Google showing a Cached option but then giving a 404
-
2 weeks ago my home page plus some others had a 301 redirect to another domain for about 1 week (due to a hack).The original pages were then de-indexed and the new bad domain was indexed and in effect stole my rankings.Then the 301 was removed/cleaned from my domain and the bad domain was fully de-indexed via a request I made (this was 1 week ago).Then my pages came back into the index but without any ranking power.Now when I perform a search for my domain my home page is listed with an option to view the Cache. Clicking on the Cache brings up a 404 error.So why is Google showing the Cached option but doesn't have the cached file? How do I get Google to properly update it's Cache or show a cached copy?
-
Oh wow....it's back!!! For over a week I've been stressing with this and the lost traffic/sales.
Yeehaw I can now enjoy my weekend. Although I still have some forensics to focus on but still, a big relief.
Lynn, I may not have checked again until tomorrow so you definitely made my night. Thank you for bringing it to my attention and for your feedback. Have a good weekend.
-
Hmm, the cache issue is strange, I really have no idea why it is behaving like that.
I can say that from where I am the original site seems to be ranking for keywords that I assume are some of your major ones and if you look at the cached version it shows the site as expected. It is a bit of an odd situation, might be wise to hold on for another week or so and see if rankings/traffic return and the index seems to sort itself out again.
-
Hmmm, yeah that could be it. It's not so much a technical issue but the real problem (and why I'm asking about the cache) is my pages have been re-indexed everyday for the past week although I have yet to see them rank. It's as if the 301 value transfer is still in effect or my pages are now being seen as duplicates and therefore in the supplemental index. Therefore I don't really care about the actual cached page.
Last night I updated my footer to try and force a refresh. I just checked and it's still the same but I just noticed something interesting. For one query for the home page you will see a snippet from cloned domain and the cache will generate a 404. But for another query you will get a snippet from the original domain and the cached page is functional.
So it seems that depending on the query Google will look at previous indexes and show older snippets/caches. Does this make sense?
-
Hi Danny,
I would think the 404 is showing because the last cache of google's was of the site when the 301 was in effect and now that site has been de-indexed (or something along these lines). As long as there are no technical issues still effecting the original site then just be patient, the next time google comes crawling then the cache will be updated and you should be fine. You are probably just about the only one actually looking at the cache anyway!
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
-
Top Landing Page has disappeared from Google Search Console but still shows at the top of Google
Hi, One of the top landing pages in my website has disappeared from GSC Search Analytics results. But I do get a good traffic from that page until now. What might be the reason for GSC to stop showing it on the results?
Technical SEO | | eduapps0 -
Odd 404 pages
Evening all, I've performed a Screaming Frog technical crawl of a site, and it's returning links like this as 404s: http://clientsite.co.uk/accidents-caused-by-colleagues/js/modernizr-2.0.6.min.js Now, I recognise that Modernizr is used for detecting features in the user's browser - but why would it have created an indexed page that no longer exists? Would you leave them as is? 410 them? Or do something else entirely? Thanks for reading, I look forward to hearing your thoughts! Kind regards, John.
Technical SEO | | Muhammad-Isap0 -
Can Google show the hReview-Aggregate microformat in the SERPs on a product page if the reviews themselves are on a separate page?
Hi, We recently changed our eCommerce site structure a bit and separated our product reviews onto a a different page. There were a couple of reasons we did this : We used pagination on the product page which meant we got duplicate content warnings. We didn't want to show all the reviews on the product page because this was bad for UX (and diluted our keywords). We thought having a single page was better than paginated content, or at least safer for indexing. We found that Googlebot quite often got stuck in loops and we didn't want to bury the reviews way down in the site structure. We wanted to reduce our bounce rate a little, so having a different reviews page could help with this. In the process of doing this we tidied up our microformats a bit too. The product page used to have to three main microformats; hProduct hReview-Aggregate hReview The product page now only has hProduct and hReview-Aggregate (which is now nested inside the hProduct). This means the reviews page has hReview-Aggregate and hReviews for each review itself. We've taken care to make sure that we're specifying that it's a product review and the URL of that product. However, we've noticed over the past few weeks that Google has stopped feeding the reviews into the SERPs for product pages, and is instead only feeding them in for the reviews pages. Is there any way to separate the reviews out and get Google to use the Microformats for both pages? Would using microdata be a better way to implement this? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | OptiBacUK
James0 -
Google local listings
im working with gutter installation company, and we're ranking for all the top keywords in google. the only thing that we're not ranking for is for the map results, for the keyword "gutter ma" since we're located in Springfield ma, i thing Google considers certain areas from Boston, because its more center of Massachusetts, What can i do to improve my rankings in maps for this keyword, because i know it wont work with PO box since i need to confirm an address? Thanks
Technical SEO | | vladraush990 -
I was googling the word "best web hosting" and i notice the 1st and 3rd result were results with google plus. Does Google plus now play a role in improving ranking for the website?
I was googling the word "best web hosting" and i notice the 1st and 3rd result were results with google plus. Does Google plus now play a role in improving ranking for the website?I see a person's name next to the website too
Technical SEO | | mainguy0 -
Why Google not picking My META Description? Google itself populate the description.. How to control this Search Snippets??
Why Google not picking My META Description? Google itself populate the description.. How to control this Search Snippets??
Technical SEO | | greyniumseo0 -
Continued Lack of Google Indexing
I run a baseball site (http://www.mopupduty.com) that is in a very good link neighbourhood. ESPN, The Score, USA Today, MSG Network, The Toronto Star, Baseball Prospectucs, etc etc. New content has not been getting indexed on Google ever since the last update. Site has no dup content, 100% original. I can't think of any spammy links, we get organic links day after day. In the past Google has indexed the site in minutes. It currently has expanded site links within Google search. Bing & Yahoo index the site in minutes. Are there any quick fixes I can make to increase my chance to get indexed by Google. Or just keep pumping out content and hope to see a change in the upcoming future?
Technical SEO | | mkoster1 -
Bing Cache
How can you see what pages are cached by bing. I'm basically looking for these google approaches for bing: cache:domain.com site:domain.com Thanks Tyler
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser1