How to find potential impediments to a site's code

[Scott Salwolke]

I'm working with a client and her site was doing well in the rankings. We added content to the site both for visitors and the search engines. We've also listed it in a number of directories. Recently, however, the site has fallen out of the rankings across the board. First it was with Google, but now its with all the major search engines for its key phrases. I think the spiders are having problems accessing the site. Is there a way to test a site?

[Acrill]

The best way to be aware of problems is through Webmaster Tools:
[google.com...]

You might also try Fetch As Googlebot:
[googlelabs.com...]

[Scott Salwolke]

I'd forgotten about fetch as Googlebot. I'll give that a try.

[Scott Salwolke]

This site is set up with home.asp as its home page. If you simply type in the main url there is a 301 redirect to a different location. Here is what the googlebot revealed

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:50:55 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-UA-Compatible: IE=EmulateIE7
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
pragma: no-cache
Location: free-market-report.asp
Content-Length: 0
Content-Type: text/html
Expires: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 03:50:54 GMT
Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDQSCQQCCQ=LIPNOJFCBACHNGEOCDCJDMPP; path=/
Cache-control: private

[TheMadScientist]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

Does the site redirect when you visit too or is it a GoogleBot only 'thing', and by a different location, do you mean on the same site or a different one? IOW: What do you normally see in the URL when you visit and is the redirect you are seeing when you fetch as GoogleBot expected?

[Scott Salwolke]

when you type in just the url it redirects to a market page. When you are on the site itself and click the home page button it goes to home.asp

[bwnbwn]

Scott looks like somebody has either hacked the server or there has been someone inside that has changed the haccess file, or One of the computers used to upload the information is comprimised and needs to be cleaned.

This is telling Google and all other SE's the site has moved/gone and now replaced by the other domain.

What kind of server are you using? Hosting etc.


Check you haccess file and take the reditect out.
Send an email for the host to change ftp passwords.
Clean both machines one of you have a bad bug and it needs attention now.

Check the changed dates on the file see when it was changed then send an email when you ask for the ftp password to be changed to the host detailing the issue dates files were changed, and ask them to check the server for holes.

[Scott Salwolke]

They've changed the redirect to go to home.asp now. I'm not sure what caused the improper redirect. The is developed and hosted by a company that offers customers a template in which they can add text or graphics, but not get into the code.

[edited by: tedster at 4:47 pm (utc) on Feb 20, 2010]

[bwnbwn]

Well i would sure have a talk with them then because this has cost her what positions she had. Hopefully they will bounce back but when things like this happen it is a turkey shoot.

Question on the content what exactly does

We added content to the site both for visitors and the search engines.

mean?
I am intrested more in the content for search engines examples.

[TheMadScientist]

They've changed the redirect to go to home.asp now.

I would see if they can get the redirect to go the the root domain http://www.example.com/ from /home.asp and serve the content from /home.asp on the root domain http://www.example.com/ rather than the other way around, personally.

I know the preceding is fairly easy on an Apache box, but IDK about Windows, so maybe someone else will chime in and give an idea of whether it's easy or not on Windows and how so you'll have an idea if the people making the changes need to know exactly what to do for SEs and rankings.

[Scott Salwolke]

I am intrested more in the content for search engines examples.

The keyword phrases we were targeting in our campaign. In this case the various communities she serves professionally.

[edited by: tedster at 4:48 pm (utc) on Feb 20, 2010]