Why is my site is de-indexed? $300 bounty.

Here's the deal, my website has been de-indexed and it is a mystery to me why. So, I'm offering a $300 bounty to the first person who can solve the mystery.

The status so far:
1. it is set up in webmaster tools and google is crawling it every day
2. it is a couple months old and was appearing very high in search results for 2 days, before it was removed
3. I have submitted a request for re-inclusion. It failed.

I run several websites, strictly white-hat with no issues except this one. I do not know what I have done wrong.

The site is http://captaincompare.com.au

 

Welcome to Google Sandbox

It's a widely known fenomina, nothing bizarre. Just keep building links and your site will be back in Google's index in a couple of months, and stronger than ever!

 

Your site hasn't been deindexed. If you search for http://captaincompare.com.au it should come up as the first result. Also try searching for the first four words of your page title and you're on the first page.

Mystery solved. I accept all types of credit cards although I prefer cold hard cash

 

Mystery not solved. That is the .com site. The problem is strictly on the .com.au website.

 

Your home page content for the .com and .com.au is practically identical, is it not?

 

good news
i have found the problem
canonical tag is a strong and dangers tag to use , i know of a lot of web sites that had big problems with it coz they did not used it right

by looking into the code of your site i spoted the problem , <link rel="canonical" href="http://captaincompare.com.au" />

yes how simple.... the canonical tag which tells google what is the page u want him to index was miss spelled
for a fast solution just remove the tag from the html
the site should be back on the index in a couple of days
__________________

update !
i see the bigger problem now

u have another site http://captaincompare.com right ? with the exact same content , thats called duplicate content and google does not like it
he will only choose 1 version of the sites and will index that version

in your case , he choose the .com one , simple as that ...

u can not have 2 exactly the same sites index together

 

there is many similarities. A few months ago, I 301 redirected every page from the .com to the .com.au

Since it was removed from the search results for so long, I took the 301 redirect off from the home page only. (so I can still eat)

The 301 redirect is still turned on all the other pages. eg captaincompare.com/CarInsurance.asp

 

sounds about right

also all your pages go back and forth between .com and au + dupe content on both. (not the deindex issue BUT should be fixed for seo reasons)

agreed on the canical issue for sure - nice eye

 

That's an understatement

I would definitely address the issues with the duplicate content and see how it goes from there.

 

Well I'm an Aussie too so I'll take Aussie dollars.

Take a look at your footer. You're advertising that you're selling links. This is a direct breach of the guidelines. You are definitely booted from the index for .com.au site.

There are no other clear reasons why you would have be banned other than that.

 

Guys dupe content won't get a site delisted or banned nor will the incorrect use of canonical get a site banned. All that will happen is that your content will be placed into the supplementary index where all duplicate content goes. There is no such thing as a penalty for duplicate content.

But this site has been completely removed from the index. This site has been banned and removed. No content exists in the index at all. Clearly dupe content is not the issue or it would have produced at the very least for site:captaincompare.com.au yet there is none whatsoever.

This is a ban. And I am almost positive that it's because of the "want a link here, contact me" in the footer.

 

true , i was thinking about the link selling option also ,

 

but he only offer selling , he did not really sold any

 

Well we don't know that for certain. Also the offer shows an intent to sell links and in effect the intent is enough to be considered a breach of the guidelines.

This is what I like call the instaban. Don't pass go, don't collect $200, go directly to the whole in the wall.

 

Seriously? I would never sell a link. Not worth the chump change.

That message is there to find link partners.

 

I picked out the dupe content issue because even though many sites will still remain indexed in the search engines with duplicate content, I was under the impression that a manual review of the site could result in the site being deindexed.

This paragraph from Google Webmaster Central certainly suggests that a site can be deindexed for duplicate content:

In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we'll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results.

Although the site owner gives the impression that he may be selling links, I don't think that there is enough clear cut evidence to deindex the site. There are tons of sites out there with much more blatant link selling activities which are not banned from Google's index.

 

I don't believe the ban is because of the semi-dupe content because for the last few months, it was a 301 redirect from one to the other. Only this week did I remove the 301 redirect so the old site can still earn some cash.

 

anyway
it will be a good idea to remove that text from your footer

 

ohhhh
u had a 301.......

now its all make sense...

301 is a permanent thing , its like telling google , this site is dead for ever , u cant change it back , u should have used 302 which is a temp redirect

 

Actually..... the .com was 301 redirected to the .com.au, when I removed the redirect, the .com was back in the results within 2 days.