I think it is because I ACCIDENTALLY put noindex tag on all the page of my site: <meta name='robots' content='noindex,nofollow' />. And I did that (noindex) on Monday. One day later (Tuesday), I realized this is wrong, so I remove the noindex tag. Now the header no longer has this meta noindex tag. On Wednesday, I noticed all my URLs disappear in Google search result. (don't know when this happened). So, my question is, Once I remove my robots noindex meta tag, how long Google would bring my site back to search results? For my case (being "noindex" before), is it better if I actually add the robots tag, and say "index, follow" to tell Google I have change my mind UPDATE/correction: Actually I should not say "all" pages. What happened was I added WordPress to my domain, and it was 100% static html before this change. All the static HTML pages are still showing in Google search results, just the Home page (now shows WordPress content) disappears. When I said all, I meant all of the newly added WordPress pages. Sorry for the confusion. I really want Google to show my Home page again...
If that is the case simply remove the noindex, and ping all your pages, get a couple social bookmarks your site will be back in days if not hours
@digiblogger17 Thank you for re-insuring me The noindex is removed. Now doing social bookmarking. How do I ping all my pages?
use this service http://www.bulkping.com/ this will stimulate bots to re-index it. when someone uses noindex google will de-index the website, it's not the same as google ban!
UPDATE/correction: Actually I should not say "all" pages. What happened was I added WordPress to my domain, and it was 100% static html before this change. All the static HTML pages are still showing in Google search results, just the Home page (now shows WordPress content) disappears. When I said all, I meant all of the newly added WordPress pages. Sorry for the confusion. I really want Google to show my Home page again...
It's strange that Google picked up the tag so quickly before you realize your mistake, but if you have removed the tag and you have incoming links it will be indexed again in about a week I guess. You don't have to add index,follow to make Google think you changed your mind, the crawler is smart enough to realize that.
To make it faster you can use the google webmaster tool. Resubmit your site map along with ping t google.
@Seoripper, Thank you for your suggestion. I submitted the new sitemap and used http://www.bulkping.com/ suggested by digiblogger17 How do you ping Google?
To ping Google use: http://blogsearch.google.com/ping and http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
First of all, thank you all for the help UPDATE: Someone oversea said they could see the site when searching for "site:my-domain-name.com", just wondering why Google does not show the site for the visitors from the Home Town of the business. p.s. I went back to Google Master Tools and made sure the "Geographic target" is still United States.