Google spiking the SERPS with ancient data?

Page that was taken down over 6 months ago back.

[Rollo]

A bit of Google strangeness, I changed my webpages from .htm to .html about 6 months ago becuase Google was not indexing the site properly so I decided to experiment. The experiemnt paid off and I got right back into Google after doing so. About a month later I decided to do a site wide redirect from .htm => .html to save the old backlinks. Today in the SERPS for a particular keyword combo, the same page comes up twice one for the .htm the other for the .html. I hope they fix this as this has dupe content issues and potential written all over it... but we're completely innocent!

[amol_v_naik]

Caution - redirecting = black hat technique, from google point of view, and this was not innosent. Suggestions Please?

[kwngian]

Don't think redirecting = black hat.

Redirecting users but not bots = black hat.

Redirecting on conditions =?grey hat?

[physics]

Speaking of ancient data, I did notice a Google cached page of one of my sites from Nov 2004 in my referral data today (on a site that has had nocache for at least 6 months).

[Dayo_UK]

Lol - 6 months ago - you call that old?

Google has data from 18 months ago and older in the serps.

[LunaC]

Google's holding on to a few of my .html pages that were removed from my site in early January 2001 :\

Tried 301's and 404's.. still they pop up occasionally. Nothing black hat about the redirects, just changed the directory structure and switched to .shtml at that point.

As for the Nov. 2004 cache, yup.. here again as well. That was when I changed to .php.. again, 301'd and still seen as duplicates i think.

[edited by: LunaC at 7:53 pm (utc) on Dec. 9, 2005]

[g1smd]

This has been ongoing for at least 18 months.

I am aware of many pages cached for content that has't existed since January 2004.

The google URL removal tool removed (umm, no, not removed, merely hid them) the pages for 90 days and then they were added back in to the SERPs exactly as they had been before.

[stinkfoot]

Google is broken mate has been for a while and they cant be bothered to fix it. Just listen to Catt Mutts "There isnt a problem" and if he says there isnt. We are all just living in a dream world.

Bit like this one [earth.google.com...]