Three weeks ago, on June 5, I spun off a new website, from an existing PR5 web site. The new site is starting to show up for my search terms, on both MSN and Yahoo. But not on Google, of course. There, I am URL only (for all pages on the new site). My question is, "How long will the Google "aging-delay" hold me back?" Some say it was 6 months, some now say as little as 2 months. Definitely longer than 3 weeks. 1. All of the pages came from the PR5 website, plus some new pages. 2. I used 301 redirects to the new site. 3. I have few links to start with 4. This is a competitive subject website 5. Standard conservative SEO practices were applied 6. You don't have to be very clever to find the new website's name (sig) I will later "polish off" this thread, and reveal the answer (hopefully!). Anyone care to guess? The closest guess gets recognition here! Oh, boy!
It's a minimum of 3 months and varies depending on the sector. As the sandbox doesn't apply to all keywords (almost all competitive), you may start seeing traffic from less competitive keywords sooner.
If you don't mind a suggestion, you need to 301 the /index.htm to the root domain or visa-versa. If you do not and both get indexed you run the risk of a duplicate content problem. If the original content was indexed on a "trusted site", the content moved in it's entirety, and then indexed URL's 301'd to the new site, you shouldn't have to worry about the sandbox effect. Your ability to SEO the site will rank it. Dave
Hi mjewel. Down for 3 months! OK. I will be looking for the "lesser term" appearances as well, as you suggest. Hi, CrankyDave, The site was spun off. Most content was left behind on the old site. I am not moving the ENTIRE site. Therefore, it would not be right to redirect the /index.htm file. Right? I did remove the old pages from the old site, at the SAME time I put up the pages on the new site. I realize there can be a duplicate content issue in the short term, but I hope it will be sorted out quickly. MSN and Yahoo don't seem to be finding any duplicate content problems.
After 1 year, I am supposedly still in the "sandbox". Getting all traffic from MSN and Yahoo. Starting to see random keywords from Google, but no biggies. I have learned to be patient. Don't be discouraged
He's is talking about redirecting index.html to the root domain so that when people type in www.yournewdomain.com/index.html it will redirect to the root- i.e. www.yournewdomain.com You should also use mod-rewrite to redirect http://yournewdomain.com to http://www.yournewdomain.com RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yournewdomain\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yournewdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Wow. Beyond me. I am not a programmer, just an old semiconductor hardware engineer. I don't know how to use mod-rewrite. I just use an .htaccess file. Isn't it OK to use an .htaccess file instead of a mod-rewrite? That was my impression - one or the other. As far as the redirecting from non-www to www, I've been through this before a while back. After reading all the posts a while back regarding split PR and canonization, I followed the directions published here, to do exactly as you suggest. However, I am on an Apache server, and my attempt to redirect from non-www to www resulted in an infinite loop software explosion (resolved in 1/2 second). I subsequently read that this can happen using Apache, because it already does something to take care of this problem. I didn't try it again. I believe this is true because I never saw any non-www stuff trying to cram itself into the action - it just seemed to be taken care of!?! Everything was WWW.blah.com. Maybe it was just my savvy ISP having taken some kind of fix-it action? NRLMedia - Wow, sounds really tough. I will try to keep my chin up. Good luck. In the SHORT term! Ha!
I have nothing to complain about it though. I make a good bit of money just from MSN traffic. It would be nice to see the same top 10 keywords in google though, my revenue would probably triple. Patience and hard work. I will get there someday and so will you
It doesn't have anything to do with cramming into the action. It has to do with the 2 versions being viewed as 2 different sites with identical content. If these 2 queries show different numbered results, then this site will have a problem down the road: www version vs non-www version The issue may not show up for months, but all it takes is one link pointing to the wrong version, and a series of relative links (as internal links should be), and bam, you've got problems. -Michael
My last site got out of the sand box in two weeks, this was due to the high pr 5 I recieved from the April 4 update. It showed up in SERPs for my keywords as number one. When I change the copy, that copy shows up. That update was good to me. It probably won't survive the next one though.
Using mod-rewrite it would look like this... Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L] This will redirect the non-www to the www. Do the same with the /index as well. Google has got a better handle on the canonical issues... for now. It's still not a bad idea to hedge your bet. Regardless of where the info was spun off from, your best bet, for a variety of reasons, is to redirect to the the root domain of the new site. Dave
Yeah, what Dave said. The mod rewrite is done inside the .htaccess file, it's not one or the other. I mean, you can do it in other ways I do believe, that's just the easiest way that I know of. -Michael