Forum Moderators: open
I have some idea how this happened but I still need help in determining this and in fixing or pursuing fixes that will help me get reindexed by Google. The problem appears to be related to a parked domain of mine that was somehow pointed to an old site with old content on an old server belonging to my web host. I have confirmed with my web host that this is the case and they are trying to determine how this happened. The domain name that was pointed, <other_domain>, has absolutely nothing to do with the products I sell on my one and only active site, <my_domain> (rack screws and fasteners)
I found the problem when I typed in the phrase "<my_phrase>" (my primary product but not the phrase I am typically ranked highly under) at Askjeeves. I found that <other_domain> was indexed and had old <my_domain> content in it! I have never uploaded any content to the <other_domain> site.
I should note that my site remains well ranked with other search except SE’s that are Google related.
In short, I have no idea how the old <my_domain> content was linked to a parked domain but am afraid that as the page layout and content is similar to my current site this may have been crawled and considered mirror content by Google. Any ideas? I must add that <other_domain> was recently transferred (within the past 2 weeks) from Verisign to Directnic. I had a tough time getting Verisign to release this name for transfer but the transfer did take place about 2 weeks ago.
Does anyone know how this link to <other_domain> of old, supposedly deleted web content, could have happened? And is it reasonable to assume that Google may well have considered this a mirror site, hence dropping it? And finally, what are my remedies? I can argue that it would have made no sense whatsoever for me to mirror old content associated with an absolutely unrelated URL <other_domain>. But it would seem that I will need to know how that old content appeared at a parked URL.
One last question. Googlebot continues to crawl through my site and I noticed that it came up with a 404 error that I do not understand and which may be related to my troubles:
2002-07-02 06:35:11 216.239.46.101 - W3SVC201 AI1020 209.120.158.206 80 GET /' - 404 2 4184 391 16 HTTP/1.0 Googlebot/2.1+(+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html) - -
Any helps/ideas would be greatly appreciated and I thank you all in advance.
gtodell
[edited by: ciml at 6:09 pm (utc) on July 8, 2002]
Alexa shows your page as very low in the traffic stats. There do seem to be a number of sites on the topic or close to it.
I have no idea what your product is but if I were you, I'd get busy getting links. Here's a fast way to start, type your jeyword and the word gossamer into Google. This will take you to a bunch of sites that have directories of links to similar product sites. These directories are usually well maintained (not always) and you can get listed in them for the next Google spidering.
Don't get hung up on the PR of these sites. Just get lots of inbound links. And get thee to DMOZ under some sort of category.
Any ideas how to address the issue of letting Google know what happened? The drop from Google coincides time-wise with being dropped from a number of other engines.
Ouch. That means that when Googlebot came to look, it couldn't see your index page (404 returned). This is probably a bad thing. If you have recently been transferring your domain, that could account for the problem.
As you can see the request in your logs, GGbot must have made it to the server that the request log is coming from. Whether the site worked at that point.... I guess not, which would account for the 404. GGbot should have come back later to ask for it again. Do you see further GET / 404 lines later on?
You might also wish to have a word with your host, and find out if they were having problems with the server, or connectivity or something at 2002-07-02, 06:35:11. That too would account for the 404
Fix : >> And get thee to DMOZ under some sort of category.
Yup. A Dmoz listing will virtually guarantee that every worthwhile spider on Earth will find you, and keep coming back, even if you have temporary glitches like this. You might also try a direct resubmission to Google, but 1st priority is to find out why your site is/was returning 404's, and fix it, if it isn't already
I am waiting to hear back from my host. I swear by these guys and they have never let me down. They will find the problem and I am sure they will send an email to Google taking responsibility. That may not help but it's worth a try.
Umm... What's the trailing single quote doing there?
I'd look for a typo on your site or on a site that links to you.
HTH,
Jim
gtodell
Maybe a messed-up javascript or dynamic link?
I've never seen a trailing single-quote like that before, but it sure could
cause problems if Googlebot actually tried to load a file named "/'" !
Jim
My web host has offered to contact Google on my behalf regarding the mistake of pointing one of parked domains to an old but "mirror looking" domain that remains on one of their servers.
What is the email address they (and I) should use to contact Google about this error, an error which resulted in getting my site dropped from the Google index.
Thanks,
gtodell
Toby
