Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
One of my sites' www-pages are delisted since the last google update. If i search for exact phrases i only find the pages without the www although they use a working 301 redirect to the www domain. Strange: the non-www pages are labeled as supplemental results and if i click the "More results from example.com", Google returns the www-pages. The cache of the non-www pages shows all relative links as non-www links - which is a proof that the non-www pages are indexed and cached.
301 redirects are not working anymore in google ...
Perhaps they've changed something recently to try to stop people from buying domains and 301'ing them to other sites?
Er... there are people who say thet 301's never worked right, but since Allegra they DO! Who is wrong now?
I had a problem with google recognising the "redirect 301 sitename.com www.sitename.com" in apache. I changed it to a mod rewrite 301 redirect and now all the backward links show the same for sitename.com and www.sitename.com.
Maybe it was a bug in the version of apache I'm running.
If course I'm still being hit by the filter=0 problem but thats an unrelated story.
Had a site 301 about a month back and its pronto followed by Google already. Another site done 301 almost 6 months back, still shows up as a URL only, worse ranks too for its targeted term :)
Mc
(Added: Ironically, just about to advise a multi billion bank site to do a 301 one of its duplicate site, rather reluctantly.. huh.)
I had a problem with google recognising the "redirect 301 sitename.com www.sitename.com" in apache. I changed it to a mod rewrite 301 redirect and now all the backward links show the same for sitename.com and www.sitename.com.
The format for an apache redirect is
Redirect status URLpath URL
Note URLpath is not domain name
From the Apache manual:
Directives use a great number of different argument types. A few common ones are defined below.
URL
A complete Uniform Resource Locator including a scheme, hostname, and optional pathname as in [example.com...]
URL-path
The part of a url which follows the scheme and hostname as in /path/to/file.html. The url-path represents a web-view of a resource, as opposed to a file-system view.
AFAIK, a site: search should only show pages from within that given site. Does this mean that Google thinks my site is actually six different distinct sites, non of which is the right one? That seems like an obvious glitch to me.
Looking through a site: command, I see that some of the other domains are back, just a few oddball pages from the interior of the site, as supplemental results. I used the server header checker, and they all still seem to be redirecting properly.
href="/newdir"
apache sees that it is a directory, issues a 301 redirect with the
ServerName. That is probably how google is finding the other domain
As far as whether 301s worked before and now dont - I can say that its a good statement.
theBear - that is correct for directories however it is not the correct way to redirect an entire domain I dont believe
bhartzer - I believe that is 302's that they have been working on to prevent what you are describing - although it may be leading to this problem but the 301 problem first appeared in July and surfaced with the SERPs update on Aug 14th last year
Emmett - I believe the filter=0 is entirely related to this as a downline effect from the change in the algorithm, or very possibly in the coding of the new Googlebot although you would think that they would have tested that end of things
Suggest you read the Apache documentation.
I'm only telling you that the redirect may not be working because it isn't in the proper form.
Computers are literal devices and there are loads of places that programs go bad, one gets nailed by stupid mistookes all the time.
You test redirects using a header checker.
You can also check your logs to find out what the bots get and do.
You really should use mod rewrite and make certain that only one name gets passed by a 301 for stacked and www and non-www domain names.
I use both kinds of redirect methods and have stacked domains with and without the www prefix.
(probably not correctly formatted due to the message restrictions)
However Im still convinced that it might be a simple conf file setup problem in most cases where the hosts are not setting up the servername properly as www.domain.com instead of the "standard" entry of domain.com
There is a conf file option it is called:
ServerAlias www.example.com example.com etc etc......
This config option is but one part of the site split apart problem.
The other being relative urls without a base in the html. Or in the alternative a set of rewrite rules.
Of course one shouldn't forget that it is possible to also hit your site (home page in particular) from its ip addy (if it isn't shared). However I'd expect the ip addy form of the problem to go supplemental rather fast the one exception being if it had a very high pr link to it.
There is interaction between all of these parameters, however most folks my not have access to the base server configuration.
It is best to read the entire Apache (or your favorite server) documentation for all references to domain.
I'm sure that will open a lot of eyes.
One thing you ought to be checking in Apache is in the conf file to make sure your host has the servername entered correctly as www.domain.com and not domain.com.
If it is the latter, any time you have a directory link, i.e.
href="/newdir"apache sees that it is a directory, issues a 301 redirect with the
ServerName. That is probably how google is finding the other domain
I'm glad you said that! I didn't even think of it. I've been doing the non-www for servername all along. Doh!
I went to my server, as you suggested, to see what they were using and sure enough, they are using the domain without the www.
All this time I have been using my domain with the www. no wonder Google is confused.
I found a script inside their forum that said to add this to my .htaccess to force the www.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}!^www\.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http:// www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
And it works! It forces the www. but is it too late? Or does it matter now? Has something changed in Google? I checked the backlinks for my domain with the www and without the www and the backlinks are the same. Hmmm
