Ranking OK While Hosted on Google Sites - is it possible?

[Kickedout]

I find the Google Sites service interesting, since it's a sort of free hosting with easy access to very handy tools and widgets.

I have a couple of old sites in their own domain ranking decently from years.

Now, I buyed a cool domain to run that small new website, I have in google sites, and I'm in the process of changing the ugly http://sistes.google.com/site/bla url to my own registered .com domain.

But I'm not sure about it... should I drop Google Sites and start a fresh site in other hosting company as always, or could I rank ok after some years no matter the website be a "Google Sites", since I never did I don't want to loose several months of work just for nothing.

Also I don't know how exactly do it in this case... I don't know if google sites have exactly primary and secondary dns to set up, right?

Is the only way to go via 302 redirection?

[edited by: tedster at 3:00 pm (utc) on Mar 11, 2011]
[edit reason] make the example URL visible [/edit]

[aristotle]

If you register your own domain, you can used free hosting for a while, and then switch to paid hosting later if you want to. I did this when I started my first two sites. Things to consider include the speed and reliability of the hosting and where the servers are located..

[caribguy]

I'm using it to host a technically challenged friend's small business website so that he can easily update his content without bothering me :)

Added a CNAME entry in my DNS for www.example.com, pointing it to ghs.google.com and am 301 redirecting example.com and *.example.com to www.

Pretty much the only 'uglyness' that remains is that subpages are all in the following format:

http://www.example.com/home/subpage
vs
http://www.example.com/subpage

His pages are all indexed and ranking...

[Kickedout]

Do you mean your interal pages looks like http://www.example.com/home/subpage after that?

[caribguy]

Yes, exactly.

[aristotle]

I'm confused by http://www.example.com/home/subpage

Does it mean that you can't put anything in the site's root directory? I don't understand how it works.

[caribguy]

Yes, because you can't get to the root of the folder structure.

Your homepage will be:
[sites.google.com...]

which acts as both a container and a view as defined in site settings. Any subpages are placed in /home

[Kickedout]

I did and now its working. What happens with email? can I make work with my gmail account my @example.com email address... no idea how to set up but I think it's possible.

[caribguy]

Have my own server for that, but I 'think' you can do this with Google Apps: http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=33352 [google.com]

[Kickedout]

A problem I'm facing now: the goolge result is showning as url the sites.google.com url, and not my www.example.com domain as I expected....

I'm trying to get quality links to my www.example.com domain, is that the right direction insn't it?

Or should I ask those links directly to sites.google.com ?

[caribguy]

That's surprising. The correct top level domain is indexed in my friend's setup.

Since your site can be accessed both through its own TLD and the google sites url, the search engine may have trouble figuring out which one it should use.

Did you already have existing links to http://sites.google.com/site/yoursite? My guess is that you should update those to point to your new domain and wait it out.

Haven't looked at it recently, maybe you also have the option to use rel=canonical to help Google disambiguate the urls...

[Kickedout]

Perhaps I just have to wait, I'm pretty sure I have existing links to http://sites.google.com/site/mysite first, and later was adding links to my own domain, yes.

Can you explain further abouth rel=canonical ?

[edited by: tedster at 10:05 pm (utc) on Mar 21, 2011]
[edit reason] make complete url visible [/edit]

[tedster]

Google supports the rel=canonical link for cross-domain URLs, not just same domain issues. So if you can include a canonical link in the head section of every page that points to http://www.example.com/thispage.html instead of http://sites.google.com/site/mysite/thispage.html Google should fix it rather quickly.

[Kickedout]

How could I?

I just can't tell a directory to point to http://www.example.com, but they don't add code in their heads pages.

About my pages in sites.google.com/site as far as I know I can't even see the HEADER right?

[aristotle]

Have you tried the site: operator in Google to see if your pages are indexed under purchased domain name?

[tedster]

Google Sites has a help section that offers advice on how to use your own custom URL: Mapping your site to your own URL [google.com]. Have you taken all those steps?

[Kickedout]

aristotle: yes and site operator shows 0 results either for example.com and www.example.com

however shows my pages if I use:
[sites.google.com...] they are there.

Tedster: I didn't know about that, and went today to:
[sites.google.com...]

Added www.example.com and now I see there as web addresses for this site

[sites.google.com...]
www.example.com

However the sites.com/site/example remais as Default.

(I could'nt add http://www.example.com or example.com, seems like the right format is www.example.com

Then I folled this instructions:

Depending on your domain registrar, you may need to make changes to your CNAME record in order for your site to be mapped:

 1. Sign in to the site where you control your own site with custom URL.
 2. Navigate to your Domain Name Server (DNS) management page. The location and name of this page varies by host, but can generally be found in the Domain Management or Advanced Settings section.
 3. Find the CNAME settings and in the section 'CNAME value or alias,' enter the sub-domain you'd like to map the URL to. The sub-domain for www.example.com would be www.
 4. Set the CNAME destination to the following address: ghs.google.com
 5. Save your changes with your domain host.

I quick edited an existant entry, so now I have:

CNAME Alias


And below that one

Host: www
Points to: ghs.google.com
TTL: 1 hour

But before www was pointing to "@"


Question: Is that correct?


Another problem is I still can't verify the site as webmaster (you can do so via DNS or metatags, tried both, but verifcation comes out negative)

From there you're encouraged to edit CNAME in registrar unhappily instructions for Godaddy are out to date and scrennshots and steps has nothing to do with actual Godaddys cpanel.

So added a TXT in DNS manger, and this is the painfull part:

I'm not sure about what I'm doing.

The instructions says:
Add new TXT Record, leave TXT Name blank (that's not possible) Paste as TXT Value

google-site-verification=MKsfODUkqkt#*$!x (obfuscated)

Accept TTL default, bla


I'm afraid in my attempt I used "quick add" and probably edited an existant entry in TXT section.

(is that important?)

So now looks like this:

TXT (Text)

Host: @
Text value: google-site-verification=MKsfODUkqkt#*$!x (obfuscated)
TTL: 1 hour

I'm not certain if that "@" has a different value before.

Then tried addin throug a TXT Wizard I discovered later, and again, is not possible to add a "blank" entry so added a record that basically is the same than other but shows a customname I entered ad "verify"

So you can see below the other txt entry

TXT (Text)

Host: verify
Text value: google-site-verification=MKsfODUkqkt#*$!x (obfuscated)
TTL: 1 hour



The thing is: I'm pretty stuck. Cant verify my google site in none of proposed ways and I'm not sure about my dns modifications be ok, or just be messing up things.

In the other hand, those changes takes time, and won't see if worked immediatly.

[Kickedout]

Update:
I could verify site and see it in webmaster tools, there is a part where you can choose preferred domain to be shown

www.example.com
example.com
or don't set

I'm trying to set www.example.com but a message saying I must proof I'm site owner appears, that's it, no more info.

How do I proof I'm? Perhaps that's the key...
In Google Analytics I see is with sites.google.com/site address (not as www.example.com)

[aristotle]

I don't understand why Google can't just let people do it the normal way with name servers. But I hope you're able to make it work.

[Kickedout]

Thanks! Is <HEAD> really inaccesible in Google Sites?
and any clue about how do I proof I'm the owner of example.com because I already did for www.example.com in dns zone... sounds redundant to me.

[aristotle]

I haven't tried to use Google Sites, but from reading this thread, it sounds like there are a lot of problems with the way it's set up. Does it give any information about where to point your name servers?