Ranked Well with Freeserver Address - poorly on my own domain name

[rivergirl]

In early August I put up a website on a Freeserver that of course ran ads at the top of my site. I bought a domain name and had it re-direct to my Freeserver site. I submitted my website to all the search engines and it quickly became # 1 for almost every word I was hoping it would -- even on Google! And it STAYED that way so this was not one of those "honeymoon effects". Google picked up on my Freeserver address and threw out my domain name.

Early October I bought webspace and took down my Freeserver site (deleted it). Yahoo, Live, etc still have me # 1 but Google HATES me. They index my site but it does not rank me other than 52 or much worse. In fact it seems to have gotten worse from Nov to Dec!

So in short, I am thinking of going back to a Freeserver site and doing the redirect. I'm also having bandwidth problems with my website--which I can't imagine what would happen IF Google did decide to pick me up! Does going back to a Freeserver sound ridiculous? Any other ideas?

[tedster]

I assume this is a continuation of the same issues you mentioned here [webmasterworld.com], correct? I do have some ideas you could look into.

1. Have you checked to see if your domain name was previously owned and put to some use that caused it to get a black mark on its history at Google? You can use archive.org to find early versions of the domain.

2. Do you have a Google Webmaster Tools account for this new domain? You often can learn valuable information there, and it provides you with a way to confirm your ownership and communicate with Google, through the "Request reconsideration" link on the Dashboard page.

[Robert Charlton]

With the two urls for the same site, you probably split your inbound link vote... and ultimately, it appears, Google favored the url with the most links.

Early October I bought webspace and took down my Freeserver site (deleted it).

Deleting the old site may have cost you any link love that was directed to the freeserver subdomain. Ideally, when you change the url of a page (or pages), you should use a 301 Permanent Redirect to redirect both search engine bots and visitors to the new location. This way, the "credits" from existing links are preserved. But, freeservers don't let you use 301s for redirection.

Here are two threads about making the best of this situation, in which you're moving from a freeserver....

Is it possible to redirect from a freeserver?
want 301, but no access to.htaccess
[webmasterworld.com...]

Using Meta Refresh for redirect - when 301 is not possible
[webmasterworld.com...]

So in short, I am thinking of going back to a Freeserver site and doing the redirect.

Not sure here whether you're talking about setting up your freeserver subdomain again and implementing the redirects suggested in the above threads to capture something of what you may have inadvertently thrown away. This might not be a bad idea if you can get the same subdomain address. I've never tried it, but it might work.

I wouldn't return to the original setup, though. You want to have the site on your own domain. Ranking a new domain is going to take time on Google in any event, and it does sound like you may now have other issues.

Duplication, btw, is not a penalty... it's a filter... and once the dupe material is gone, that filter should disappear.

[rivergirl]

Tedster,
Yes it's still that same situation I am referring to. I have a Google webmaster account set up and also requested reconsideration about 2 months ago. It didn't seem to matter. I did a search on the archive.com and my domain name was parked by GoDaddy about 12 times total from 2003 to 2005--no other page content was recorded. So I was the first owner of it in about 2 years. I am really confused as to why my site would be dumped since I bought webspace VS. when I had the freeserver site. Basically it is the same exact content. There is NO reference to my old Freeserver website on Google so it can't be a dupe problem.

The only idea I have is that when my domain.com address was being forwarded to the freeserver address Google threw out my domain name and opted for the freeserver address in their searchs and now still will not pick up the domain name. If this is the case, how long will Google leave me in the dark before picking up my domain name?

Thanks all!

[tedster]

Well, you did say that Google is ranking your new domain but just not very well so far. So it sounds like you are not really "thrown out" - your urls are being spidered.

As your domain gets backlinks, and as you build a history of being trustable, your rankings should improve. It can take as long as six or seven months for this to unfold, but then things stabilize. There is a good thread about this process in our Hot Topics area [webmasterworld.com], which is always pinned to the top of this forum's index page.

Filters exist - the Sandbox doesn't. How to build Trust. [webmasterworld.com]

[5ubliminal]

Established domains give more strength to sites (subdomains/directories) hosted there.
When you start over with a new domain you loose the extra boost of ranking the established domain gave you.

Time to spread your links around the web...
It's a whole new game making it on your own.