Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
In the past few days, google has completely dropped my main url and is sporadically listing the secondary url. cache:www.widgetco.com comes up with an error that there is no cache.
Is this an illegal redirect and what do I do about it (if I get rid of the secondary url, that would not be good because it's currently the only url google is listing)? How do I check to make sure it's a 301 redirect, which is legal right?
I've had this redirect going unchanged for years, so could this even be the reason my rank demise?
THANKS!
[edited by: needhelp at 7:43 pm (utc) on Sep. 20, 2006]
There are many online sites that can do this, as well as programs you can download and then run on a PC or Mac.
HTTP/1.0 200 Ok =>
Date => Wed, 20-Sep-2006 22:30:42 GMT
Server => e/3
Connection => close
Content-type => text/html
Set-Cookie => ezstida=314680613;path=/;expires=Sat, 17-Sep-2016 22:30:42 GMT
No clue how to use this info, though...
Thx for taking the time everyone. I'm so stressed, Google indirectly pays my mortgage!
Some headers checkers show only the last response in a sequence of transactions. So if you requested widgetcompany.com, you might see 200-OK if that were the case. However, the better checkers will show *all* requests/responses, which in this case should be:
---
Client requests www.widgetcompany.com/ :
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.widgetcompany.com
Server responds with redirect :
HTTP/1.x 301-Moved Permanently
Location: http://www.widgetco.com/
Client requests home page from correct URL given in 301 response :
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.widgetco.com
Server responds with page content :
HTTP/1.x 200-OK
-or-
HTTP/1,x 304-Not Modified
---
These are only the relevant headers, you will likely see lots more.
In order to *know* you are getting good results, I'd suggest you download the "Live HTTP Headers" extension for Firefox and use that -- I know its reports are accurate.
BTW, make sure that wigetcompany.com and widgetco.com (no "www.") also 301 redirect to www.widgetco.com.
Jim
[edited by: jdMorgan at 9:59 pm (utc) on Sep. 20, 2006]
Could this really be just a wait and see game, I can't figure out anything wrong with my site. If I'm the only one being "picked on" by Google, what else could this mean except Google doesn't like me for some reason? I've been top 3 on Google for at least 2 years for ALL of my keywords, I post fresh content (my competitors don't), I just don't get what Google's new ranking method could be...I'm not lower, I'm totally GONE. I haven't changed "structure" stuff (code, etc.), just some text here and there, and have been acceptable to Google for years, so what's going on? I'm panicking if you haven't noticed!
In effect you now have four sites competing against each other.
Get a site-wide 301 redirect placed on three of the variants to eliminate that happening.
See also: [webmasterworld.com...]
Assuming also that index pages are all index.html filenames.
Add this to the .htaccess file in the root:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /.*index\.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.html$ http://www.maindomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^maindomain\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.maindomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^otherdomain\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.maindomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.otherdomain\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.maindomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
Modify the domain names to fit your actual domain names. That's it!
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ [newsiteurl.com...] [R=301,L]
But, on widget.com (no WWW), where do I put this file?
Anything that comes to the server asking for the "wrong" domain name is redirected to the correct domain name. When it then comes back asking for the correct name, just moments later, only then it is let in to see the content.
[edited by: g1smd at 11:40 pm (utc) on Sep. 20, 2006]
If I don't have Apache, gulp, what then? Should I go to my www.othersite.com's domain register and tell them I want it pulled off the net?
If you have the Mozilla, SeaMonkey, or Firefox web browsers, you can also get to see this information by installing the Live HTTP Headers extension.
i don't have apache (of course), so my host says he'll try to do some kind of redirect that is equivalent to the 301 (he said it's a windows server).
I've pulled down the alias site, now I'm worried what that will do to my standing in Google.
I will try to email google and explain and see if they help. funny how I try to stick to rules but make an honest mistake and get wacked, but spammers don't (one competitor of mine has hidden keywords all over his site). oh well. thanks very very very much for all the advice!
I say this because all search engines handle the 302 quite differently than the 301, and you could jump from the frying pan into the fire. So whenever you hear back that the 301 is set up, make sure you double check it yourself. Make sure that it works properly, sending the 301 response, not just for the domain root itself, but also for any internal URLs.
And while you have the admin's ear about redirects, this is a good time to make sure that the "no-www" version of your domain also 301 redirects to the "with-www" version for all URLs in the site, not just the Home Page.
This "www" advice also goes for your widgetcompany.com domain as well. Make sure that both versions (with and without the "www") actually 301 redirect to the with "www" version of widgetco.com -- and that redirect should happen in one step, not two, and definitely not three!
This is a situation where you should "accept no substitutes!"
I don't like that "equivalent to" bit here. It is either a 301 redirect, or it isn't. There is no "alternative".
.
>> I assume it will be obvious when I type in www.widgetcompany.com what type of redirect is? <<
You coud use an online HTTP Header Checker. There are many out there. Alternatively, if you have the Mozilla, SeaMonkey, or Firefox web browsers, you can also get to see this information by installing the Live HTTP Headers extension.
.
If your site is "portable", now might be the time to take it to an Apache server, and lose all the troubles that Windows hosting brings.
.
>> By the way, when you go to www.widgetcompany.com, you get a message saying it's not available - is that bad? <<
Yes it is bad. I guess those pages still rank somewhere, so at the least serve a custom 404 error page that lets the user click through to the correct site. As soon as you can get the site-wide 301 redirects installed. Those URLs will turn into Supplemental Results and hang around in the SERPs for up to a year. While they still show up, make them deliver traffic to your site!
Domain Level 301 redirect
in IIS (at the server level)Let's suppose that you have a web site http://www.example1.com
and you want http://www.example2.com to 301 redirect to
the http://www.example1.com domain.1. Select the example2.com web site in Internet Services
Manager and enter into the Properties.2. In the Home Directory tab, change the option button "When
connecting to this resource the content should come from" to
"A redirection to a URL".3. Specify the URL as http://www.example1.com/
4. Check the checkbox that says "A permanent redirection for
this resource."
I'm still trying to figure out how Google found my alias site in the first place. Someone must be linking to that URL for Googlebot to have found it right? With that said, should I get rid of all my affiliates through shareasale? What if they decide to dupe my content - I can't watch over them all - maybe the affiliate traffic isn't worth the risk of duplicate content?
By the way, anyone can steal and create duplicate content, but both the thief AND the real owner get penalized - what's up with that and how can you deal with that?
[edited by: needhelp at 8:13 pm (utc) on Sep. 21, 2006]
Or, you could move to a new hosting service.
That is a good start, just as long as the redirect really is a 301 and the redirect is site-wide and preserves the originally requested folder and file names in the redirect.
Supposedly I'm just supposed to click on install, but that just saves it to my desktop.
[edited by: needhelp at 8:41 pm (utc) on Sep. 21, 2006]
If it is something like WebBug, then you need to Install the software first, before running it. When running you enter the URL you want to test, click the HTTP/1.1 box, and then click "GET" or "HEAD" to fetch the information from the server.
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2006 21:04:27 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.37 (Unix) mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 mod_log_bytes/1.2 mod_bwlimited/1.4 PHP/4.4.1 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635.SR1.2 mod_ssl/2.8.28 OpenSSL/0.9.7a
Location: [widgetco.com...]
Connection: close
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
(this is info for www.widgetco.com - the primary site)
HTTP/1.1 200 Ok
Date: Thu, 21-Sep-2006 22:04:25 GMT
Server: e/3
Connection: close
Content-type: text/html
Set-Cookie: pen=14;path=/
Set-Cookie: ezstida=314975596;path=/;expires=Sun, 18-Sep-2016 22:04:25 GMT
Now I'm just waiting for the redirect to actually happen (still hitting a no-site-found "landing" page when I try to go to www.widgetcompany.com)
AND for Google to like me again (how long does this take?)
SO now that I have the redirect going, is there anything I'm missing? Should I nix all the affiliate stuff and do daily searches to try to catch content thiefs?
[edited by: needhelp at 9:22 pm (utc) on Sep. 21, 2006]
