Matt Cutts in this post has stated If you remove one of the www vs. non-www hostnames, it can end up removing your whole domain for six months. Definitely don’t do this. But what I need to know is what would happen if I used the remove URL tool to remove the index page (i.e. index.php, index.html, or whatever). My index page is no longer named index.php, and index.php is now doing a 301 redirect to the root domain. If I were to now use the Remove URL tool to remove the index.php, what would happen? Would this remove the whole domain? ADDED: If I decided to use the URL removal tool, I would first remove the 301 redirect, so I wouldn't confuse the issue.
Hey Donna... Ok, I have no experience with this, but would also love to have an answer, as a very dear friend of mine is having the same problem. I do have one suggestion though... I would not use the removal tool while the 301 is in place... I would make sure it returns a 404, so the tool does not get confused. Aside from that, does anyone else have any actual experience with this tool at all, either in this scenario or otherwise? Thanks! -Michael
Yes, I agree that 301 is a great way to go. But I still am curious as to whether or not using the url removal tool on the old index.php page (which is no longer my home page) would act the same as the situation Matt cited. Would it remove the whole domain or not?
Don't do it. It will screw your site up. Just use 301 and it will redirect it. This redirects PR, importance and visitors as well as bots. Everything goes with a 301 and there easy so it is the way to go. URl removal tool is for removing pages or sites such as fredsbakery.com or fredsbakery.com/breadovens.html. I wouldn't try it with index files.
Since it is no longer the default page for the domain, I see no reason that you could not remove the page without affecting the whole domain, just as you would any other individual page. But I would do so by means of a meta tag on the page, and check that Google had picked up the new homepage just to be certain. If it were still the home page, Google will probably see the default domain page and the index.php page as the same and not just drop the index.php page - it would drop them both, and then you would be at the mercy of links to the internal pages alone. Submitted as a removal of an individual page (domain.tld/index.php) it should not take out the whole site. But a 301 redirect is the way to go in most situations, if it is available to the webmaster.
The actual question wasn't as to whether or not anyone thought that was a good idea. Google has both www.thesite.com and www.thesite.com/index.htm cached, both show up on a site: command, and they have different cache dates. As soon as this happened, the site lost rankings, with the listing being buried under the "similar results" category. Therefore there is obviously a duplicate content issue happening. The question was, would removing index.htm, which in the serps is definitely being treated as a separate page, be seen by the tool as an attempt to remove the root domain as well? Does anyone have any experience with this? Thanks. -Michael PS: I know I wasn't the OP, but I know what Donna was asking.
301 doestnt work.pages will just go into supplements and stay there for ever. 410 the pages to remove them from Google's Cache.
In my opinon , if you use url removel tool , nothink will be happen. it's possible that google has indexed more pages than the index. if i were you , i try 301 redirect
No but the importance, pr and value and visitors are passed over to the new page. Google sends it supplemental but since you aren't trying to rank for that page that is fine and that is why it is done like that however the new page takes all the value as I said. 301 is the way to go always. Ever heard of asp?