Redirected pages in Google index?

[shaunm]

Hi All,

I have come across a very new problem (at least for me) today.

SiteA has redirected to SiteB some 6 months ago. I was told that it's a site wide redirect.

But when I type in site:siteA.com, Google returns almost 500 pages for SiteA.

The title and descriptions appearing are that of SiteB but the URL path is of SiteA. When I click on any of the results it leads me to only SiteB.

SiteA.com/samepage/something.asp
SiteB.com/samepage/something.asp

So I thought Google might not have crawled these 500 pages for some reason and weren't able detect the redirect.

But when I click on 'cached' against any of those 500 pages in Google index, it only shows the page from SiteB also with a recent last crawling date.

So Google has crawled those pages as well but why SiteA pages are still show up in its index while the cached version has SiteB pages?!?


Thanks for the help!

[aakk9999]

There was a recent thread that discussed Google not always ranking the redirect target page:

John Mueller: Google May Not Show the Redirect Target URL in SERPs
Feb 20, 2014
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4646897.htm [webmasterworld.com]

I have however seen the situation you describe as far as few years ago, and it is usually when the new redirect is implemented. Six months may be a long time or not so long time, depending on how big the site is and how often pages are crawled. To me it looks lie that Google needs to visit the page that redirects several times before it replaces it in SERPs with the redirect target.

In my cases, after a while the target page was shown in SERPs, although the SERPs was bouncing between redirected/target page for little while.

It also may help if you manage to change inbound links to point directly to the SiteB, at least for the most important links. If all links lead to SiteA, then I may see the reason of Google wanting to show SiteA in SERPs despite SiteA redirecting to SiteB.

Out of curiosity, do both domains belong to the same owner/have the same IP?

[shaunm]

Thanks @aakk9999

To me it looks lie that Google needs to visit the page that redirects several times before it replaces it in SERPs with the redirect target.

If that's the case, it should have removed all the SiteA pages from its index by now right? In six months time it would have already crawled the links for several times.

What bugging me is that through the site:SiteA.com search or when I type in the domain name www.SiteA.com in Google it shows the pages in its index. When I click on the cached it says that

This is Google's cache of http://www.SiteB.com/. It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on 30 Mar 2014 03:54:51 GMT. The current page could have changed in the meantime. (SiteB?)

What is wrong?

It also may help if you manage to change inbound links to point directly to the SiteB, at least for the most important links. If all links lead to SiteA, then I may see the reason of Google wanting to show SiteA in SERPs despite SiteA redirecting to SiteB.

Would that help? Doesn't that make a redirection questionable?

Out of curiosity, do both domains belong to the same owner/have the same IP?

Yes, both domains owned by the same owner but not sharing the same IP but sharing our own hosting (nameservers)

The IPs closey matches each other too.
SiteA - nn.nnn.12.80
SiteB - nn.nnn.12.133

Any idea?

Thanks!

[Mishaelo]

So I was just asking a similar question today:
[webmasterworld.com...]

Though in the case I noticed site:siteA.TLD returns 1 result only (homepage) with cache being of siteB (same is in OP case)

in my case, SiteA and SiteB are the exact same names just different TLDs, same owner but different IPs

Still can't figure out how / why this is happening

Also worth mentioning that siteB has higher majestic stats as far as backlinks / trust / citation

[aakk9999]

It also may help if you manage to change inbound links to point directly to the SiteB, at least for the most important links. If all links lead to SiteA, then I may see the reason of Google wanting to show SiteA in SERPs despite SiteA redirecting to SiteB.

Would that help? Doesn't that make a redirection questionable?

It is the best practice and I think it sends a stronger signal to Google that the site moved. I always strive to change at least some important links to go straight to the target domain.

Has any of you two added both sites to the same Google Webmaster tools account and executed "Site Move" in there?

[lucy24]

In six months time it would have already crawled the links for several times.

Several dozen, I should think. I just went and tried a "site:" search on my personal domain name, which I redirected pretty exactly three months ago. They're still listing 68, 77 or 93 pages (we all know about google math)* ... and that's not just obscure pages that nobody ever visits. The list includes the specific page that was the first to be re-indexed under its new name. In fact the more popular redirected pages are listed before most of those that never moved.

Tentative moral: A "site:" search is not always useful or informative.


* What we know is a different question. Cross-check of gwt for the same domain name has them admitting to just 43 pages indexed. ("In his lifetime, Rembrandt produced 3000 paintings, of which 4000 are genuine and 5000 are in Romania.")

Digression:

Update: As of 3/9/14, the Index Status reflects the data of your specific protocol and site combination as it is verified in Webmaster Tools (i.e. distinguishing www and https variations).

Oops. Missed that one. Should I worry that it claims to have 47 pages under the "wrong" name-- that is, the form that was always wrong?

[aakk9999]

(i.e. distinguishing www and https variations).

Yes, I saw this in WMT too. I presume they wanted to say http and https rather than www and https as one can have both, www and https.

[shaunm]

Thanks @lucy24

Has any of you two added both sites to the same Google Webmaster tools account and executed "Site Move" in there?

I didn't perform this at the time of migration and have removed the site from Google webmaster tool account post migration. There is no way I can add it back and execute 'site move' right?

Thanks @lucy24

Cross-check of gwt for the same domain name has them admitting to just 43 pages indexed

Bad I've removed the redirected domain from my list of domains managed in Google webmaster tools.

("In his lifetime, Rembrandt produced 3000 paintings, of which 4000 are genuine and 5000 are in Romania.")

haha

Digression:
Update: As of 3/9/14, the Index Status reflects the data of your specific protocol and site combination as it is verified in Webmaster Tools (i.e. distinguishing www and https variations).

I noticed this too. What does "As of 3/9/14, the Index Status reflects the data of your specific protocol and site combination" means by the way?

Thanks again!

[lucy24]

I assumed they meant both: "with/without www variations" and also "http/https variations". Well, it gives them one more way to list nonexistent pages ;) That is, any given pagename is now recorded in all four forms. I hope they don't expect people to validate https sites just to be able to say that they don't exist, since for some of us this will be physically impossible.

[shaunm]

@lucy24

Is that possible when the server is configured to respond correctly to any given request?

For example.
Redirecting https requests into http and non-www requests into www pages?

Thanks!

[lucy24]

If your server listens to both http and https (technically I guess it's listening on different ports) then sure, you can redirect to your heart's content. But I really hope google don't start inventing https addresses for my site and putting them in SERPs.

I've never looked into it, but I know by direct experiment that [mysitename...] leads to nothing but a browser timeout. At a guess, they probably collect all their https customers on certain servers that listen on 443 or whatever it is.