Ok, well here's the story: I got my site indexed in 3 days due to article and directory backlinks. Only my index page and the links directly linked from my homepage got indexed, despite submitting a sitemap before being crawled. Then, only two of my pages were indexed by Google using the site:www.example.com, however the homepage came up when I searched for www.example.com...hmmm, interesting. Then, the Google webmaster tools site said that my site was no longer indexed. Shock horror! So, big deal. However, what I'm bit scared of is that on some peoples computers my sites homepage (without the "www.") comes up as a 404, which is an ad littered page made by my host. I know this sounds a bit stupid when I say it works for me but not for other people using the same browser, but it seems to be true. I think I may have changes this now, but could this have gotten me banned by Google? Is getting partially indexed then unindexed even with a sitemap normal? I'm quite scared at the moment... Thanks in advance.
Is your domain very new? This will keep on happening for a few weeks if so, nothing to worry about though
Its common for brand new sites just to have their homepage listed at first, I wouldn't worry about it. You could maybe try and get one or two deep links from somewhere. As for your site not working without the 'www', I would contact your host about that first. You dont want that to happen.
Google has many DC, the site may have some pages indexed on some DC's only. You can search and get the one that has it, then search a bit later and have the one where it's not. That's normal and will not be as evident when most pages wil be on most DC's. Sometimes, even if the site has been there a while and all pages indexed, it happens that google will revert to some older data. If the site only had 30 pages at the time of that data set, the site command will show only 30 even if it had 50 for a long time... just old data being taken out of the cupboard for a while... lol The non-www thing is not normal... and I also agree thet it must be an hosting setting... but the "on some computers" does not fit, should be on all computers.
Yeah, it's really strange and slightly illogical. It works fine for me without the www., and I think it generally works for other people too...I had someone from the AdSense Usenet Groups check my site out today for AdSense placment, and it didn't work for them... Oh well, once the site's fully finished I'll post it on these forums and see if the problem is still happening. Thanks.
I have seen this occur on a corporate network where the DNS was not setup correctly. If it persists do contact your host.
Yeah...it might be some downtime thing, because it seems to be fine...I might post it on Digital Point later today so the members can see if it's fine or not...hmmm.....yeah....it's just kind of scary, Google is too exciting. It's really scary seeing this site that you've spend a bit too much time on slightly coming up in the Google results, then not at all. Creepy. So this is normal? My host is generally fine it seems, but I will contact then just to make sure, and change the 404 or whatever error it is. It might be some weird technical error that is much too complex for my primative mind to comprehend.
Yeah, I'm not blaming Google for the 404. Well thanks for the advice. Off topic, do directory links count as quality backlinks if the directory has a high pagerank? And whats the Google "sandbox", can I avoid it? Thanks.