Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
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In addition, my Yahoo listing disappeared as well. I then did a Yahoo search for pages with my domain included and found most of my interior pages indexed but not my home page.
What happened? Is it possible my site was not ready to be crawled when Googlebot and Slurp robots visied my site - simultaneously?
This is a very "white hat" site - no tricks at all, just good content...
I went and manually requested my site be spidered on both Google and Yahoo, and sent an email to Yahoo requesting any explanation as well.
Is there anything else I can do? Any ideas of why this happened?
When "link.php" querys the database looking for the value "id=42," guess what it finds.
(hint: your url)
<<Should i e-mail this site and ask them to remove the redirect link i found in a search?>>
Sure, they problably will remove it for you. But, Google won't. Why? Because everytime gbot goes back to "link.php?id=42" it finds valid content --yours.
Yes, it is no use to just remove the link. The script URL should return a "404 Not Found" otherwise you can not remove it from Google, and Googlebot will not flag it for removal either.
Claus,
When I had the redirect site remove my link, it now returns their home page. My concern is that if the link is no longer in their links list will googlebot ever re-index it and figure out that its pointing somewhere else now? Should I add a link to their script to my site just to get google to re-index it?
Thanks
Big problem.
You must be able to type the EXACT original url into your browser address window and make sure your page no longer comes up. If it does come up, then that's what gbot will find when it re-spiders the link.
Simply having the offending link removed from the hijacker's page isn't enough. The problem is that the original url is still in Google's database and gbot keeps going back DIRECTLY to it --not via the hijacker's page.
And trying to get it removed via the URL console is no good because it still appears to be a live page to G.
If it doesn't return a 404, gbot won't remove it.
If it doesn't return a 404, gbot won't remove it.
It doesn't return a 404 now but it does point to their site instead of mine. I assume thats ok?
On a related note:
I found another (maybe only) source of my duplicate content penalty. In attempting to 301 redirect my ip address (left over from old setup) to the www site I was using the following code which google never seemed to understand (names changed and spaces added to protect the innocent):
Redirect 301 / http: //www. mysite. com/
I then changed it to (ip changed):
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^123.45.678.9:69
RewriteRule (.*) http: //www. mysite. com$1 [R=301,L]
This redirected the browser from my ip address just fine and I didn't think anything of it until I put it through the WebmasterWorld Server Header Checker which was returning 200 OK!
So now I updated it to the following:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}!^.* mysite \.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http: //www. mysite. com$1 [R=301,L]
The last entry seems to be returning the proper 301 redirect.
Just thought I would post this for anyone else having a split site problem. Given that 1 dupe offense = 30 day penalty, 2nd offense = 60 day and 3rd = 90 day, I don't expect to see my site listed in google for a long while :(
When I had the redirect site remove my link, it now returns their home page. My concern is that if the link is no longer in their links list will googlebot ever re-index it and figure out that its pointing somewhere else now? Should I add a link to their script to my site just to get google to re-index it?
It's okay that it returns their home page if they are now 302 redirecting to themselves in stead of you.
As jk3210 wrote, Googlebot will pick the link from Google's own list of links at some point and spider it, regardless if it's found on the page or not. I don't know how long this will take, but it could take some time.
If you can enter the exact URL of the script in a server header checker (or in a browser with your User-Agent set to the full Googlebot UA string) and see another site than yours, then this particular link will no longer harm your site once Googlebot gets around to spider it.
You could try speeding things up by submitting the script URL to Google.
So now I updated it to the following:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}!^.* mysite \.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http: //www. mysite. com$1 [R=301,L]
I would use this syntax in stead, but if yours works for you there's no need to change it:
----------------------------------
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com$1 [R=301,L]
----------------------------------
"Is mysite.com in trouble?"
let's say it can't help you. Google might choose ignore them, you, or hurt both.