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by robinoh 2163 days ago
> There seems to be no way to contact an actual human, and since nothing on the site has changed, I can't think of anything to revert.

There are some Google people on Twitter responding to concerns such as yours. @JohnMu is one of them. You can send a private message to him about it.

We've experienced similar issues, but possibly with a different cause, see https://seotool.ee/indexed-not-submitted-in-sitemap

Once Google doesn't like your site, it's not easy to get it back. It involves being patient and trying to understand what's wrong. Sometimes though, there is nothing to be done and your site just comes back up. Google is a big black box in this regard, and doesn't give any message in search console about what may be wrong.
2 comments
Yajirobe 2163 days ago
Why should Twitter be the space for Google's customer support service? This is absurd
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zucker42 2163 days ago
The actual answer to your question is probably that it's better for Google if it's difficult to reach a human without sufficient effort, since it lowers their support costs. Providing a escape hatch in their support process might mean that too many people use it.

Also, the person in this case is neither a Google user nor a customer, so there's a particularly small incentive to provide easy support.

Maybe a lot of it comes down to Google's tendency to rely on AI, but the fact that so many companies have crappy support to me indicates that it's a harder problem than one might think.

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otterley 2162 days ago
An indexed site is not Google's customer. From Google's perspective, the Web that they're indexing is just a resource that they can choose (more or less) to do what they please with.

Advertisers, on the other hand, are Google's customers.

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throwaway25239 2163 days ago
I think I actually read your post earlier when I was trying to figure this out, so thanks for that! The symptoms do seem pretty similar, although the fact that the timeframe is different makes me think it's a different issue.

> There are some Google people on Twitter responding to concerns such as yours. @JohnMu is one of them. You can send a private message to him about it.

Thanks! I'll try that if I can't find a solution.

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