Google created a page that does not exist on my website and called it /default.htm. They totally dropped my site from all of my page 1/position 1 top keyword rankings. I don't HAVE a page called /default.htm so what is it? Also, webmaster tools alerted me to it because it said that there was a crawl issue because the bots could not find it, ummmm...that's because that shit doesn't exist! Now, it also said 11 sites linking in. I checked them out and they were all hop links coming from those damn sites that display yours in a frame. So here are the possibilities. 1. the hop links did it 2. Someone is cleverly trying to sabotage my site What do I do then? create a page called default.htm and put a redirect on it??
There is no default.htm page on my server. There is no such page that exists on my site. So why does google think there is one?
Like earticles said, maybe try the redirect. If Google thinks you have a page called /default.htm then they might have created a cached page, have you checked the SERPs for a cached page? Try this Google Search, replace YOUR_URL_HERE with your own URL, without the http:// http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YOUR_URL_HERE&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1 Code (markup):
Thanks for the code. I used it but found no cached version of that page. I went ahead and did the 301 redirect and its redirecting just fine. I just need to let google know that I made the change - any ideas? thanks for all your suggestions - I'm starting to not panic as much ;P
You really need to find out why this all started. If someone is messing with your site, then they can just keep doing it all day long by creating more pages /default1.htm, /default2.htm, etc... Do you have any code that you have placed on your site related to any hoplinks? Can you check those hoplinks to see If they have backlinks to your site (maybe try SeoQuake - backlinks)?
Have you included (or has some software automatically) a /default.html in a sitemap .... Google won't just invent pages ..... When you say it's 'created' it ... is it showing in the SERPs or just in webmaster console?
No its just showing in webmasters tools under crawl errors. From there it lists 11 links pointing to /default.htm. All of these links are hoplinks (because I have a product on CB). Those links are normal. I think one of them is even a CB analytics/directory site. I just wonder if its their frames code that's doing it. This is what I'm seeing through their frames. The default.htm does not exist, so it goes straight to my missing page, which has a little bit of a lay out. What also sucks is that this layout is repeating on this page. The code for that page is good. I'm using godaddy, but godaddy duplicates code left and right. Its not doing that at the moment. Where would I locate a code that blocks the frame display?? I think that's really shitty of webmasters to do that in the first place.
Ok so it's two seperate issues. You have a page listed in webmaster tools as default.htm ... AND your rankings have dropped on the main domain. The default.htm isn't causing the drop in rankings. Block it via robots.txt and 301 redirect to your main domain ... try and point your CB links to the main domain too
Yes that page is listed in webmaster tools, but I didn't put it there. It simply does not exist. It appeared out of thin air. Does not exist on the server. Yes my rankings on the main domain are out the window. I can't control the CB links because I am the vendor, the site in discussion is the product sales site, and those 11 links are affiliate hop links. And how the hell would an encoded hop link point to www.example.com/default.htm and not encrypt to point to www.example.com? www.example.com is the format registered with CB. Something is very fishy.