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I finally have the answer.
Google hasn't penalised the page at all, but simply fails to recognise it - if you go to www.mydomain.com you will see a nasty grey bar. Also in the Google directory, the site is listed as not having any page rank. However, if you go to www.mydomain.com/index.asp you get a page rank of 5.
Has anyone else experienced this?
What would be the best way to get my page rank for the site back (in the directory, that is - may not help the rankings, but will help me size up our competition better!)
a) rename the page? to what? default.htm, index.htm etc? (I already run htm and html pages through the asp dll - that's not a problem). Obviously I'd also need to put in a redirect.
b) change all my links back to the index page to absolute links (http://www.mydomain.com)?
Finally should I report the bug to Google?
PS. I've just checked another couple of sites (we always use index.asp as the default page). This doesn't affect all sites using index.asp. Have no idea why it would just affect this one.
Have you tried changing the filename to default.htm?
Try that. I hope it solves your problem
:-)
Onya
Woz
when you search backlinks for www.mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com/index.asp, respectively, what do you get?
Also, is this a new problem or does it exist for a longer time?
Normally, Google knows that this pages are the same and you should get the same PR. Even if not, www.mydomain.com should show at least the PR coming from external links (assuming that they are linking to www.mydomain.com and not www.mydomain.com/index.asp).
There are no backlinks for www.mydomain.com as it has no page rank. Backlinks are showing for www.mydomain.com/index.asp (but only a few external ones. I just assume most of the sites linking to us are < PR4). In fact it only shows two sites, both affiliates and both no longer linking to us, but since they're affiliates they would be using the www.mydomain.com address (via the affiliate company's servers).
I just don't know.
I think changing your links back to the index page to absolute links will not solve the problem. I would try the solution suggested by SEO_practioner and Woz.
If your .asp page already has good PR, you could just change your directory entry so it lists your site as www.example.com/index.asp.
If you don't like this, then you could try and change all your (external and internal) inbound links so they refer to your homepage as www.example.com/ and not [example.com...]
A third possibility would be to always 301 (permanent) or 302 (temporary) redirect all requests for /index.asp to / (or even vice-versa) - although I don't know how IIS would cope with that.
After just 30 seconds of searching I found a site with PR8 where their start page was in the format www.example.com/portalT.asp. Not exactly a standard page name :-) and although hardly any inbound links use it, they 302 redirect all requests for / to /portalT.asp, and Google nicely transfers the PR to /portalT.asp, so I suppose it doesn't matter :-)
Doc
I'm currently building my first-ever commercial site, and so am still fumbling around when it comes to issues such as SEO and search engines rankings. I've built up a lot of theoretical knowledge, thanks in part to the excellent discussions on these forums which are obviously frequented by experts who've "been there, done that, got in the search engines". The site is still some way off completion, but my client is insisting that he wants to see how well ranked the site is likely to be in the major search engines before making any sort of payment.
To pacify him, the site currently just has a home page and one publically-available page together with a couple of other "admin" pages. In this form, for my chosen keywords, the site is placed #1 with MSN, Lycos, AskJeeves but nowhere with Yahoo and Google.
The home page is "http://www.mydomain.com/default.asp" and the only publically-available page is "http://www.mydomain.com/detailspage.html" - I've been visited by Googlebot (Googlebot/2.1 //www.googlebot.com/bot.html) on 19th March, but if I try "allinurl:www.mydomain.com" on Google I only see the "detailspage.html" and no sign of "default.asp". Searching on the relevant keyword in Google doesn't show my site at all.
Sorry to have been so long-winded, but could anybody confirm this idea about Google not recognising pages named "default.asp" or "index.asp"?
just change your directory entry
have you ever tried to get a directory entry changed in dmoz?! (actually we just have, after about 6 months. that could be part of the problem)
I think I'll experiment with a 301 redirect from index.asp to /.
Does the site with the /portalT.asp default page show page rank in Google's directory?
Just to confirm there is no problem with index.asp. I have site using ASP.net and uses index.aspx and that works fine too.
Regards
G,
Are you sure you're looking in the right direction to solve the problem?
The site with /portalT.asp does show in Google's directory as PR8.
Doc
No problem at all here with default.asp as homepage.
Are you sure you're looking in the right direction to solve the problem?
Probably not - as I say, this my first commercial site, and search engine submission has been a great journey into the unknown for me so far ... I just can't fathom out yet why I should be listed (and highly-placed) in some search engines but not at all in Google.
As I've said, The home page is "http://www.mydomain.com/default.asp" and the only publically-available page is "http://www.mydomain.com/detailspage.html" - I've been visited by Googlebot (Googlebot/2.1 //www.googlebot.com/bot.html) on 19th March, but if I try "allinurl:www.mydomain.com" on Google I only see the "detailspage.html" and no sign of "default.asp". Searching on the relevant keyword in Google doesn't show my site at all.
At the risk of trying everyone's patience, I'd appreciate any pointers here ...
Normally, Google knows that this pages are the same and you should get the same PR.
I'm not convinced by this at all, in fact I believe exactly the opposite.
I've got a PR4 site. All links to the home page are to www.example.com/ - but the 'true' home page is www.example.com/index.php (that is to say that Apache serves index.php as the default document when a request for / comes in).
If I request www.example.com/ I see PR4, yet if I request www.example.com/index.php it drops to PR3. I suspect Google treats index.php as if it were just any other *NEW* page in the directory (PR of directory minus one). I've just uploaded a brand new test.html file into the root directory, and guess what? It shows up as PR3 too...
IMHO I would always stick with links to directories (example.com/product/)and never to the default document (example.com/product/default.htm) - if you ever change platforms then you just cause yourself grief down the line.
Remeber the W3C's recommendation: "Cool URIs don't change"... :-)
Doc
The home page is "http://www.mydomain.com/default.asp" and the only publically-available page is "http://www.mydomain.com/detailspage.html"
Why not have simply list your home page as www.example.com/ and the other page as www.example.com/detailspage.html with any links from your details page to your home page link this: <a href="/">? Surely it's actually *more* work to include links such as <a href="/default.asp"> - why bother?
As I pointed out in another post, the W3C do make a good point with their page "Cool URIs don't change" (Google search for that phrase, their page is #1 in the SERPS). They specifically list things best left out of a URI, and "filename extension" is on the list! IMHO the best URIs look like this
www.example.com
www.example.com/product
www.example.com/contact/
because they are completely platform independent. If you switch from IIS to Apache (or vice-versa) next week, no-one need ever know...
Just my $0.02 :-)
webdoctor
I never specify the default document in a link. This is why i'm so confused.
Just tried redirecting requests for the index page to the root - unsurprisingly it get me into a nice infinite loop.
Best go for the default.asp option.
raymurphy - when sites are new, Google lists them very erratically. Only some pages will be listed and the listings may dissapear and reappear.
It may be that google only visited the one page when it visited you, but either way its nothing to worry about.
Wait for next month's dance.
my experience is that normally Google identifies these pages as one.
For example, for one of my homepages all significant external incoming links go to "www.mydomain.de", why all internal links refer to "index.htm". You can reach this site also via "www.mydomain.com" (but this domain have no significant incoming links). However, the backlinks shown (internal and external) are the same for "www.mydomain.de" as well as "www.mydomain.de/index.htm", "www.mydomain.com" and "www.mydomain.com/index.htm". Moreover, all these pages have the same PR as well as "mydomain.de", "mydomain.de/index.htm", "mydomain.com", "mydomain.com/index.htm". Also, I made the same observation for several other domains.
However, I know that there are cases where this doesn't work. (But I don't know when it works and when not.)
Thanks for the comments - something for me to look at. With the site being new, perhaps I should
Wait for next month's dance- I've already got a flavour from these forums for how calm and patient you all are regarding the timings of the dance/update :)
