Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
1. I had originally optimized a site with a long domain name like this: www.this-that-and-the-other-stuff.com
2. There were always two different URL's pointing to the same site. One for biz cards, and one for SEO. One site had linked to the "marketing name" previously so I'm guessing all the SE's knew about the shorter name since the beginning 2 years ago.
3. The end result was that Yahoo and MSN has it in the top 10 all over the place. Excellent. Yet Google crapped all over it. After trying every technique in knew of, I finally surmised that the domain name must be what's getting in the way. However I didn't want to ruin the Yahoo and MSN rankings with a new domain name.
4. I did a 301 redirect (via ASP code) for Google so every time Google tries to visit any page on the old "long name" site through one of many existing links, it gets properly forwarded to the new short name domain. I was hoping this would put things back on track.
5. All new links are still pointing to the old long domain name site so as to not screw up MSN and Yahoo's rankings.
This however hasn't worked out as planned. It's been about 2 months so far and here's what's actually happened:
1. The short domain name has PR between 2 and 3 depending on how IE's Google toolbar feels apparently. :)
2. The old domain name doesn't appear to be indexed in Google anymore. I checked via:
* searched for entire title (short domain came up)
* did an "info" nothing came up
3. The new domain name does appear to be indexed in Google as I can find it if I search for the title of the page. However the info command (info:www.webmasterworld.com) comes up with a big blank. 0 results. Additionally, clicking the "Similar page" link next to the site when found by other means does not show the old long domain name.
So my question to you, is what's the screwed up factor here? Under normal circumstances this would be in the Top 10 with its current optimization and it doesn't appear to be blacklisted because it's still visible via certain searches.
Thanks in advance for any assistance. I appreciate any insight into this seemingly unique issue.
- Bry
And most of all, I suggest you double check those redirects. Are you actually redirecting each URL to its twin on the other domain, or are you sending all of the URLs to the domain root.
4. I did a 301 redirect (via ASP code) for Google so every time Google tries to visit any page on the old "long name" site through one of many existing links, it gets properly forwarded to the new short name domain. I was hoping this would put things back on track.
Based on what I have seen on this forum and elsewhere, I would vote for this as the most likely cause of your problem and confusion. Intentionally sending Gbot in one direction and other users and spiders in another is not good, and is certain to cause the effects you describe, if not worse. G now (99.5% of the time, according to Matt C.) indexes the final, canonical URL of the landing page, and not the original URL used to get it there.
IMO you may have over-reacted with your approach. A simple .htaccess 301 redirect of each long domain page to its short domain twin would have done the trick. All of the SEs would be happy at the same time. All of the old IBLs would still work, just redirected to the short domain URL. All of the indexed pages on all SEs should start to show the short domain name only instead of a mix, and the PR of the old pages would be transferred to the new ones. The indexed old domain name pages may linger in the SERPs and/or supplemental index for awhile, but since they are all redirected to the new URLs, users would still get to the right place.
Google indexes URLs, right? And the info: operator usually returns the domain root plus some links. When you do a site: search, is the domain root at the top? What esle does the site: operator show you?
It says (quite dissapointingly):
---
Sorry, no information is available for the URL www.thissite.com
* If the URL is valid, try visiting that web page by clicking on the following link: www.thissite.com
* Find web pages from the site www.thissite.com
* Find web pages that contain the term "www.thissite.com"
---
And if I just type the domain name into the search box, it comes up at #3 with a chamber of commerce web site link to it being in the top slot. *shakes his head*
And most of all, I suggest you double check those redirects. Are you actually redirecting each URL to its twin on the other domain, or are you sending all of the URLs to the domain root.
I wrote a redirect that merely swaps out the old domain name and subs in the new name. So:
* www.thissite.com -> www.thisnewsite.com
* www.thissite.com/about.asp -> www.thisnewsite.com/about.asp
* www.thissite.com/contact.asp -> www.thisnewsite.com/contact.asp
Should be working, but with Google being so touchy, I can't 100% verify if it is or not.
Based on what I have seen on this forum and elsewhere, I would vote for this as the most likely cause of your problem and confusion. Intentionally sending Gbot in one direction and other users and spiders in another is not good, and is certain to cause the effects you describe, if not worse. G now (99.5% of the time, according to Matt C.) indexes the final, canonical URL of the landing page, and not the original URL used to get it there.
That's actually what I want it to do. I want it to ignore the old domain name and use the new one.
IMO you may have over-reacted with your approach. A simple .htaccess 301 redirect of each long domain page to its short domain twin would have done the trick. All of the SEs would be happy at the same time.
It's a windows server. I'm not sure that works with windows servers, which is why I went with the software redirect. So you're thinking that the Yahoo and MSN requests won't take a hit from the new domain name?
The key is after all to get the Google rankings without causing the MSN and Yahoo stuff to take a dump. Ah well.
Any way to definitively check and see if Google is blacklisting or ignoring a site? Although I'm not sure why they would since as far as they're concerned the old site shouldn't even exist anymore.
If it does not return the code 301 in the HTTP header then whatever it actually is, it is not what you need.
