Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
My site has more than 1,00,000 pages indexed in google. The homepage is indexed as http://www.example.com whereas the internal pages are indexed as http://example.com/belts.
The internal pages (eg: http://example.com/belts) had a 302 redirect to http://www.example.com/belts.The page rank for these internal pages ranged from 3 to 4.These internal pages (eg:http://example.com/belts) on clicking was 302 redirected to http://www.example.com/belts.
The toolbar page rank used to show a PR of 4 for http://www.example.com/belts. The link: operator used to show the 12 backlinks for both the versions of the page i.e with www and without www.
Three months back we changed this 302 redirect to 301 and since then these internal pages are showing a toolbar page rank of 0. However when i do a page rank check through an online PR tool for the url http://example.com/belts (i.e without www) we do get to see the original PR 4. The check with the link: operator yields the following results :
link:example.com/belts shows 12 backlinks.
link:www.example.com/belts shows 0 backlinks.
We have checked the 301 redirect status through some online http response code checker tools which shows that the url indeed has a 301 redirect. The redirect was implemented in the httpd.conf file.
Pls help
Alfred
[edited by: tedster at 1:58 pm (utc) on June 28, 2006]
[edit reason] use example.com [/edit]
This has been my situation for almost A YEAR now.
In desparation have removed the 301 redirect now as Google clearly can't manage this correctly.
Sorry I can't offer more positive news.
[edited by: cleanup at 6:07 am (utc) on June 30, 2006]
1. Google's publicly reported PR is only updated a few times a year. But behind the scenes, the "real" PR that they use for ranking calculations is updated on a nearly continual basis.
2. Google's link: operator is pretty much "for entertainment purposes only". It never shows more than a sampling of the links they actually have in the index.
When you used a 302, the original (without www) url was the one that got into the index. When you switch to the 301, it means that, eventually, the target url is the one that gets into the index. 1,000,000 urls is a lot to get re-indexed and Google's new crawling pattern has been a bit stingy until quite recently.
But assuming you've checked the http headers and the 301 is really working, you've done what you can do, and what Google recommends. Now it just takes patience while the big G sorts it all out.
<added>
The past three months (really 6 months) have been quite chaotic for many sites on Google. We all have hope that some of the oddities get sorted out really soon.
One thing you didn't mention was whether traffic has been affected. There can be quite a difference between seeing odd PR or backlink reports, and losing traffic. I hope your situation is mostly just seeing odd reports.
</added>
And it is invariably 3-4 months out of date.
What matters is your place in the serps for useful keywords; your number of referrels, the number of unique visitors, the number of conversions, and your ROI. Little green men, sorry, bars, do not come into it.
If you you have moved 100,000 pages, likely google sees your site as a new one, so a many-month delay in the visible indicator is utterly normal.
Did it change this week? Other wise may be another quarter. But see above: it really doesn't matter. :)
