Google search issue with exact domain
-
We had a site from Feb-2011 to Nov-2011 at the domain amcoexterminating.com. The site was pure HTML/CSS and the daily unique visitors steadily increased over that time. So all was fine.
We then moved the site to a CMS (Joomla) on Dec. 6th. From that day forward, the daily visitors went into the tank.
Before the move, if you typed "amcoexterminating.com" or "amco exterminating" into Google search, the site would be the first result (as you'd expect since those are the words that make up the actua domain). But we tried this yesterday and the site did not come up at all. NOT GOOD. It would work in Yahoo or Bing, but not in Google. So obviously, the problem with Google search directly affected the daily visitors.
We just checked Webmaster tools yesterday (yes, this should have been done sooner, lesson learned) and it said "Site has severe health issues - Important page blocked by robots.txt". It listed the "important" page URL and it was just a link to an image. Regardless, I wiped out the Joomla created robots.txt file and added a new one and made it just say...
User-agent: *Allow: /
About 14 hours later, after the new robots.txt file was recognized by Google, the "severe health" message went away. However if I search in Google for "amcoexterminating.com", it still doesn't show up and the client is concerned (as they should be).
Do you think the search engines just need more time to refresh? If so, once it refreshes, should the site show up first again right away?
Or is it possible the robots.txt file had nothing to do with the issue? If so, what other things could I check into that might cause Google search to not find a site even if you search for exact domain name?
Please share any and all things I should look into as I need to get this site showing in Google search again (as it was before moving to the CMS).
Thanks!
-
Sorry I never replied...It all looks good now.
-
Hi Rob,
How are things going on this site? Are your rankings back, or are you still looking for some help?
-
Yes thats all you needed to do.
it should come back, with ine a few weeks
-
Update: I found this code in my htaccess file...
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noindex, nofollow"
So I commented it out like so..
#Header set X-Robots-Tag "noindex, nofollow"
And resaved it.
I imagine this is all I needed to do. If you think I should have done something else, please let me know.
-
Thanks Robert, the answer to your two "Edit" questions is Yes (htaccess.txt was renamed to .htaccess and "seo friendly URLs" was selected as YES).
It makes sense that what Alan suspects is my main problem (i.e. there is a no-index, no-follow on the homepage) so I'm hoping he can point me in the right direction to correct it. If you know and see my reply before he does, please let me know
-
Thanks for the heads up on the canonical issues, will correct that.
As for this X-robots header, do you know where I can find that code to either change the no-index, no-follow to index, follow, or delete it completely? I tried to view what you said in IE, but when I click F12, the window that pops up doesn't have a "Networks" tab.
I am searching my site files for X-robots header and can't find this area, so if you could give me any insight on correcting this, I would be very appreciative. If that is the problem (and I trust that it is), I really gotta get it fixed ASAP
Side note you may not know: If I correct the X-robots header to be index, follow, should the site start showing up again in Google results immediately or could it take longer?
-
Rob, you have a problem. Or two.
First, somehow your images files are showing up and I believe this is causing a duplicate content issue. If I were to guess, I would say that you are new to joomla and may have set something up incorrectly. Without seeing your Joomla dashboard, it is hard to say exactly what is going on though.
When you do a Site:www.amcoexterminating.com or Site:amcoexterminating.com you get mostly images and pdfs. You also see excluded content and when you click on it you see the same.
The only site url that is not a pdf is http://www.amcoexterminating.com/images/ so Google is not seeing any other url. This is due to Robots.txt or bad site map, Joomla settings that control these, etc.
I wish I could be of more help, but without seeing what the settings are in the dashboard, I cannot find the issue (using firebug, etc.).
Best
Edit: Alan has some good info in his response. Also, in Joomla on the Global Configuration there is an SEO Settings near top on right. Within that is a selection for Use Apache mod_rewrite if you selected this did you rename htaccess.txt to .htaccess before you activated this?
Above it is a selection for search engine friendly urls, have you selected that? -
No I cant see one image blocked being the problem, you should not block images, js or css files that are used on pages that are not blocked, it is not a problem alone, but if there are any other signals of spam, then the fact that you hide these files is then seen as a suspicious signal.
I am not a fan of CMS, as they do not write clean code. I had a look at your site and found many problems. The worst is canonical issues, you home page rank is split between
http://www.amcoexterminating.com/index.php
http://www.amcoexterminating.com
http://amcoexterminating.com/index.php
http://amcoexterminating.comYou need to fix your canonical issues.
http://thatsit.com.au/seo/tutorials/how-to-fix-canonical-domain-name-issuesbut the reason you cant find your page in Google is you have a X-robots header of no-index, no-follow. You have a index, follow meta tag, but the header must be overruling it.
If you want to see this for yourself. in IE press F12, select the network tab and start capturing. Load your home page, then click on the home page url in the results and select response headers.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Trying to rank on top 3 in Google.co.uk for a moderate competitive keyword by having a .dk domain
Do you think I should switch my domain to a .com and use ccTLDs method for my other international domains ? The problem is that my .dk domain(norwell.dk) has a better SEO ranking that my .com domain (norwelloutdoorfitness.com) and also differs slightly in name. The primary keyword I want to rank is ' outdoor fitness' which is in the name of 'norwelloutdoorfitness.com', thus over the long-term providing better benefits. Let me know what you think. Thanks, Andrei
Web Design | | kkk92330 -
Is it necessary to Remove 301 redirects from Wordpress after removing the 404 url from Google Webmaster?
There were many 404 urls in my site found by Google Webmaster. I've redirected these urls to the relevant urls with 301 redirect in wordpress. After that I removed these 404 urls from Google Index through Webmaster. "Should I cleanup these 301 redirects from Wordpress or not? ". Help Needed.
Web Design | | SangeetaC0 -
Can multiple domains compete with one another if they have the same/similar content?
Could an ecommerce site with a .co.nz nd .com.au domain compete with one another and hard organic rankings if the content of the pages are the same? All the links would be identical (apart from .co.nz or .com.au) the product descriptions, pages titles etc... would all be identical or similar (our page titles are ever so slightly different). Could this be hurting us? Thanks in advance ^ Paul
Web Design | | kevinliao0 -
Google Webmaster Message!!
Hello, One of my clients is using an old version of wordpress. On google's web master tools there are about 5 messages recommending an upgrade. My question is: Could this affect rankings? Thanks
Web Design | | ogdcorp0 -
Wordpress drop down menu issue...
While I am tweaking my current site with getting rid of my footer links, my site will not allow a drop down menu for my service area parent page. It will do a drop down menu for any other tab. Could not find anything in a google search besides just link to parent for drop down... Any ideas?
Web Design | | greenjoe0 -
Landing Page/Home Page issues
Hi. I was speaking with my designer last night (we are setting up a new website) and we were discussing the design of our homepage, now the designer said he wanted the first page of the website to be a sort of landing page page were the visitor has to click and enter, im sure everyone has all come across these before. However, I am concerned as to the SEO implications of this? Any help guys?
Web Design | | CompleteOffice0 -
Redirecting 301 Redirects -- Will Search Engines Notice?
Hello Mozzers, We're currently evaluating a client site where the previous web developer redesigned the site and got lazy, 301 redirecting hundreds of pages to the home page instead of to their respective new URLs. Ugh. In any case, we will probably fix this for the sake of implementing best practices. But I am curious how search engines treat 301'd URLs, as they are supposed to be permanent redirects. Will search crawlers ever visit the old URLs again to find that we've re-redirected them? Or have they written them off as moved to the home page for good, meaning that there's no way to direct the authority of the previous URLs to their rightful targets? Thanks!
Web Design | | SEOTeamSF0 -
Need advice on diplaying content for Search
Hi every body, I am doing landing page redesign(s). Does any body know or can refer a content carousel that can rotate video and pictures? The "site with images" search option result is a compelling reason to showcase pictures if your space competeiveness (showroom, merchandise, etc) can be improved with a strong image presence. here is my main landing page http://www.shearerpainting.com I know there is alot of stuff, and confusing call to action, but I am looking for strategies to clean it up, clear fous on action (get bid, learn more), but allow users to see that they can dig for more content.
Web Design | | johnshearer0