Edit - oops sorry didn't notice google update thread - so ignore the first part of this post - however im trying to sort out my .htaccess file to ensure all my backlinks go to the same URL (eg http:// and www.) see my post further down - any help much appreciated - i have just checked on the mcdar quick check tool and have PR 0 across the board so im starting to get a bit worried. original post since the last google update i have had 11 of about 20 or so of the backlinks for my site show up using the google link:mydomain.com command, all of which (bar one) were from PR4 pages and all IBL's from other sites. however i just checked today to see if perhaps G may have updated at all and wehther it may have picked up some of the 30 or so new backlinks i have generated since the last update and it is now only showing 7 links at least 4 of which are from PR2 pages from my own site - so now it is only showing 3 IBL's from other sites is this a common occurance? also is it anything to worry about?
Google is in the middle of a PR and links update, and from first appearances they are doing some serious revamping of what they are choosing to show us with the link: command. Many sites are reporting up to 100% increase in IBLs shown, and others are reporting a decrease in IBLs, but so far no one is showing any change in PR or much of a change in Search results. Whereas a couple of months ago you could be sure that the majority of the IBLs shown would be PR4+ pages now they are showing a mix of everything including PR1 pages, many forum sigs and even a few guestbook sigs. I have checked two of my sites and while the links shown with the link: search are very different the number and type of links shown with the @URL search have not changed much at all. My take on the situation is that they are changing what they show us with the link command, and the only reason I can think of for doing that is to mess with our minds still more.
hmm now im getting different results depending on whether i use http://mydomain or www.mydomain in the link command - which i'm sure didn't happen before. i am trying to implement the fix shown in this thread http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=13 using the .htaccess file (which i guess won't make any diffreneces to IBL's shown straight away) but i'm wondering if i'm doing it right so far i've put RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} www.sanibel-view.co.uk RewriteRule ^(.*) http://sanibel-view.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301] i thought i would be able to tell if this worked by when i type in http://sanibel-view.co.uk to the address bar it would redirect me to www.sanibel-view.co.uk - is this what it will do - or will it just affect Backlinks? any help appreciated
ahhh - ok didn't see the Google update thread duh! still would be useful if someone could help me out with the .htaccess thing - it would be good to sort it out before G finishes it's update yes?
Read up on regular expressions.... RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} www.sanibel-view.co.uk RewriteRule ^(.*) http://sanibel-view.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301] won't work.... should be RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^sanibel-view\.co\.uk RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.sanibel-view.co.uk/$1 [R=permanent,L] onve in use a clean IE or other browser windon and try M
nice one - thanks expat - just one question - how can i tell it is working? if i type in http://sanibel-view.co.uk into the address bar should it redirect me to http://www.sanibel-view.co.uk? (p.s i can't tell if it does or not - the status bar at the bottom of the browser displays the http://www prefix even though the PR of the site is still 0 (instead of 4) and the the http:// (no www) address still shows in the address bar - is this working alright then?) soo confused....
AFAIK that is the way it has always worked. Those are, technically speaking, two different domains. Of course, Google sometimes is smart enough to match up links to the same content via different paths, but that's almost an exception.
Please try this and let me know if it works for you: Skip all the crazy mod_rewrite madness and just add this one line to your .htaccess: Redirect 301 / http://www.sanibel-view.co.uk/ This syntax works fine for me to redirect several old domain names to their new domain names. In addition, it redirects each page to the correct location, instead of sending people to /.
Concerning the suggested lines: RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^sanibel-view\.co\.uk RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.sanibel-view.co.uk/$1 [R=permanent,L]If written as-- RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.sanibel-view\.co\.uk$ RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.sanibel-view.co.uk/$1 [R=permanent,L]--they will be slightly more general, in that any URL call (not just sanibel-view.co.uk) that is not exactly to www.sanibel-view.co.uk will be re-routed to it. Mind, that is not really relevant if no other URLs except www.sanibel-view.co.uk and sanibel-view.co.uk are going to end up pointing into that root directory. You might also want, for certainty, to add the line-- RewriteBase /--right after the directive that turns the rewrite engine on. One point to keep in mind about directives to the rewrite engine--should you have occasions to use more than just the one simple one under discussion here--is that their order in the file matters, profoundly, because they are processed in the order they are encountered. That L in the flags box tells Apache to stop processing rewrites using that rule. Imagine that you wanted to do a directory redirect--say that you renamed /oldjunk/ to /classics/ and didn't want to lose any backlinks. If you aren't quite careful, a call to-- http://sanibel-view.co.uk/oldjunk/somefile.html--that you want to be 301'ed into a call to /classics/somefile.html will not be redirected because it would earlier have been redirected to-- http://www.sanibel-view.co.uk/oldjunk/somefile.html--and that's all she wrote. Just a reminder . . . .
First of all presently your redirect works. The simple test is to use a clean browser and type in the old address. (If you use IE clear history and temp) Second It will take a while for G to adjust to it. They do have a database where they keep www and non www domains as the same but have purged this lately and are not very good at reloading. This is all to do with the anachronism of www.domain.etc - where www is not a subdomain but anything else is..... which is recognised by all other big ones just G has to be different. Regular expressions if you want to know a bit more here is the best article on the net http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/dario19990616.php3?page=1 thus ^mydomai\.com will exactly address mydomain.com and nothing else. e.g. subdomain.mydomain.com will NOT be addressed. It is also advisable that you check all inbound links and try to get these to link to www.mydomain.com rather than domain.com It has happened to us that we had one link from an older domain not adjusted (this domain is not visited regularly by G) and it still shows up as a link to the original domain thus confusing the hell out of G. PR usually gets adjusted within one update. M
i only have one http://(no www) link which was definitely included with the rest of the links (http://www) now it is sat one it's own when i link check for http (no www) - and this since this strange game of musical backlinks altough all mine have done is dropped in number and quality - and stayed there.