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Google acknowledges problems with site: query

Discussion in 'Google' started by minstrel, May 19, 2006.

  1. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #221
    NetMidWest, your explanation sounds well thought out and I will look into it further.

    BUT:

    The problem with it is that prior to Big Daddy the new pages were listed and the old nonexistent ones were not listed. Since Big Daddy, I've lost the new pages and the old pages are being listed again.

    I would also point out that the 302 issue to which you refer is for discontinued pages on the main domain. However, it's not the main domain that has lost pages - yes, there are old pages re-included lately that no longer exist but as far as i can tell the new pages are also there. It is the subdomains, most dramatically the forum (but to a lesser extent the directories and the blog). The old forum, which is showing many pages listed but hasn't existed for some time, actually does have a 301 redirect to the new forum... has since the beginning... AND those old forum pages disappeared but since Big Daddy have been returned.

    It would be really, really nice to find a logical explanation of all this, especially one I could do something about (i.e., fix). But every explanation I've seen either does not fit at all (e.g., Cutts and his black hat and link buying) or just doesn't fit the facts for my sites.
     
    minstrel, Jun 7, 2006 IP
  2. NetMidWest

    NetMidWest Peon

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    #222
    I think it is really all related more to the crawl caching proxy servers, in that the content Google is now using is not the most recent, and unlike pre-BigDaddy (Cutts said that the proxy servers were coming online with it) they are not getting true status codes from the server of the site. They are instead getting the status codes from the proxy cache servers.

    As for other sections of your site, I have no real conclusions until what is obvious and known to me to hurt rankings (302 redirects) are gone from the site. Chances are, once solved, any other problems will be obvious for any webmaster of experience.

    This is ever so similar to the 302 hijack bug to me... 302, then a 200. Rank the site giving 200. 302, then 404. Rank the 404. Error pages giving out 302 then a 404, same content, penalty. One wins. But the entire site is looked at with suspicion... of duplicate content, with many different filenames, on the same domain.
     
    NetMidWest, Jun 7, 2006 IP
  3. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #223
    NMW, I am telling you the part of the site that contains the 302's is NOT affected.

    Use the header checker on this URL as an example: http://www.psychlinks.ca/phpbb/index.php

    Tell me what you see.
     
    minstrel, Jun 7, 2006 IP
  4. markhutch

    markhutch Peon

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    #224
    Whatever Google is doing isn't getting better for me, but worse. Oh well, I guess it was fun while it lasted with those guys. Anyone seen any new unexplained bots in your log files that might be the next "old" Google who might explode onto the scenes in the next year or so? I'm getting too old for this guessing game and in the 10 or 11 years I've been on the Internet, I've seen some pretty darn good search engines come and go and some are completely dark at this time. Anyone old enough here to remember "Infoseek"? Oh how I miss those days. I remember that SE moving right along and providing some pretty good traffic and then "Disney" bought them and within a year they turned it into "go.com" and within a year and a half they completely shut it down. So much for "bigger is better".

    I knew down deep inside that things were going to go bad for Google once they went public and all the hard working folks that started that place in a garage somewhere became instant "billionaires". There will be someone new come along and I don't think that is going to be MSN. More than likely someone else is in their garage right now working on the next big thing and the more Google keeps up their present pattern the easier it will be for them to take their market share. There has been speculation that Microsoft’s new OS will have a completely new hard drive system, which will give the average user over a terabit of storage capacity. With new developments like this in hard drives storage, old problems for a commercial operations could allow someone pretty smart to build a new generation SE that is based on brand new HD technology that didn't exist when Google first came on the scenes.

    Just image the advantage someone like that would have over current SE players who have tons of information on old storage platforms? The new guys would definitely be in the drivers’ seat if they had this new technology from day one of their SE. Sorry about this rant guys. I’m just so frustrated with the Google problems right now that I needed to think about something positive coming somewhere down the road.
     
    markhutch, Jun 7, 2006 IP
  5. grandmac

    grandmac Guest

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    #225
    I have two hyphens in my web site name url and am still having problems.
    Supplemental pages, traffic down, AGAIN. I make good progress and get back to where I was before the last problems, almost, and then they go and mess something up. Getting Old Real Fast.
     
    grandmac, Jun 8, 2006 IP
  6. mobilebay

    mobilebay Active Member

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    #226
    It really does seem its affecting us all in many similar ways, my adsense has dropped dramatically in turn with my traffic almost lost 80 % of traffic. Looking into new mediums ... heres hoping
     
    mobilebay, Jun 8, 2006 IP
  7. NetMidWest

    NetMidWest Peon

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    #227
    I see a perfectly valid 301 redirect that seems to be working properly. When was the redirect put up?

    If you are asking why this url shows up in Google's index, it is because the url has links. They are being attributed properly to the new forum location.

    What is causing problems is this search, listing old urls that Google has saved because they 302 to your 404 error page.
     
    NetMidWest, Jun 8, 2006 IP
  8. Cyclops

    Cyclops sensei

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    #228
    Yes my Adsense revenue has gone from about $8 a day down to 7cents yesterday. It's roughly down to around $1 per day but some days a few cents is all I get.
    Affiliate sales has dropped just as dramatically, probably worse actually.

    The problem is Google is in a win win situation. While this is happening more people are turning to adwords. In the niches I am in the competition has hotted up considerably and so has the price for terms.
     
    Cyclops, Jun 8, 2006 IP
  9. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #229
    Several months ago when I made the switch from phpBB to SMF.

    site:psychlinks.ca/phpbb/

    The number is actually dropping but those pages were out of the index and are now back. The new pages were in the index and are now gone.

    Believe me, I *want* a solution as I said above. If what is happening now is somehow causing the problem, what do you suggest to fix it? I pay for hosting - I don't have control over server configuration or over the headers, if that is indeed the problem. I still don't understand why it was OK before Big Daddy and totally screwed up after, which is another thing that makes me reluctant to make any major changes...
     
    minstrel, Jun 8, 2006 IP
  10. NetMidWest

    NetMidWest Peon

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    #230
    I don't know exactly what your config is, Minstrel. I would start with this in your .htaccess for a Linux hosted site:
    Note the relative path. Apparently, this makes a difference.
    I learned alot more today about error pages, php, and server configuration. You might be able to mod rewrite your error.php page to 404.shtml (if that is your host's default error page) or rename it to 404.php (if your host also has this in the .htconf file) and update your CMS, etc. to use that page.

    Here are some really good links discussing 302 headers, 404 headers/error pages, apache, IIS, and php:

    http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2004/08/smart-urls-and-smarter-404s
    (Be certain to read the comments. This one is valuable! But read them all.)

    http://www.jaguarpc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13982
    (Sounds like what you need, interesting comments on using server default error pages - perhaps you should rename to 404.shtml?)

    http://www.mcanerin.com/EN/articles/301-redirect-404-error.asp
    (General redirect and error issues, IIS and Apache)

    http://developer.msntv.com/Develop/error_pages.asp
    (Leave it to microsoft to recommend using a 302... LOL!)

    Fact is that you may have to experiment and find a solution that works for your particular site and scripts.
     
    NetMidWest, Jun 8, 2006 IP
  11. GADOOD

    GADOOD Peon

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    #231
    Can't webmasters build good sites without worrying about been unduly penalised these days?

    Can I just butt in with a dupe content question?

    Say there's a list of articles on a site at:
    site.com/category/article.html

    And on one part of the site it is linked to using article.html and another link pointing to /category/

    Would Google see this as 2 different pages and penalise for dupe content, or would it recognise it ultimately leads to the same page?

    Why should we have to worry about these things. The incompetance of Google Search if this is the case (as it seems to be with PR etc) astounds me.

    Pete
     
    GADOOD, Jun 8, 2006 IP
    Nintendo and Cristian Mezei like this.
  12. NetMidWest

    NetMidWest Peon

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    #232
    GADOOD, I think if you use:
    DirectoryIndex article.html
    in the /category/ directory's .htaccess you will not have a problem, but the safe thing to do would be to rename the article index.html and use:
    DirectoryIndex index.html

    The 302 hijack bug is basically a dupe penalty to the site hijacked - Google gets the content from the correct site, but sees it as belonging to the site the 302 link itself is on. Add to that proxy trash showing up in the serps, scrapers, etc. it is a big issue with webmasters and search engines.

    And it has been for awhile, but Google's new crawl cache proxy servers seem to exacerbate the problem.
     
    NetMidWest, Jun 8, 2006 IP
  13. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #233
    :confused: A difference how?

    It's not the server default. It's my own custom 404 error page - error.htm .

    Thanks for the links - I'll check them out.
     
    minstrel, Jun 8, 2006 IP
  14. NetMidWest

    NetMidWest Peon

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    #234
    Remote url means a url that can be accessed remotely - an absolute url. Admittedly, this is from 2.0 docs, but it explains things well.

    Could this be your problem in a nutshell, Minnie?

    Also:
    ErrorDocument 404 /404.html means looks in the document root
    ErrorDocument 404 404.html means look in the current directory.
     
    NetMidWest, Jun 8, 2006 IP
  15. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #235
    OK. I've made the change to a relative (internal) custom 404 error page. We'll see if it helps.

    If that is the problem, I'm gonna kick myself. And then I'm gonna kick Google. And then I'm gonna kick you (but I'll thank you while I'm kicking you). :eek:

    Headers for http://www.psychlinks.ca/pages/workshops.htm (page no longer exists):

     
    minstrel, Jun 8, 2006 IP
  16. Cristian Mezei

    Cristian Mezei Notable Member

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    #236
    Hmm .. some of those info's are totally wrong man.
     
    Cristian Mezei, Jun 8, 2006 IP
  17. NetMidWest

    NetMidWest Peon

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    #237
    Sweet. Now you need to get Google to visit those non-existent urls one last time... or do a url removal.
    The suspense is already killing me...

    LOL @ Expertu...
     
    NetMidWest, Jun 8, 2006 IP
  18. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #238
    You need help, Expertu :eek:
     
    minstrel, Jun 8, 2006 IP
  19. Cristian Mezei

    Cristian Mezei Notable Member

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    #239
    Just joking Minnie ... I'm off to bed.

    It's 5 AM and I got back home only at 3 AM from an E-Commerce event held today.
     
    Cristian Mezei, Jun 8, 2006 IP
  20. minstrel

    minstrel Illustrious Member

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    #240
    Here's more errors from Google Sitemaps - look at what they are trying to crawl - where the heck are they coming from? Some of the URLs are not even correctly formed and/or have NEVER existed those that did exist at one time haven't in months - and note that Sitemaps IS identifying them correctly as 404:

     
    minstrel, Jun 8, 2006 IP