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The SEO community is abuzz with discussions surrounding the sudden disappearance of John Mueller’s website from Google‘s search results. According to a report by Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Journal, John Mueller, a prominent figure in the realm of Google Search, has found his website, johnmu.com, completely removed from Google’s index, sparking curiosity and speculation among SEO experts.
Upon conducting a site command search for [site:johnmu.com], users were met with no results, indicating that the website had indeed been de-indexed by Google.
SEO enthusiasts immediately turned to examine the website’s robots.txt file in search of clues. However, their inspection yielded no clear explanation for the de-indexing.
Although access to John’s Google Search Console was unavailable to the public, many doubted that his site had fallen victim to a manual action by Google, similar to what numerous other sites experienced recently.
The discovery of the de-indexing was first brought to light by Twitter user Tomek Rudzki, who alerted John Mueller to the situation in a tweet. John responded with a mixture of humour and concern, tweeting requests for assistance and sharing cryptic messages.
Meanwhile, speculation about the cause of the de-indexing continues to circulate. Some attribute it to potential issues with links to Google+, while others point to anomalies in the robots.txt file.
John Mueller himself shed some light on the situation via a LinkedIn post, where he acknowledged the peculiarities of his website’s robots.txt file. He explained that while the file may seem unconventional in size and content, it serves specific purposes related to testing and optimizing for search engine crawlers.
Despite the mysterious disappearance of his website from Google’s search results, John remains optimistic about its eventual return. He hinted at utilizing the Search Console tool to expedite the recovery process, suggesting that the pages are still indexed but hidden from public view.
