Website Has Disappeared from Google

[StevieG]

Hi all

I have an issue with my webiste, it has disappeared from Google etc.

When I type in the domain it just shows a blank white page.

When I was building the site I did it in a secondary folder called NEW on the same active domain.

The website in the NEW folder (which seems to have been taking current content too) is actually indexed by the search engines. When I type in my domain name the domain/New/ site appears.

I guess I should have placed a Disallow field in the Robots file to stop the SE's seeing the New folder but its too late now. Do you think Google etc have picked the NEW site as the main one and removed the main site?

If so, how do i solve this?

Please help! :)

Thanks

What can i do to

[aristotle]

Do you have the site in Google Webmaster Tools?

[mack]

You said you type the domain name and its just a white page. That's the problem you need to address first. Is the old content still in place?

Mack.

[StevieG]

Hi Mack, yes the old site is still on the server.

It is in my Google Webmaster Tools, is the original domain.com.

Thanks

[CainIV]

If I understand you correctly, Google has spidered the internal folder and its contents, as opposed to what is at the index, which is of course a duplicate of what is in the NEW folder.

What I would do if the website is small, is

301 permanent redirect the inner pages in NEW to their exact duplicate in the root of the website, and leave the NEW folder there for now.

Add the link canonical tag to the index page in the NEW folder and point it at the root of the website where the canonically correct page is:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.mywebsite.com"/>

Check the stats code returned in a header check by typing in

check header

into a search engine, and enter in the full url to the index page in the NEW folder.

The tool should show that there is a permanent 301 redirect to your domain root, and the domain root default page returns a 200 OK status.

Also check that there isn't anything in robots.txt blocking the index page in the root of the website.

The combination of these items should place the correct value to the root of the website. Once the main pages are back, I would then build some links to the main pages and remove the NEW folder and redirects.