Forum Moderators: phranque
I thought it was somehow related to the fact that I just moved that website to another host but now I see the server address showing as a referrer (instead of the website's url) in the logs of another site that I have NOT moved.
I'm wondering if the problem is related to the webhost's move to a new data center a month ago (?). They say there was a problem with DNS caching because even though they set everybody's DNS TTL’s to 1 hour before the move (whatever that means!) there was still the problem of ISPs not updating the DNS frequently enough.
I am trying to understand what on earth is going on. Google appears to have indexed my site in that way a week after I moved to another webhost.
Any ideas?
I'd copy off your server log showing the odd-ball referer, and explain what you did (visiting one of your sites from the other, I assume) and send that to your host, and demand they give the problem report to someone who can fix it. You might explain what getting your Google listing trashed for a month means to you...
Jim
Tech support/customer service has got pretty bad which is one reason why I have started moving sites, so I don't anticipate much joy from contacting them.
No, it wasn't visiting one site from the other. Direct visits are recorded as referrals for some reason.
Now I'm really confused.
This is two problems, one confounding the other...
The first problem is that it sounds like the hosting service has messed up the log file format. If it's an Apache server, you can look up Apache mod_log_config to see how it's done. But this is not something that you (personally) can tweak on a shared server.
The second problem is that Google has now "freshed" your old server, and they (or you) have removed your site, so it's now showing a "default page" from your old server. In a few days, I'd expect the Google cache to revert from "fresh" back to what they had cached at the beginning of the month, which sounds like it was another default page (but I can't be sure from your description if it's from your new server or your old one).
Hang in there, and hope for an early Google update this month!
Good luck,
Jim
I think I'm getting the picture.
However, I thought that Google spiders all month and then applies its new algorithm at the end of the month, and the serps change.
So what I am presuming will happen is that Google will apply its new algorithm to the site (or lack of) in the cache?
Is that not how it works?
But as I said, I may be wrong - real wrong. You might want to post a very specific question in the Google forum, like "How old is the data used to determine PageRank and incoming links?" or "How old is the data that shows in the Google non-fresh cache?" I've never had a big problem with Google, and I run a non-profit "clean SEO" site, so I really don't pay too much attention to Google's detailed behaviour...
Jim
'What will show up at the end of this month is what was captured at the beginning of this month, and the results of on-page-analysis of text, keywords, etc. will be taken from then'
I'm wondering how near the beginning of the month? The first cache with the server address on the page was 12 October.
I guess it won't be long before I find out! I was so thrilled to have hit #1 on Google last update and then to start getting a load of traffic from Yahoo too! I thought it too good to be true but I guess there's always another update!
When you "rent" web space with a unique IP, that number is yours for as long as you pay for it. With name-based hosting, the IP address is shared, distributed among several "tenants". If a "tenant" web site moves away from a unique IP they can retain the space and redirect to their site at the new host. But when someone moves from a shared IP, the name of the "tenant" site has no unique number of its own so when accessing by the IP number it'll bring up the server admin, which is exactly what happened this past week with the host you moved from.
That host is almost local to me so I called tech support - and they picked up on the first ring. He said to contact the server admin and mentioned the DNS problem they had had a while back; but there were no current problems, said it wasn't on their end. Which it actually isn't.
Google crawls by domain name AND IP number. While you're at shared IP hosting, they'll get your site because the server is configured to include you in it's addressing. Once you're gone, it isn't any more - so it will likely pick up something else - which is what happened, they got the default, which was the admin site for your previous host. So while you ARE indexed, Google just may not have your site's new address yet. It's the DNS updating, it just takes a while.
When moving from a unique IP to another unique IP it's relatively simple; for extra insurance, when I've done that, I made sure a link from another site was directed to the new IP number to make sure the site would be found in the right place. When you posted the other day I whipped up a little graphic and put up a link to your site with the new IP number as the linked site address from a page that gets fresh crawls - the last time was on the 19th.
What Google has now looks what is at a web space prior to the site's actual pages being uploaded. Check the crawl date by your listing; they'll catch up, they didn't lose you and it'll probably straighten out this next update.
Added:
Jim, it was showing the default page from the old server, now it appears to be showing the default page from the new server, it's a different page than what it was the other day.
Many thanks for taking the time to link to my page with the new IP!
I'm getting clearer about what is happening but I still don't understand why it would show the default page from the new server when I moved the site a couple of weeks ago and the cache is dated 18th October?
Also, another site which is still on the 'old' webhost showed its own server address in the referrer logs (instead of it's own address) so I am thinking that there was a problem with the host itself.
That's good news that it will probably clear up during the next index - thanks for the reassurance.
