Hopefully you're unaware that Google dropped a huge number of web pages recently. We say 'hopefully' because, if that statement comes as news to you, then you're among the lucky ones who didn't see their pages plummet in the rankings or disappear altogether from Google's index.

Or, it could mean that Google hasn't gotten around to giving your pages the boot just yet. Or maybe you haven't checked?

Now's a good time to check and see if your webpages are still listed by using Google's site: search command. If you're not seeing a radical drop-off in the number of pages you have listed in Google, then you're one of the sites that's done everything right. Kudos on a job well done. However, if many of your pages are now missing from Google, then you've not only got a lot of company to commiserate with, you've also got your work cut out for you.

So what's happening to all these disappearing pages? There's a couple of factors at work. The first has to do with Google experiencing a few technical difficulties that could be effecting your site. We'll cover those later.

The second, and far more important factor, is a substantially new paradigm in the way Google looks at linking relationships and the quality of your incoming and outgoing links.

The old link-building strategies are falling by the wayside as Google is making a serious push to detect and discount all means of artificial link manipulation—while simultaneously raising the importance of the naturally earned link to new levels. In other words...