So far, so good!
However, if I search for my-site on Google (or Yahoo.co.uk, so probably others as well) when the search engine finds the site and you click the link, the address bar says "http://freespace.my-isp.net/my-name".
I want the address bar to say www.my-site.co.uk, though.
Has anyone any ideas how I can change this? Is it an issue I need to address with the company from whom I purchased the domain name? Should I instead speak to my ISP? Or do I need to re-submit my site to the search engines, perhaps?!?
Any help would be very gratefully received indeed.
Many thanks in advance,
Choggy
I would do two things.
1. Contact the search engines explaining you problem, however, I wouldn't hold your breath for a quick response.
In the meantime.
2. Contact the host of the free webspace and ask them to setup a 301 Permanent Redirect. This will transfer visitors to your website and most search engine spiders are clever enough to update their index with the new url.
Chris
Depending on your budget, consider purchasing web hosting to go with your domain name - thus eliminating the frames & the redirection. The site could be uploaded to this space and re-submitted to the search engines. Whilst this is underway, you could then use the 301 redirect to send people visiting your freespace site back to your proper domain name.
Once the search engines have picked up on the 301 redirect, the old site should gradually be dropped & be replaced with the new.
Contacting the search engines probably won't be of any use - they're simply indexing and displaying the site as it is. Since all the content is on the freespace, this is the address that will appear.
R.
The re-direct does indeed use frames (*grrr!* Don't like frames, or I would have used them when creating the site :( )
Can anyone explain to me what a 301 Permanent Redirect is? Is it a perl thing? (if so, I don't think my free isp will support it, so I'll have to rehost) More to the point, will it involve visitors seeing one of those "This site has moved, please wait while we re-direct you" messages?
Thanks again both of you for your replies.
Chog
Most search engines will take note of the page having moved, follow to the new page and update their indexes accordingly. It's especially handy if you've achieved good positions and don't want to lose them due to a domain change, as in this case.
Some useful info here [tamingthebeast.net] which explains the thing a whole lot better than I can!
R.
Out of interest, on a related topic, because the domain name uses frames, I seem to be unable to make a link to "http:\\www.my-domain-name.co.uk\a-specific-page.htm" work (e.g. to create a link to take people back a to a file in a higher folder). Any ideas why this would be, or would this also be sorted out (in the long run) by the 301 re-direct, do you think?
[edited for spelling]
I'm having the same problem, only my site can't be found at all.
The browser get pages read the information from my site, but the spider pages list a "200 ok" which directs the inktomi spider to my virtual host.
Anybody have a fix for this?
