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Title and description disapeared!

But the link is still there...

         

FrenchGuy

7:42 pm on Dec 13, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



We have several dozens of pages indexed by Google. This month, most of them have the same rankings for the same keywords but Google shows only the link! No title, no description... :-(

This happens to very different kind of pages: frame ones with optimized no frame area, dynamic ones and also classical html pages.

Some of my pages are still normal.

Does anybody have an idea what is this?

jdMorgan

3:36 am on Dec 14, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



FrenchGuy,

If you have a robots.txt file, I'd suggest reviewing it, and validating it here [searchengineworld.com].

Your description matches the symptoms of Google's treatment of a page which has incoming links, but is Disallowed in robots.txt

Of course, it could be a different problem, but that is something to check.

Jim

FrenchGuy

10:31 am on Dec 14, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



jdMorgan, thank you for your help. Well I have no robot.txt. I have been working without it for three year now...

Do you think one would be now necessary? Or could the problem be an other one?

jdMorgan

3:58 pm on Dec 14, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



FrenchGuy,

No. It is OK to not have a robots.txt file.

Another meaning of the situation you describe is that Google has found links to those pages, but has not yet followed the links to index the pages. Therefore, it knows the pages are there, but does not yet know what the titles or descriptions are.

Jim

FrenchGuy

8:25 pm on Dec 15, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thanks jdMorgan, I think you are right... some concerned pages are new, other are old but disapeared from Google for a time and come back now just as links... hopefully itīll get complete with the next index...

FrenchGuy

9:49 am on Dec 20, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



jdMorgan: I discovered today that our web-designer hat put a "DISALLOW: /" robot.txt in our Root! No, it ist not a criminal purpose ;-((( But this is because he transfered changes he made in a test web-space. The test web-space has such a robot.txt because we do not want our content to be indexed twice...

How long does it take Google to put everything back again?

jdMorgan

2:22 pm on Dec 20, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Uh oh,

That's not good...
I can't say for sure... If you are lucky, Googlebot will come back and notice the change in robots.txt and update the data it is preparing for the next update (I don't know if it can or does actually work this way). Otherwise, that "Disallow: /" may just cause Google to drop the whole site during the next update. The site would likely come back at the beginning of February, but that's no consolation...

This may not help, but it may be worth a try:

  • Fix robots.txt and re-upload it (now!)
  • If possible, make a significant change to your home page, and do so every 2 days to attract freshbot's attention
  • Resubmit your home page to Google once
  • Set the file permissions for robots.txt on your server to read-only to protect it from overwrite

    Before you go kick your developer, let me just say that this accident happens quite often in a development/production environment. Using a formal release checklist for site updates is helpful: Check critical file permissions, .httpd.conf, .htaccess, and robots.txt for correct file versions, content, and file permissions as applicable. Don't make this list too long, though, or it won't be used.

    Jim

  • FrenchGuy

    2:58 pm on Dec 20, 2002 (gmt 0)

    10+ Year Member



    Thank you jdMorgan!
    Iīve put "disallow:"...
    We do have freshbot and Iīve seen that it has taken the dmoz descriptions instead of ours...
    Weīll see what happens... Itīs very painful to think we may have to put our own company name in addwords or premiums in January... :-((((

    FrenchGuy

    9:07 am on Dec 30, 2002 (gmt 0)

    10+ Year Member



    Some news afterwards ;)

    As soon as I fixed the robots.txt, Googlebot began spidering; actualy every day until Dec. 27th (since then no clue from Googlebot, but it might be normal at this time of the month).

    The main page and a few other ones (those known by freshbot) have now their own titles and descriptions back, instead of DMOZīones.

    Question Nr. 1: everything thatīs beeing spidered by Googlebot returns a 304 Code. Should I change something in these pages? Or will Google restore the old stage anyway?

    Question Nr. 2: I would like Googlebot to visit deeper other pages. My plan is to put these links on those pages which are beeing spidered quite often, but these pages are frame pages. Do you think internal links in the "no frame" area could harm?

    Thanks in advance for the answer(s)...

    FrenchGuy

    6:30 pm on Jan 9, 2003 (gmt 0)

    10+ Year Member



    The final result might be of interest for other guys...

    After changing something on every page, "304s" turned into "200s" and now the pages are coming back the one after the other, each day more, with their descriptions and titles.