Domain expired & google lost me - now what??

[Kristin]

OK, I accidentally let my domain expire (I know, I know - it was an email issue that I've since fixed - please don't scold me). My site was down 3/14 to 3/16. It was mostly back up by 3/16.

http://bestmilwaukeehomes.com

For a few days, everything seemed ok in the search results & my position didn't change much for my main keywords: "milwaukee real estate" and "milwaukee homes for sale." I remained on page 1.

I just checked today and I'm not even in the first 100 results for "milwaukee real estate" and I'm on page 4 for "milwaukee homes for sale." I'm not sure exactly when this happened, but it was fine as of 3/22 according to my traffic.

I'm assuming this has to do with Google trying to crawl my site while it was expired and not finding anything. (It's still indexed, as I still come up for other searches.) But not sure about the delayed response in dropping my site?

Should I sit tight and wait for it to get crawled a few more times or should I resubmit it or anything else? Or am I assuming wrong and there is something else wrong with my site that maybe I was penalized for? I haven't changes anything as far as SEO - only adding more content, videos and listings - which should have actually HELPED. The Mozilla/5.0 was heavily crawling my site the past 2 days - isn't that Google?

My main source of new business was this site and not being found in the results is killing me - any feedback would be appreciated!

[Discover Davis Homes]

It's likely that your position in google did not change immediately because you site wasn't crawled right away. I would hold tight and see what happens when the site gets indexed again.

Mozilla isn't Google.

You could write a couple of blog posts - here at REW would be a good place to start (if you don't have an outside blog) about some aspect of your website and link back to your home page and other pages - don't make it a link fest but something pointing to your site - might possibly get the search engines to notice your site more quickly.

[kevinkirkpatrick]

Kristin - When the domain expires it throws google off a bit, but you're rankings will be back in literally a week or two. I can understand how this can be very disconcerting but the only way you're going to feel better is once your rankings ARE back...so all you can do is wait until they are. If they aren't back in 2-3 weeks...then you can worry. But not yet.

[Kristin]

Hi Carolyn,

Thanks for your reply!

I haven't had to worry about watching for Google crawlers for a while. What do I look for again to know they have been to my site?

[Kristin]

Kristin - When the domain expires it throws google off a bit, but you're rankings will be back in literally a week or two. I can understand how this can be very disconcerting but the only way you're going to feel better is once your rankings ARE back...so all you can do is wait until they are. If they aren't back in 2-3 weeks...then you can worry. But not yet.

Thanks Kevin! It's good to hear that my suspicions may be correct. I'm praying I don't have to start over from scratch - I put so much time and effort building a great site and getting awesome search engine positioning that it's killing me to see it GONE like this!

It was weird that it took so long for Google to react to the expired domain. I was hoping that when it didn't fall off within a day or two that I dodged the bullet!

I was concerned because I've been reading on some Inman groups how Google is rumored to be changing how it ranks sites with bounce rates, etc getting more emphesis, etc. I've been working on that, but I was worried that I haven't done enough.

I hope you're right!

[Cleo]

I am not an expert but I have had a big drop and a couple of days later it came back to where it was.

[Discover Davis Homes]

Kristin - I use google analytics and hittail on my real estate site - doesn't really tell me when google was there - my wordpress blog does tell me when spiders visit. One thing you can do is find your site in google and look at the cached date. In the google search box type: cache:http://bestmilwaukeehomes.com This will tell you the last time google cached your home page - March 21st. It could take a while for everything to get reindexed -although you have over 200 pages indexed. Maybe check the cache date for a couple of weeks - see if the next time it updates or even the time after that if you notice any difference.

You would probably benefit from spending some time here on the forum - some of the things on your site do look kind of outdated. Sounds like you worked hard to get the rankings you have - would be nice to be able to keep them. There is a lot of useful information here.

[amidcars12]

OK, I accidentally let my domain expire (I know, I know - it was an email issue that I've since fixed - please don't scold me). My site was down 3/14 to 3/16. It was mostly back up by 3/16.

http://bestmilwaukeehomes.com

For a few days, everything seemed ok in the search results & my position didn't change much for my main keywords: "milwaukee real estate" and "milwaukee homes for sale." I remained on page 1.

I just checked today and I'm not even in the first 100 results for "milwaukee real estate" and I'm on page 4 for "milwaukee homes for sale." I'm not sure exactly when this happened, but it was fine as of 3/22 according to my traffic.

I'm assuming this has to do with Google trying to crawl my site while it was expired and not finding anything. (It's still indexed, as I still come up for other searches.) But not sure about the delayed response in dropping my site?

Should I sit tight and wait for it to get crawled a few more times or should I resubmit it or anything else? Or am I assuming wrong and there is something else wrong with my site that maybe I was penalized for? I haven't changes anything as far as SEO - only adding more content, videos and listings - which should have actually HELPED. The Mozilla/5.0 was heavily crawling my site the past 2 days - isn't that Google?

My main source of new business was this site and not being found in the results is killing me - any feedback would be appreciated!

This can be due to the reason that when google crawler comes to your website and at that time it is dropped then it affects your ranking.

If you have renewed your domain(as its past one year i have seen your post) then i think it will not take time for google to again crawl your website and all the backlinks to your website. This would might not take much time.

[kevinkirkpatrick]

You're back on the first page..woohoo!

Now, if anybody wants to play the other side of this game and get into buying expired domains...check out freshdrop.net. It's great for finding expired domains. Let's you see how many incoming links they have, if they still have any page rank, etc. Then you can buy them for about $13 assuming nobody else bid on it (which they often never do.)

[bhartzer]

I actually just experienced the same thing recently on a site. What I would do is keep building links to the site to show Google that you're still around, and that the site is still alive and kicking. It should come back in the rankings in time.

I would also go right now and renew your domain name for several years, like at least 10 years...