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A recent surprise made me re-evaluate what my purpose for this website is.
Around some time last week, a good deal of my pages dropped out of Google’s index. For the non-search engine optimization people, this means that my website is now receiving only a fraction of the traffic that it was before. Usually, when you create a website, search engines such as Google visit your site and index it, making it part of the search engine’s results. Then, when someone goes to Google and type something like “INTJ Personal Development”, they can find my website. This is true for the subpages of the website too – if they are indexed and part of the search engine.
Unfortunately, for some reason or another, Google had determined that about 80% of my articles were “unworthy” of being included in the search results. This proved to be somewhat problematic, as about 75% of my traffic was from Google alone. Therefore, about 50% of my website’s traffic disappeared in about a week’s time. That presented me with somewhat of a dilemma. If my website dropped out of Google, a huge portion of my traffic would be gone, which would severely hinder my ability to reach the people that my articles would have an effect on. Should I abandon the website and let it stagnate? Or should I continue investing my resources of time and energy, knowing that I would be severely hindered?
Clearly, I had a decision to make. This is the type of situation where a clear goal in life helps in making a determination as to the direction to take. As I’ve explained in The Meaning Of Life and How To Find Out What You Really Want, I tend to think people want to exist. Since the purpose of my writing is to provide value to people through increasing their awareness of concepts and possibilities, it would then figure that people would come back on their own if it accomplished that purpose. After all, who wouldn’t want some real value for free?
Additionally, this is also a semi-journal to me, categorizing my life time of experiences. Had there been zero readers, I would probably still write it anyway. Many of my theories, insights, and perspectives are unique as far as I can tell. I am not only writing for my current readers, but also for myself years from now and future readers long after I am dead.
In fact, this had been my original reason for starting the website. I’d known that I may run into problems like this and knew that if my purpose wasn’t sufficiently strong (such as “testing the waters” or “making a small amount of money”), this would be a perfect situation to give up.
This situation has happened to me before. In the early 2000s, I’d started a website about how to play poker well, as I was an avid poker player back then. I very eagerly wrote about 10-15 articles over a weekend and put my website up. A few weeks passed. A month. I didn’t notice any affiliate sales. Then, discouraged, I just gave up. That’s what happens when you don’t have clarity of purpose and sufficiently strong motivation in the first place.
Compare that to a friend of mine who started his poker website at about the same time. He too experienced similar problems, but stuck with it. Now, it’s one of the most successful websites of its kind and makes millions of dollars a year. That’s what happens when your purpose is clear.
Luckily, that experience has stuck with me to guide me in this situation. I started this website for a strong purpose – to allow people to see a unique perpective on life. I had picked a topic I was passionate about – it’s how I think. No matter what happens, this is who I am. One search engine not indexing my website is a small point in time as far as the life of my website is concerned.
Looking back on my doubts, it seems almost ridiculous to worry about some pages not being indexed in a search engine somewhere. It’s kind of like if people gave up a fight for freedom in the U.S. because the French Army wouldn’t help them or something.
Ahead we go! 
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Go ahead! I have your website in my rss feeds so don’t worry & I think other people too.
Maybe it’s only temporary big G deindexing.
I found your site interesting and I hope I’ll find usefull it still.
I came here through Google search so I think it’s fine now.
Hey, I searched on google why google had deindexed some of the pages of my blog.I was worried.But You have provided a gr8 solution to my problem.
Thanks for that.
I have bookmarked ur site and will keep visiting here.
Thanks for the insight, really helpful. Business is always unpredictable, and the content business is a very rough one. Its best to take things lightly like you say as most things are fickle and uncontrollable!
Google sucks like hell recently. I had two big sites deindexed recently, supposedly the reason was content that is unappealing to the reader. WTF?! ALL MY STATS tell different! Visitors are browsing the page, thanking me sometimes, buying things. They are active on my freaking site, then the big F G comes and tells me my content sucks. F0CK!
Sorry for my language, I’m just really pissed at the moment, since I lost a lot of money because of these freaks.
I just had a new site of my de-indexed! Google can be very temperamental at times.
Having webpages or a website disappear out of search engines is always a huge blow especially if it seems there is no logic to it. As you said, best thing to do is stay focused on the bigger vision and purpose and keep on going.
Ironic but your deindexed site is on the first page for “google de-indexing”
At least that’s getting somewhere 
Hi, I am having the same problem, I just hope it’s temporary. It looks like google love you again, because i also typed in “google de-indexing” and you came up first page.
BTW Excellent website!
Regards
Linden
I came here searching for info on why my indexed articles got deindexed. Credible info. But It would be better if Google tell us exactly what the reason is so we can make corrections.
They’ve done something similar to me. Before the big F.G just knocked me back 40 spots for key terms, today they just wiped me out for those key terms. Like sisyphus pushing that rock to the top of the mountain and then watching it roll to the bottom again. People should boycott google, they suck.
I’ve had the same thing happen with a few of my pages, I believe it to be Google de-indexing low content pages/link pages and the sort which it feels is not necessary to provide for SERP
Same thing happened here. Got de-indexed on January 6, 2011. Does Google re-index sites at a later time? Anyone know?
Just for the record, the site that got de-indexed is the one highlighted with my name. If by the time you are reading this that site is indexed again, you know whether or not Google will re-index a site.
Cheers,
Jen
PS: – I too came here looking for answers on why I got de-indexed and yes, I used Google to do so!
I think the site above this comment got deindexed because it is a thin affiliate site. Its only purpose is to drive affiliate sales, and google hates that.
Yeah, but there are a lot of affiliate websites out there that don’t get deindexed. There must be another reason.
I had my largest site de-indexed, and thought I’d done something terribly wrong. Apparently, many are going through this.
There must be a better way to make a living online, then relying on the Big G to send us free traffic…
I came to this page through Google’s first page, so I guess it bounced back!
One of my revamped websites has been de-indexed by “the big G” just a few days ago. Your post does offer some hope…..
great post!
im currently struggling with google de-indexing, and not returning a number of my pages for their text, in its results. thanks for this article… im hoping my pages will come back to life soon, but this is really frustrating. :S
My site has been deindexed from 40.000 pages to 425pages.
No traffic or nearly or traffic.
Thanks you. I should get a clear purpose.
It realy sucks when your page get deindexed
Nice article. But i just landed this page from Google search and i feel that your site is still indexed. This is something that has happened to my site although to me, my traffic comes most from Bing and Yahoo. So i need not to worry of complete drop off from Google.