Since my site has disappeared from google completely !!! I was checking out the robots.txt file in google webmasters, to see if I'd messed something up. the image below is what it told me about the home page. Does anyone know what 'detected as a directory - specific files may have different restrictions' means in google webmasters? The main site is not a directory, but it does have a (free) niche directory as part of it - perhaps 3% of the total site. Have I been banned for being a directory?
Your site will not be banned for being a directory. There might be some errors in the dir script or robots.txt files. Also have a check at sitemap you submitted there.
Maybe Google doesn't like this text in your submit a site page: "Reciprocal - free upgrade to Featured for recip PR3+ less than 20 ext links on page" ?
gawk, I'm not talking about the site in my signature, but I will go and get rid of that text anyway, thanks - I forgot it was there. rajanforums, I have never submitted a sitemap, I have an index/sitemap on the site itself and its always worked fine. If it was a problem with the directory script that might cause the directory part to be dropped but not the whole site, I think, which is in straightforward HTML.
The message you see about detecting as a directory is perfectly normal so no problem with that. Do you have a blank Disallow: in your robots.txt? If so it doesn't need to be there. Google will show you in red if you have blocked anything.
Guess it's something else then. Somebody has started a different thread about 'sites that got dropped at 7pm yesterday' - I guess I've got the same problem as them (the same thing was also reported at webmasterworld).