A High Rankings Forum member has lost his high rankings (no pun intended). Apparently, he's been deindexed since January 2008. His first inclination at this point is to check the IP address, assuming everything else is looking good.

Is the IP really the right direction to go? As one member puts it, it can help, but moderator Randy has a different take.

As a general rule the search engines do not ban IP numbers. There are simply too many sites out there on shared hosting plans, so if they did they'd end up throwing out a lot of babies with the bathwater.

So what can you do instead? First, check if the search engine spiders are visiting at all. If they're not, you might be right about the IP blockage. But also investigate other possible reasons for being deindexed. Here's what you can do to check:

1. Make sure your robots.txt file isn't blocking spiders.
2. Browse your site as Googlebot and see what the spider sees.
3. Investigate files and ensure they aren't hacked.
4. Run Xenu on your website and check any external links
5. Register your site with Google's Webmaster Tools to check for red flags

What else would you add to this list?

Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forums.

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