the Google index. Our crawl process begins with a list of web page URLs, generated from previous crawl processes and augmented with Sitemap data provided by webmasters. As Googlebot visits each of these websites, it detects links on each page and adds them to its list of pages to be crawled. New sites, changes to existing sites and dead links are noted and used to update the Google index.

• Check for crawl errors. The Crawl errors page in Webmaster Tools provides details about the URLs in your site that we tried to crawl and couldn't access. Review these errors and fix those that you can. The next time that Googlebot crawls your site, it will note the changes and use them to update the Google index.
• Review your robots.txt file. The Test robots.txt tool lets you analyse your robots.txt file to see if you're blocking Googlebot from any URLs or directories on your site.
• Make sure that the URLs haven't been blocked with meta tags.
• Review your site structure and make sure that it's easily accessible. Most search engines are text based. If you use JavaScript, DHTML, images or rich media such as Silverlight to create navigation and links, Googlebot and other spiders may have trouble crawling your site.
• If you have recently restructured your site or moved to a new domain, pages that previously performed well may now rank poorly. To avoid this, use 301 redirects ("RedirectPermanent") in your .htaccess file to smartly redirect users, Googlebot and other spiders. (In Apache, you can do this with an .htaccess file; in IIS, you can do this through the administrative console.) For more information about 301 HTTP redirects, please see http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt.
• Consider creating and submitting a Sitemap. Even if your site is already indexed, Sitemaps are a way to give information about your site and the URLs that you consider the most important to Google. Sitemaps are particularly helpful if your site has dynamic content or other content that may not be easily discoverable by Googlebot, or if your site is new or does not have many links to it.

Googlebot processes each of the pages that it crawls in order to compile a massive index of all the words that it sees and their location on each page. In addition, we process information included in key content tags and attributes, such as Title tags and ALT attributes. Google can process many types of content. However, while we can process HTML, PDF and Flash files, we have a more difficult time understanding (e.g. crawling and indexing) other rich media formats such as Silverlight.

• Check your site's index stats. These stats show how your site is represented in the Google index.
• Review your site's structure. Google, like most search engines, is text based. This means that Googlebot can't read text included in images or in most files other than Flash rich media files or pages that are hidden behind JavaScript or require signin. Making sure that your content is text based and readable helps make it more accessible to humans and to Googlebot.

• Understand how users are reaching your site by reviewing the Top search queries page. The first list shows the Google searches in which your site appears the most often. The second list shows the Google searches from which users clicked through to your site. This information is particularly useful because it gives you an insight into what users are searching for (the first list) and what they find compelling enough to click on your site (the second list). For example, your site may often appear in Google searches for espresso gadgets and coffee widgets. If the query coffee widgets doesn't appear in the second list, it could be because it's not clear to users that your site contains information about coffee widgets. In this case, consider revising your content to make it more compelling and relevant. Avoid keyword stuffing, though, because this can cause your site's ranking to suffer, as well as degrading the user experience for your readers.
• Understand how Google sees your site. The Keywords page shows the keywords and phrases that other sites use when they link to yours. Understanding how other people see your site can help you determine how best to target your audience.
• Check the HTML suggestions page in Webmaster Tools. Descriptive information in title tags and meta descriptions will give us good information about the content of your site. In addition, this text can appear in search results pages, and useful, descriptive text is more likely to be clicked by users.
• Tell the world about your site. Incoming links to your site help Google determine your site's relevance to the user's query. Natural links to your site develop as part of the dynamic nature of the web when other sites find your content valuable and think it would be helpful for their visitors.
• Check to see if any of your content has been flagged as adult content by turning off SafeSearch. Google's SafeSearch filter eliminates sites that contain pornography and explicit sexual content from search results. While no filter is 100% accurate, SafeSearch uses advanced proprietary technology that checks keywords and phrases, URLs and Open Directory categories.
• Great image content can be an excellent way to generate traffic. We recommend that when publishing images, you think carefully about creating the best user experience that you can and follow our image guidelines.

There's almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you're concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organises information published on the web; we don't control the content of these pages.

Occasionally, fluctuation in search results is the result of differences in our data centres. When you perform a Google search, your query is sent to a Google data centre in order to retrieve search results. There are numerous data centres and many factors (such as geographic location and search traffic) that determine where a query is sent. Because not all our data centres are updated simultaneously, it's possible to see slightly different search results depending on the data centre that handles your query.