Hi all, This is my first post although I've been a lurker for a while. I would be grateful for some help. I have a site that has just been reindexed in google following a reinclusion request. That's the good news. I bought the domain name not knowing it had previously been owned, and it has taken a couple of months to get this far. But - google is now usually showing the site with a july 2005 cache - the previous owners - although it sometimes alternates with a more recent cache, and all pages shown as belonging to the site are those of the previous life of the site as well. No mention of any of my current pages. Is this normal, and will just take a few days to sort itself out or do I need to go back through a long-winded google help desk process again??? Googlebot has visited the 'up to date' site and it has several reasonable backlinks. So why would it show this old data? Thanks for any help
Welcome, Rasputin! Any of the old links (those that give 404-Not Found errors) in Google should be run through the Google URL removal. If there are pages you may have duplicated urls for, (ie: forums.yourdomain.tld) you should temporarily add a robot exclusion for the url, and then do the same. Once you have confirmation that the url has been removed, remove the robots exclusion. Where you can, link absolutely (use the full version, http //www domain.tld/filename.html or http //forums domain.tld). Google is a domain registrar; they do not sell domains, however they certainly have access to whois records, and it seems they became a registrar for that information. Cases like yours are an excellent argument to use the info to decide what pages should show. IF you have not done so, change the registration information and make certain you do not duplicate old email addresses in the information (for now). Google will pick up on the change in ownership, and work this into deciding which pages to keep and which to dump. Google has thrown up old caches before, and if you follow these steps, there should no longer be pages from the previous owners included should they do so again. Any possible penalties should eventually fade away as well.
Thanks very much for that comprehensive reply. I've done a removal as you suggested so will see what happens in a few days. It's a mystery really how sometimes it shows me a cache from last july and sometimes from last week...I would have thought it would always find the same one? I guess it depends on the data centre or something. Still very curious. The whois info seems up to date and correct so hopefully no problem there. It's the last time I buy a domain name without at least checking if it has had a prevous life, so I know what I'm in for. Anyway, thanks again
Can anyone help me? It's a bit long I'm afraid...the site concerned is france-renovation.com I ran the URL removal as above, and google confirmed it had been done. But a week or two later the pages are not removed (these pages all are from a site run by a previous owner of the domain name) I sent the following query to google "a 'pages from the site' query still lists pages from the old site, and is not indexing any of my own pages Hence my site is still, I think, completely unfindable to anyone visiting google It was the old site, from before my time, that I wanted removed not the current site as well... Is there anything can be done so the site can just be indexed and reported like a 'normal' site?" Then the following: "I am really quite concerned about all this. Please do tell me if the previous owner did something that is making this site irretrievable, and I will buy a different domain name and transfer it. This really is just a straightforward, useful, site, and several other companies/sites have wanted to recommend it to their clients, so it has has links in from other sites as well, making a transfer a bit of a nuisance but if that is what I need to do I will do it." They replied "Please be assured that your site is not currently banned or penalized by Google. We understand you're concerned that a page from your site is appearing in our search results as a supplemental result." along with some stuff about supplemental results I said: "Thank you for this explanation. However, it is still the case that my site is not cached, no other pages from the site are indexed (although pages from the previous owners site, dating from a year ago and no longer existing are still listed as supplemental results), and it has a page rank of 0 - which is certainly not correct. Unfortunately it is clear that somehow it has gone wrong in the system, so all I need to know is whether it can be corrected or whether I need to buy a new domain name and transfer it all..." They replied with a standard explanation that not all pages get indexed, some sites are PR 0 etc, which of course I knew but should not apply to this site after 3 months. They finished with "We're sorry we can't be of further assistance in this matter." Hence they consider the matter closed. What should I do? I have a site that does well in MSN, and remains completely invisible to google, and they deny there is a problem? If i am just being impatient I can wait of course. What would anyone else do please???
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:france-renovation.com&hl=en&filter=0 seems to be the problem now. It shows you as both www and non-www. Use this in your .htaccess file, it will correct the duplicate listing problem you see in that search: After doing this, you should begin to see improvements on number of pages in the index. I do see a potential problem, something oddly curious after this latest update... http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...m?ifps=af06abe71ab7bfd920358098cce35fbb&id=93 It's a 301 redirect, but the fact that it is indexed is reminicent of the 302 redirect problems. To fix it you should link absolutely - use the entire domain, and link to your homepage as "http://www.yourdomain.com/" and not as index.html. Really just an insurance, I think. And get some good anchor links with appropriate keyword text.
Thanks again for your help. I'll try this out, although I know nothing about redirects so will perhaps read up on it first, so I know what I'm doing (and understand what you are describing) Cheers
Ok I went off to try this, I read the thread here about redirects, and then stumbled at the first hurdle - the site in question is really a subdomain of another site, that is somehow redirected by the hosting company to its current domain. i.e. I pay to hold 10 domains, but 9 of them are actually redirected subdomains of the first domain. (marcus97.southofthedordogne.com) Seemed like a good idea at the time! But I can only see an htaccess file for the 'main' domain, not for each subdomain. So can I add a new htaccess somewhere else within just this subdomain, or do I add it in the main domain htaccess file. If so do i eed to change it? Sorry, I know this isn't clear, I haven't got a clue what I'm doing...
Sorry for the slow reply... Yes, you can add an .htaccess file for your subdomains. Subdomains are treated as an individual domain by Google, so be sure to build some links to them as well.