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I hope someone might know what is happening here. I am going nuts over it.
My website is hosted in Australia. For some reason last month it has completely gone of .au searches, but still shows up fine in google.com searches.
The only pages that are still there are those stupid Suplemental Result pages. Which have old URL's and are about 6-9 months old at least.
Any idea why suddenly I would just disapear from .au searches but not .com searches?
I recently upgraded my code so that I am using static html URL's and have used a redirect for the old urls that were in google. Could this redirect maybe have done something?
After I did all the upgrades, google.com.au seemed fine with it and had all my new static html URL's displayed. Then suddenly a few weeks later, all was gone.
Any advice on this would be a great help.
Thanks in advance,
Dave
could your hosts have changed server location without you knowing...unlikely but possible?
how long has this been happening for?
Marra
It's a .COM domain name.
I checked with the host today and they said no changes in location of their servers.
It started happening around the 16th of April. Before this I had no problems.
Thanks so much for replying, hope u might have some ideas.
Dave
in my limited experience of this sort of thing (we moved our .com website from US servers to UK servers) I found that google is usually pretty good at figuring out where your site is hosted and tends to reflect this in the regional serps.
I also know that google can occationally act up a bit. My advice, although, not particually interesting, is to stay put for while and wait to see what happens.
If you're still getting no joy then maybe it had something to do with the changes you made (I know that changing a whole load of urls is something that we tried to avoid). If this is the case you can weigh up whether or not you think it's worth the risk changing things back.
Above all, don't panic and start changing everything back again too soon. sit tight and hopefully it will pass.
Marra
PS - are the pages that are coming up in the google.com SERPS the new urls or the old urls?
We have been using the .com for 5 years & are well branded using this, we can not risk suddenly moving everything to the .com.au domain.
This needs to be fixed ASAP.
The new host had name servers with a .com.au and I hoped this may help bring me back. My old host had .net name servers.
If this works I will let you know.
(Marra, they are old urls 6-9 months old)
I use a whois service (that we can't name here) as one of many ways to find out where the hosting site is located.
It is possible that this "Aussie" web host moved his server, but there is also the rare possibility (has happened to me) that a new batch of IP addresses for Oz do not map to any country, so the default becomes the US.
I think it's best that a few non aussie results slip into the SERPs rather than eliminate 20-30% of legitimate Aussie sites that simply don't use a .com.au (which back in the day, used to cost 10 times as much as a .com).
Yahoo, btw, has no trouble deciphering the difference between aussie & not =)
If my change of host does not work, should I register the .com.au domain and then use the .com as an alias to keep the traffic coming in?
Whats the best way for me to go about it if I want to move my site to .com.au?
If my change of host does not work, should I register the .com.au domain and then use the .com as an alias to keep the traffic coming in?
Not an alias, but place a 301 permanent redirect at the .com pointing to the new .com.au and then you'll be right, regardless of where you are hosted. In case you don't know, Google needs a site to be a .au or showing an AU-allocated IP address to be considered Aussie. You will often see a similar discussion from UK based site owners whose "UK hosts" use a US-based server.
