Google Update Bourbon Part 3

[Sweet Cognac]

Continued From:

[webmasterworld.com...]

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My whole site has a new cache date of May 25th. Maybe once these other sites around me get recached, I won't hold such an honorable top position. But at least Google has found my pages worthy to sit in the Search again.:) It seems strange to look at the stats and see Google in there, after 6 months of just seeing Yahoo and MSN referrals.

My website has plenty of outbound links, but they are on relevant pages. The problem my site has always had, was a lack of "inbound links." I got tired of searching for people to link to me (with all the spammy sites around) and gave up. So my pages have acquired some links naturally I guess(and I'll bet I still don't have more than 30 inbound links for the whole site) Still have a PR4, which I've had since it disappeared in Nov.

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 8:54 pm (utc) on May 27, 2005]

[Dayo_UK]

Reseller

I did not call the update ;) - Brett did really. I only noticed something of interest on a couple of DCs.

PS. I dont believe in the rotating algo theory

Clint

Have you done the 301 redirect of your duplicate domains to your main domain. If not you should really consider doing this. Not a short term fix as it sounds that you may have a duplicate content penatly - this penalty may have to run its course.

[Clint]

Clint

Have you done the 301 redirect of your duplicate domains to your main domain. If not you should really consider doing this. Not a short term fix as it sounds that you may have a duplicate content penatly - this penalty may have to run its course.

I still don't know what that means and I've been trying to find out. Maybe you can kindly tell me how. Earlier today I removed these domains from the cPanel area "Parked Domains". I don't know what kind of "point", "redirect", or "forward" this was called. My original main domain name WAS MASKED in the address bar, if any of these fwd'd domains were clicked, it was THEIR URL that would appear in the address bar. So hopefully that will tell you something.

I've since fwd'd one of them by my registrar who offers this service and they have the option to mask or not mask the URL. So I chose not to mask the URL, which will mean (after the new propagation is completed), when this domain name is clicked, it will be my real domain name that appears in the address bar. It should be completed today, they said it takes about 24hrs to show up.

So is that the correct or preferred way, or is this something I have to do in my htaccess file?
Thanks.

[Dayo_UK]

Clint

If you explain your circumstance in the apache forum someone may be able to help you. (The experts on this type of thing may not be reading this thread)

[webmasterworld.com...]

Not exactly sure what the Registrars mean by mask - when it is done if you check your header using the following tool:-

[searchengineworld.com...]

You will want to see what Status code is returned. If a redirect is in place it should also state a location - this location should be your correct/main site url. I would suggest that you really want a 301 status code - but they may use a 302 or a 303 (as someone elses hosts used in another thread)

[helleborine]

It's not just us.

I've been talking to non-webmasters - whining about my lack of traffic - and unless they are merely trying to make me feel better, I do believe that users have noticed that "nothing in Google makes sense these days."

[Ledfish]

Funny, I was told the same thing by a couple of users at a memorial day finction yesterday.

[jd01]

Clint

Without too much detail...

it was THEIR URL that would appear in the address bar.

This is definitely a possible duplicate issue.

You will need to make sure any redirecting is a 301, NOT a 302. (Use a header check to make sure, no matter what your host tells you.)

I would be happy to answer more thoroughly in the Apache forum. If someone else does not get there first =)

Justin

Added: Just as a rule... I believe, you are generally best to actually host the domains and then redirect and manage them yourself, so you are in control of all aspects of the domain.

[fearlessrick]

I'm trying to make sense of all this, but here's something I just can't get my mind around.

I do a search for say, a four KW phrase, which happens to be the title of a page on my site.

In that page, I have metatags for description, keywords, robots - very clean and done according to my best understand of SEO - and with relevant, informational content.

Many other pages come up before mine which have NO Meta Tags, including a "What's New" page that is generated by my on-site search engine - that has no metatags.

This is occuring not only on Google, but on Yahoo and MSN, which, for this phrase at least, is really a mess.

Any ideas as to what I'm doing wrong? My robots tag looks like this:
<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="all">

Do I need to change that to INDEX, FOLLOW?

[Tropical Island]

Clint:

We have a web site that has 4 other domains parked and pointing at it for years. When you enter these parked domains the main site comes up with the url of the parked domain.

We have had great rankings in all 3 SE's for this main site for many years.

This method for parked domains has been in use for years. We use Interland for hosting, one of the main players, and this is how they do it.

This is not the problem.

[fearlessrick]

I just received an email which contained an article about the DMOZ, called "Trouble at the ODP."

I would post the link but I would imagine that it's against the TOS here. A search for that article will get you to it, though.

I'd like to see if anybody reads it and can comment. It may have quite a bit to do with what's been going on with this update, and previous ones.

[reseller]

fearlessrick

>I just received an email which contained an article about the DMOZ, called "Trouble at the ODP."<

It could be the reason why Google "suspended" its PR on the toolbar for few days ago. Not to say that Google PR wasn´t already dead in practice for the last few months or so.