WordPress.com

1. juneauxena
   Member
   May 25, 2011, 2:31 PM

   I've contacted support about this previously, regarding the sudden disappearance of my blog posting from Google Alerts. I post almost daily and receive about 1,500 hits a day. My search terms are all over my blog posts, I've verified my site, and I'm in compliance w Google's T&C. I see other blogs with far less traffic getting picked up by my Google Alerts, and it's frustrating to see that readers who are using Google Alerts to search for my topic are not being made aware of it. I did notice that several other WordPress sites that post about my topic are also not appearing in Google Alerts any more, which makes me suspect that there is some missing link now between Google Alerts and WordPress blogs... I'm contacting support because I think there's a larger issue that could be affecting all WordPress blogs.

   If this continues, I may have to migrate to another CMS platform. I can't afford to keep missing out on this important channel for gaining readership.
   Blog url: http://onthemeaningofadamlambert.wordpress.com/

2. designsimply
   Happiness Engineer
   May 25, 2011, 2:40 PM

   The thing that you can change on the WordPress.com side that will affect your ability to appear in outside sites such as Google are the privacy settings. If you're blog is setup as "visible to everyone" in Settings → Privacy, then it has the same chance to appear as other sites, however, it is up to Google how or if they decide to display your blog on their site or in their Google Alerts.

   The very best thing you can do is setup Google Webmaster Tools as Google has provided diagnostic tools and help for you there:
   http://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/

3. juneauxena
   Member
   May 25, 2011, 6:05 PM

   Please read my original question carefully. As should be evident, the site is visible to everyone, has been for 20 months. We went through Google Webmaster to verify the site, and we were getting regularly picked up by Google Alerts for months. This suddenly changed not only for our site but for other WordPress sites with shared keywords. This makes me think there's something about all WordPress sites that is making them invisible to Google Alerts.

   I think you should be concerned. This could be affecting the visibility and effectiveness of thousands of WordPress blogs.

4. coffeemanmatt
   Member
   May 25, 2011, 7:10 PM

   I'm really sorry this is happening.

   Unfortunately, Google is the only one that determines how/when/why or even if your blog content gets picked up by Google Alerts. There simply isn't anything we can do on our end in this regard. (I wish there were, so I could help you out!)

   You should most definitely contact Google and let them know that your blog is no longer being picked up in Google Alerts, and ask them what has changed.

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