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We had a thread going (ended in September) about Google not indexing our server. A bunch of helpful people tried to figure this out (http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/16816.htm), but the problem persists.
We had an old server, with name "old.name.server.ca", which we retired, in favour of the new server's name, which was "name.server.ca". ie. we removed the prefix. Now...one was originally an alias of the other, so they pointed to the same website. The old server had been up with redirects in place, and then taken down (almost a year ago). Google never indexed the new server - not after more than a year. It hits the index and robots files, and never goes any further.
I have determined that Google believes that the old server and new server are one and the same, even though the old server has been offline for a year. We began to notice pages appearing in Google's index very briefly that never existed on the old server, but using the old server name. ie. old.name.server.ca/page/ never existed on old.name, but DOES exist at name.server.ca/page/
Weird, eh?
The sysadmin and I put the old server back online, and it was immediately spidered by Google (first day!). We have put a 301 redirect in the htaccess page to point to the new server, but Google is still not figuring it out. We are really frustrated, and our competence is being questioned. How do we let Google know that old.name.server.ca is NOT name.server.ca? How do we get Google to index the new one? We have now removed the htaccess file, and put in a robots file that disallows access. Will this help or hurt? ie. if the old server says don't index, will Google finally get the hint that the new one is NOT the same?
FYI - the problem is not with javascript in the pages (there's a lot, and many people suggested that I change this, but I have tried that solution, PLUS...we have 8 other departments using the same templates with the same js, and they don't have problems).
Please help! I am pulling my hair out - and I don't have much to spare! :)
Cheers,
Crow
Just guessing and bumping up the post... you need someone like takagi, or one of the other experts, helping with that.
Put your 301-Moved Permanently redirect back up, and then leave it alone for 2 or 3 months. Once you see the 'bot actively spidering your new hostname, then you can take the old hostname down.
Jim
Something of this sort happened with me.
We had a client whose website was in PHP. He moved his website to ASP.NET and therefore a new IP but same domain.
His old pages always remained indexed and never got removed. And new pages never got indexed. I created a sitemap of the new website and then had over 50 Good Quality Links point to that sitemap. Voila....it worked...and all the pages of that site got indexed. I created filename specific redirects and everything is perfect for me and the cliuent. He gets a lot in sales from Search Engines ONLY. :-)
You can use the above as a Case Study I feel. :-)
We've had old.name.server up for about 5 weeks, with the 301 redirects in place. Google is still spidering it like mad, but hitting ONLY the index and robots file on the "real" site.
I don't want to bail too quickly, but we thought perhaps putting a robots file disallowing the spider on the old server might finally convince Google that the old server is dead, and that the new server is NOT the same thing.
We DO in fact have several sites (including PR7) that link to the correct pages, and have for a year now, but it doesn't seem to matter to Google. They still think that the pages belong to the old server.
Isn't it bizarre that Google is periodically showing pages in its index that have never actually existed? For example:
name.server/page ==> is real, and linked to by another site
old.name.server/page ==> never existed, but this has been showing in the Google index, presumably because it has seen the real page (from the first link) and thinks that the two servers are one and the same.
Cheers,
Crow
Okay - I have the redirects back in place. Google has resumed hitting the old server (old.name.server.ca) daily, and still has not begun spidering the new one. I am going to leave it in place for a couple of months...but I am not convinced that Google is going to sort out this mess.
I just don't get it. How am I going to separate old server from new (w.r.t. Google)? Will the redirects work?
Cheers,
Crow
