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We have a site that was in gogle a while ago under:
example.com
We did a 301 redirect with htaccess to www.example.com
The site is a simple site, no spam-related SEO techniques. None the less, it is still not back in the index.
To make matters even more strange, googlebot has deep crawled the site twice in the last 3 weeks.
People keep talking about PR updates, etc - and we even got backlinks from multiple sites above PR 4.
Could it be that the site is added on the next update - and will not be added before then for some reason?
Or perhaps should we email google some how to see if there is a mistake or something of that sort.
Thanks to anyone with a similar experience.
[edited by: ciml at 1:07 pm (utc) on May 26, 2004]
[edit reason] Examplified. [/edit]
Thank you in advance.
Shina
> To make matters even more strange, googlebot has deep crawled the site twice in the last 3 weeks.
That's a good sign.
> People keep talking about PR updates, etc - and we even got backlinks from multiple sites above PR 4.
Are these links pointing to the old example.com or to the new www.example.com?
> Could it be that the site is added on the next update - and will not be added before then for some reason?
It's possible, but I've never had a problem with a 301... The old domain was simply replaced by the new one. Others here *have* reported problems, though.
Get as many of your old backlinks updated to point to your new domainas you can, and make sure that pages on your own site do not link to the old domain.
That's all I can think of right now... Good luck with this.
Jim
Exactly how long time ago is "a while ago"?
You should be prepared that this process may take 4-6 weeks from start to finish. This is perfectly normal for most sites. In some cases it will take even longer time, and this does not mean that anything went wrong - it could just be that your old URL was/is not very frequently spidered.
There's no exact rule, but there's some kind of relationship: The more frequently your old URL was spidered, the quicker the change will be.
Try searching for "site:old-domain.com" and "site:new-domain.com" - you should be able to find at least one of them in the index.
As far as a time frame, the site was initially found by google when it was brand new. I would say late March.
I didn't know that you could use htaccess to direct all site.com to www.site.com (or if someone pulled the site by IP address - to www.site.com). You know, an automatic redirect. I think its called a 301.
So, then we did that automatic redirect. In google, though, it was listed under site.com. In any case, it may have been due to this or simply having problems with hosting - but for some reason the site was dropped from the index. You would think because of the automatic redirect, it would pick up fine.
The VERY strange part about this is that we were dropped from the index either the day before or on the same day we were APPROVED for adsense. Very strange. I know google is alog. driven - but still strange.
So, needless to say, it makes zero sense. We thought we did something wrong and google was "cleaning" its index or something and that it meant we had been not approved for adsense. But since then, we have been using adsense ever since and are in yahoo. Also, we are using adwords.
The only thing I can come up with are some strange google conspiracy theories. However, I am hoping that because it has been deep crawled it will be included in this next elusive update. I have been reading that the update hasn't come. And when people do talk about it they say rankings are going up and down a bit every day. Since we aren't ranked - we are left out completely. Which, everyone dreads.
All the backlinks point to www.site.com, although because of the automatic redirect anyways, we would think this not to matter. (the htaccess setting).
In any case, I am glad to hear I shouldn't really reply to google. And am just at this point wondering about someones best guess at forecasting the weather so to speak. Anyone with a similar experience on getting back in and the timeline.
Whacky stuff, I must tell you.
=)
I don't know why I am smiling, this is kind of the livelihood - I am sure everyone understands. Haha.
About the only thing I can recommend is to check your site [searchengineworld.com] and make sure the redirect is working properly and returns a 301-Moved Permanently server response for the non-www domain.
JIm
I must have missed the tools section. However, yes it's showing 301.
The funny thing about this too is all of our less mission critical didn't have this hiccup. Then again we started them off with 301s and on a good host.
Sweet lord! Wouldn't ya know the mission critical site takes forever to get back in. As we pay for clicks! Ha!
Also does 301's go through a quarantine period?
As for getting all your links changed, remember that could take longer to count because of the sandbolox.
In anycase it's way too early to be worrying for you.
