While multiple findings suggest that a de-index from Google is a nightmare that must be sorted out, there are contrasting reports as well. Did this just happen to you? Maybe you’re thinking about doing it manually, or perhaps you’re just curious as to what the outcome would be if it did happen. Let’s look more closely at what you can expect if Google de-indexes your site.

You might be thinking right off the bat that you would wake up to your analytics tools telling you that traffic to your site has dropped significantly. That can really impact the sales for your business, and that’s not any good at all. Is it something that can be fixed right away?

First, you do want to confirm that your site has been de-indexed. You can do so by looking at the source code for your site. And, just because you find it on one page doesn’t mean all the pages were marked to be de-indexed. You’re going to have to survey the damage and determine the fix.

One account of this happening to a business professional detailed that Google had de-indexed 249/8000 pages. Are you a developer? If so, you can roll back the no index markup update, but then you have to take on the task of reindexing pages. That means that Google is going to have to crawl your site once again.

But wait, here’s the catch. Here is why some sources say that a de-indexed site can be a blessing. As a matter of fact, these same people say that you should de-index your site manually in order to get more traffic. Does it just happen because you choose to de-index your site, or is there another catch?

Simply choosing not to index your site with Google isn’t going to get you more traffic. What they are saying, however, is that the work you put in afterward to get the site crawled again is going to give you a boost in traffic. Yet there is something else to point out here as well.

First, SEO is a very tactical approach. Let’s say you have a rather large site. If you have overdone it a little in terms of SEO, you might want to de-index certain pages to get a better ranking. This will get your SEO at just the right level, but be careful because you don’t want to overdo it.

If you’re not well versed when it comes to site development and SEO, you should speak to a developer or an SEO professional. They can tell you whether or not some of your pages could stand to be de-indexed. Be sure that you’re not putting duplicate content out there because that is definitely something that Google can hold against you.

Think about pages that are duplicate content because one is a printer-friendly version. Keep in mind that Google doesn’t need to index both of those pages. If Google does, that can count against you. Also, think about pages that don’t necessarily need to rank so high. For example, your thank-you pages don’t necessarily need to pull up in search results.

That said, the best keywords on those pages can take away from how the rest of your site ranks with those keywords. Do you see how it can be a good idea to manually de-index certain pages? What you don’t really want to have happen is Google do it for you and de-index the wrong pages. You want to get that traffic and drive sales. Now you know more about how you can do that and how you can use de-indexing to your advantage.