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CASE 1:
I have a site that's been online for years, it's listed in DMOZ and Yahoo! (I paid for it, btw). Late last year it disappeared from Google for no apparent reason (I wasn't violating _any_ guidelines and I specifically asked them if I was being banned and got a canned response). I guess my server was down during crawling.
Several months later I decided to buy another domain and start using it. Of course after I did that, Google spidered the old domain and I was back again at the pole position. I forgot about the new domain and took down the few links I had setup.
Then Google changed its mind and started pointing to the new domain (which is a redirect, btw). No matter what I do, Google seems to prefer the new domain, and even searching specifically for "www.olddomain.com" brings up "www.newdomain.com"! The title and description are taken straight from DMOZ, and there's no cache of the page.
One more piece of info: the new domain and the site title on DMOZ are identical.
What gives?
CASE 2:
My band's website changed a few years ago from www.band-name.com to www.bandname.com. I also own www.THEbandname.com, as well as some .org and .net variations. There are still links to the old site, and some people are linking to www.band-name.com and to www.THEbandname.com.
It's not setup as a redirect, but as a "parked" domain: i.e. all domains bring up an identical site.
So far it's never been a problem to me, and Google has always indexed www.band-name.com, but seems to "prefer" www.bandname.com
Am I running any risk here?
And finally:
What's the _right_ way of setting up a redirect (Apache, please) so Google will "like" it?
Thanks a lot,
Jorge
[edited by: heini at 2:53 pm (utc) on Dec. 13, 2002]
[edit reason] sorry, no site reviews here ¦ thanks! [/edit]
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