I had a website for around 9 years now and it's always been at the top 3 of google search for the key words... Now I've probably made the biggest mistake EVER. Don't ask me why I did it, I like to play around and try things, so I thought it would be a good idea to implement a meta refresh into the index page that will redirect users to the news page after 7 seconds. My website has good and useful content to MANY people, no fraud, no money making or anything... I searched the digitalpoint forums for similar problems and people talk about doorway pages, this is NOT what I intended to do... I merely wanted to redirect users to the news page because I thought it might not be clear to some where to click to enter the page, so after a few seconds, they would enter the site automatically... So I inserted the following meta tag: <META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="7;URL=http://www.mysite.com/news.php"> Now, 4 days later, the main site is not to be found in google anymore, but all other pages are still indexed... to be more precise... www.mysite.com can't be found in google while www.mysite.com/news.php and all other pages of my site are still there. What can I do to fix this? Please don't tell me this mistake is ruining 9 years of website work thanks in advance to EVERYONE offering ideas If this is useful information, link:mysite.com still brings thousands results, and my site is still in dmoz and all...
Thank you so much Makes me happier! Are you speaking out of experience? I have also submitted a sitemap in google's webmaster tools for the first time... Assuming Google takes a few weeks to list it again, will my pagerank drop in the meantime? Also, once it's back, will my site find its way back to the top 3 for key words in Google? Has anyone else had the same problem?
Your PageRank should be fine. While it does get updated regularly behind the scenes, the toolbar PageRank doesn't get updated for a few months at a time. I do agree though - remove the META refresh tag.
Exactly, I also want to tell you the same answer remove META refresh tag. B'coz you have only one solution may be it'll work for you. Good Luck
Thanks so much I removed the meta tag immediately when I found out about all this... I'm very concerned about the ranking though... not the "page rank" as in numbers, but I mean the ranking in google when you search for the key words... my site used to be there at the top 3... do you reckon it will be back at the top where it was before?
Yes i have experience.BUT when i did this mistake on a very popular keyword, i did a LOT of link building to re-gain the rank faster because i was loosing 200$ day ^^
never use meta refresh... 301's are much more SE friendly theres more about them at this site: http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php
Just writing again to let everybody know my site is back in google where it belongs Thanks to all of you!! Maybe an interesting fact, I don't know... During the time the main page was not indexed, the site that I redirected it to (news.php) was on the 2nd page of google when searching for the key words. Now with the main page being back at the top 3 in google, news.php fell back a few pages... this is normal I guess?