I successfully submitted my XML sitemap to Google and almost immediately all my stats disappeared. “Not available at this time”. I didn’t notice right away but over a few days my Google traffic went down to zero. I am now in the proverbial Google Sandbox.
I am hoping that this is a temporary blip. Perhaps submitting the sitemap has caused all my pages to be reindexed. But when I search for my pages using my keywords, that just a few days ago were working – well, I am just not there.
Based on my late night research into this phenomenon, others have had similar problems but are unsure why this has happened.
One thing that has crossed my mind, but I am usure whether this is related, is that my site displays as either http://neenmachine.com or http://www.neenmachine.com. When I created my sitemap, it was generated using the plain neenmachine.com. (There is an option in the plugin to change this to www. but I did not zero in on this when I created mine.) But in Google Webmaster Tools I had set my preferred domain as http://www.neenmachine.com. When I submitted the XML sitemap I did get an error about a mismatch so I changed my preferred domain at Google Webmaster Tools to http://neenmachine.com. Per the Google Webmaster Tool site changing this setting will cause my pages to show up as http://neenmachine.com in the search results and also will cause the crawlers to see both the www. site and the plain site as one and the same.
I came across some discussion that there should be a 301 redirect in place so that the plain site is redirected to the www. site. At this point I don’t know how to do this and I am unsure whether this is the reason why my pages have fallen in Google’s search results, so I am not going to change anything – yet.
I will keep you updated. If you have any insights, I would love to hear them.
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Hi Neena,
I seem to be having problems very similar to what you are describing here. (I updated my blog to a new wordpress version and theme a while ago and I have been struggling to get everything back on track.)
I am wanting my site/blog to be found with the www prefix. You mention that there is an option to select www with the plugin:
“(There is an option in the plugin to change this to www. but I did not zero in on this when I created mine.)”
What plugin are you using? I don’t see that option with mine (Google-sitemap-generator 2.7.1)
Are your pages back in google now? I hope so. Some of my pages are in google but they are showing up with only the home page URL and nothing else, no post titles…
I have been searching for an explanation for hours on every forum and blog that is relevant. No one has had an answer for me yet.
Maybe you can shed some light on this?
Lori
Lori,
Thanks for your comment. I feel your frustration. I just wrote a post today dealing with this issue called To www or Not to www. I will email the link to you.