Google Search Results Question

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by twalters84, Oct 3, 2007.

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  1. #1
    Hey there,

    We released our new michigan real estate website last week.

    Google has been crawling our website like crazy.

    Last night, our hosting service decided to disable some coldfusion tags. Their actions caused our RSS feeds, map search, and sitemap XML file not to work.

    We were using the cfcontent tag to tell crawlers that our coldfusion pages were actually xml files that were just generated with coldfusion. We fixed that problem.

    However, we noticed that our search results decreased by at least 5 positions during the time of the errors.

    My assumption is that google found our website to be unstable.

    I am sure we can come back up in the rankings, but my question is how long does this usually take when something like this happens?

    I just wish our hosting service gave everybody some sort of notice that they were going to make the change. After they made it, they did not even think it was important enough to give everybody a notice then. They said it effected like 8 customers, but still that caused a lot of problems on my clients website.

    Let me know what you think.

    Sincerely,
    Travis Walters
     
    twalters84, Oct 3, 2007 IP
  2. mvolpe70

    mvolpe70 Peon

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    #2
    You should recover pretty fast. Usually if you have a lot of content and it is changing frequently you have enough mojo that little things like this will not matter much in the long term.

    One thing your site is missing is a permanent (301) redirect. Here is a report: http://www.websitegrader.com/wsgid/292993/default.aspx
     
    mvolpe70, Oct 3, 2007 IP
    twalters84 likes this.
  3. twalters84

    twalters84 Peon

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    #3
    Hey there,

    Thanks for the great SEO tool. I have never used that one before.

    Enjoy your better reputation. That was really handy :)

    I have set a preferred domain to www.lukebouman.com in the webmaster tools instead of lukebouman.com.

    I am not sure how to do a 301 redirect from lukebouman.com though?

    With a windows server, I would probably need IIS privledges and I am on a shared server.

    Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

    Sincerely,
    Travis Walters
     
    twalters84, Oct 3, 2007 IP
  4. TextLinkCenter

    TextLinkCenter Peon

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    #4
    Running a real SEO campaign is alot like losing weight. It sounds like you went to the buffet once this week. Well run a little harder next week and in 6 months you'll meet your goals.

    If your site is only 5 days old, you'll probably drop entirely for a good 6 months if your domain name is new. Count on it.

    Brandon
     
    TextLinkCenter, Oct 3, 2007 IP
  5. twalters84

    twalters84 Peon

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    #5
    Hey there,

    Thanks for the comments.

    My client's website is about a year and a half old.

    There were a lot of things completely wrong with his old site including frames.. flash navigation.. etc.

    The biggest change was going from a static design to coldfusion.

    His website definately went to the buffet once this week.

    I am not sure if his drop in the search engines was a result of google dancing or from the hosting's change that caused massive errors on the website.

    I never see the top ranked website for "holland michigan real estate" drop in rankings with google. However, my client's website recently jumped up in the yahoo search results.

    Sincerely,
    Travis Walters
     
    twalters84, Oct 3, 2007 IP