Google’s Mueller Discusses Site Demotions, a publisher with a long list of reasons why their site may have been demoted asked why the site was demoted in Google search results. John Mueller explained why the issues the publisher suspected weren’t necessarily the reason why the site was demoted.

Why is My Site Demoted?

The question that was asked noted several reasons why the site may have lost rankings, including competitor sabotage.

This is the question:

“My site is no longer appearing in search results. There are no violations on my site and it stopped appearing completely from March 12th. It’s a Google News approved site.

I received over 3,000 bad backlinks from my competitors and over fake DMCA complaints from my competitors which I have countered them and am awaiting Google’s response.

Why is my site de-indexed, demoted in Google when there is no violation on my site?”

Difference Between De-indexed and Demoted

Mueller began his answer by clarifying the difference between a demotion in rankings and being de-indexed. I’m not sure if “demoted” is a term used at Google. But it’s a descriptive word for communicating that a site lost rankings.

I think nowadays a site is either relevant or not relevant, rather than demoted or promoted.

Here is John’s explanation of the difference between de-indexed and demoted.

“It’s really hard to say without a site.

From our point of view there’s a really big difference between a site that’s de-indexed and a site that is demoted.

So de-indexed would be not appearing at all. It’s not indexed at all which oftentimes is either due to a very significant web spam issue or a technical issue.

And so… if it’s really de-indexed that’s something where oftentimes they’re really clear paths to resolving that.”

By a clear path Mueller probably is referencing the fact that Google notifies publishers via the Google Search Console if there’s an issue that results in being removed from Google’s index.

Read more: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-site-demotions/355866/