Google indexes wrong index page

Drop of over 100 places due to removal of redirect

[crisscross]

We dropped from 23rd to 150th for our keyword.

Previously, due to the way we programmed our site all requests to [example.com...] were redirected to www.example.com/?content=home. A few weeks ago we stopped redirecting. Now all traffic comes directly into [example.com....]

The page that is indexed in Google at 150 for the keyword is the original [example.com?content=home,...] which has dropped because it is now not receiving much traffic because there is no redirect. We need to Google to change the indexed page to [example.com....]

Any ideas if we can do this on our side? Or does Google have to do something?

Note that almost all the backlinks link to [example.com...]

[edited by: ciml at 3:42 pm (utc) on May 15, 2004]
[edit reason] Examplified. [/edit]

[kaled]

The obvious thing to try is a (meta) redirect on the www.example.com/?content=home page.

Placing the following in the head would do it
<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" CONTENT="0;URL=http://www.example.com">

There are other ways to achieve the same effect (e.g. a 301 redirect) and it is not certain that any would have the desired result.

Having said all that, I'd wait at least a week to see if Google sorts itself out first.

Kaled.

[crisscross]

Good news. The site came back in 16th place.