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I don't even have access to this web space myself anymore - so can't upload a robots.txt etc.
But what I *can* do is upload a basic new index page.
I've considered a simple "no robots page", with a single link to my URL (the same URL GoogleBot is searching!) to try to shake up its DNS - can anyone foresee any probs with this?
I've heard of an error 301 (or is it 303?) How do I get the GoogleBot to recognise this for what it is?
Many thanks in advance for any advice.
My old server is the default name server but it doesn't host my domain any more. I have limited access to its services. I can't FTP it, I can't even see my site on it, but I *am* able to view the last 1000 lines in its log etc. There are only 4 lines in this log - Google crawling my index page on this site today and for the past 3 days! (The log on my new server is tens of megabytes)
I was seeking advice - not "oh, you've got that wrong!"
As for old SERPS, as I explained, all the new pages on my site have been listed, but Google continues to crawl my old site.
I don't understand why, and I was seeking advice - rather than incredulity!
Someone advise me about this rather than - "I can't understand why...etc."
301 is permanent redirect, 302 is temporary.
This is definitely not my area so I'm no help with it, but you'll probably find some applicable information by doing a site search for google + update DNS, which sounds like that's where the problem could lie.
Here's one past thread where it was discussed:
[webmasterworld.com...]
Let us know if that's what you're looking for and has the answers for you.
My new DNS propagated across the INet months ago - I can't understand why GoogleBot keeps coming back to the old site for my index page - I can't access it myself! I
The old server GoogleBot keeps crawling for my index page is my default name server, and has a holding page which I'd hate it to find - it is full of pop-ups when you try to close it.
I'm an honest bloke looking for a solution!
Many, many thanks
Nick
If Googlebot thinks that your domain still points to this old IP address, then putting a link in
the old index.html pointing to yourdomain/index.html isn't going to do any good, since the 'bot
will just see that link as the page pointing back to itself. The same goes for any kind of 301
redirect at the server level (e.g. .htaccess) on the old machine.
What is confusing about your post and probably led Lisa to question it is that you state that you
can upload a new index.html to the old site, and then state that you can't upload a new robots.txt.
Your second post then amplifies the confusion by stating that you can't FTP, either. This is an
unexpected twist - most of us have full access or none.
No-one here is trying to criticize anyone else, but both your situation and the ambiguities of
written communication are quite confusing.
If your new site's index.html is indexed, you could delete or rename the old index.html. Or just
not worry about it, and wait for Googlebot to figure it out.
You could also put a link in the old index.html to the new index.html using the new IP address in
the form: [12.34.56.78...]
but that would also make for some ugly search results...
Jim
I have a few questions.
1) Was your old server vhost based or could you reach the site via the IP?
2) “old server is the default name server” Can you clarify this? Do you mean that your old website server is still your DNS name server?
If google is using a cached IP for your domain name then a 301 redirect will not help. Google will get confused when it sees a 301 redirect from example.com to example.com. It is best to wait for Google to update their domain to IP mapping. You say it has been a few months. It can sometimes take up to 2 months for your pages to show up in Google. If you miss the crawl, and you update your page after that then you will be in the new index 28+27 days from then.
Please advise - how do I conduct a permanent redirect?
Nick
They are a host with, perhaps, over 600,000 domains listed.
Rather difficult to contact (you might think) - I guess you're right.
And they are.
You can pay for various services with them - logs, stats, web space etc. You can also do a DNS change.
When my business took off I moved the domain because, unbelievably, they don't provide CGI.
Since then, GoogleBot has scoured my Index page on that server. Despite the DNS change months ago.
What I *can do* is upload a new index page - I'm simply asking for advoce on how to move the GoogleBot to the IP address now listed on every other computer on the Internet!
Kind regards
Nick
I've only been moved about a week now, and Googlebot has luckily found and indexed my site at the new host. I'm almost down to no accesses on the old server, bar a couple of inktomi and fastsearch crawls, which I don't really care about anyway.
I haven't had GoogleBot come visit the old website, though. I knew you were with UK2.net as soon as I saw the 1000 logfile lines reference. :)
If your domain on your current host is being correctly crawled and indexed as you say it is, then I wouldn't care that GoogleBot is visiting the old host. I'm assuming your index.html on your new host is the one in the Google index, right? Well, like you I'd be concerned about the DNS issue, but not too much given that I'm assuming your entire new webspace is in the index.
You can't do 301 or 302 with UK2.net because they don't provide .htaccess functionality as far as I know.
If you're still concerned, I'd go post in the UK2 forums, and also raise a helpdesk support ticket that can be found in the technical complaints announcement. If you want specific URLs please stickymail me.
If you're ultra worried, then in your position I'd pay the £19 plus VAT and move your domain to the new host as well.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>301 Moved Permanently</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>301 Moved Permanently</h1>
<p>Moved to <a href=
"http://your-new-domain.com">your-new-domain.com</a></p>
</body>
</html>
You can replace your-new-domain.com with the IP address of your new site assuming it is hosted on a dedicate IP.
Apologies for being so pompous - but just because someone doesn't have the measure of the Internet doesn't mean you are a damned fool!
I'd like to ask Key_master if I can simply put my URL twice into the template he kindly provided. Would this stimulate GoogleBot to re-search?
The DNS change is indeed a real one and to a new IP, I can obtain the new IP from my DNS records, but what would the full syntax be for the index page?
Many thanks for your patience.
Nick
Yes, you could list both URLs providing you can visit your site via it's IP address.
simply insert this line into the HTML:
<p>Moved to <a href=
"http://xx.xx.xx.xx/">xx.xx.xx.xx</a></p>
with xx.xx.xx.xx being the IP address of your site.
the index.html being listed by Google for the past 3 months *isn't* that listed at the new domain - it's a very old one. Google keeps returning to UK2.net. But it has picked up some of the new pages.
The DNS change is complete - it has propagated all over the Net - I don't understand what hold UK2.net appears to have over the index page.
You suggested paying - would that be for the professional DNS service? I'm happy to pay anything within reason if I can finally shake this off!
joined:June 3, 2002
posts:30
msg #:10
AFAICT, like me, your domain name is still hosted with UK2.net, but you have the webspace with another (better!) webhost with the DNS record pointing to your new and improved (tm) webhost. What I was suggesting was why not move the domain name to your new webhost as well, rather than just pointing it there. If you've had the domain name with UK2.net for less than two years, apparently you have to pay some £19 plus VAT, otherwise it's free.
The point of doing this was to make sure that GoogleBot had nothing to find at the old webspace. I don't understand why it's still going there given that your DNS record has been changed since so long ago. Maybe Google keeps a record of IP addresses against site names with history for some reason?
I vaguely remember others posting on this topic a month or two ago - maybe you can find more details in the site search. At the time I did get the impression that they were being impatient with their DNS record sync and the phases of GoogleBot, but I could be mistaken.
I must have been quite lucky on my site - I did the DNS update Friday 26th July. Googlebot already has the new IP and has taken all my pages including the index from the new site.
That leaves us with one of the following as most likely your problem:
I've had situations in the past where we switched servers and 90% of the site was crawled at the new IP within a few days of propagation, but a handful of pages were still being requested from the old IP. It took a couple of months for Google to finally get the DNS right across all crawlers.
I've never tried the solution Key_Master mentioned, but I doesn't sound like it would work do to the fact that the page would still return a 202. You certainly could stop the old index page from being indexed, but I don't think anything at the html level will help Google correct an outdated entry in its DNS cache.
