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
-
Google confused by trailing slash
My client has a page with the URL https://www.corptexsystems.ca/training/. Google won't index this page because it has detected a canonical at https://www.corptexsystems.ca/training (without the trailing slash). I can't find https://www.corptexsystems.ca/training without the trailing slash anywhere in our site. All the other page URLs end with the slash. How do I sort this out and convince Google that https://www.corptexsystems.ca/training/ is the version to index? Thanks in advance for your help, SEO masters! -AK
Technical SEO | | AndyKubrin0 -
Fake 404 Issue
Hello, I just had a problem my site started showing up 404 issues for all my wordpress pages and post but visually the page was loading with content but yet all pages and software including google WMT was showing the 404 issue. I never found the issue but was able to move the site into a new hosting and restore from a backup and it work. Google found the issue on Jan 27th and they remove all the pages with 404 from the index and I lost most of my top ranking I have since fix the issue and was wondering if google would restore my ranking in such a case? Regards, M
Technical SEO | | thewebguy30 -
Why is Google Webmaster Tools showing 404 Page Not Found Errors for web pages that don't have anything to do with my site?
I am currently working on a small site with approx 50 web pages. In the crawl error section in WMT Google has highlighted over 10,000 page not found errors for pages that have nothing to do with my site. Anyone come across this before?
Technical SEO | | Pete40 -
Google Published Date - Does Google Lie?
Here's the scenario. I create a page called "ABC" and it gets published and found by Google lets say on the 13th of April. on the 15th (or 14th) i decide to update the URL, page Title, and content. (Redirect old URL to new URL as well) Will Google still show this page as being published on the 13th? or would it update the publish date according to the new URL? Greg | | | | | | <a id="question_reply-to-question-36769-description_codeblock" class="mceButton mceButtonEnabled mce_codeblock" style="color: #000000; border: 1px solid #f0f0ee; margin: 0px 1px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: transparent; cursor: default; vertical-align: baseline; width: 20px; border-collapse: separate; display: block; height: 20px;" title="Create Code Block" tabindex="-1"></a>Create Code Block | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Technical SEO | | AndreVanKets0 -
Some posts not showing on Google search if I seach them using post title?
Hello! Some of my WordPress blog posts aren't showing on the Google search result, even if I type the post title. What could be the issue? Is it my site text selection disabled issue or WordPress SEO by Yoast plug-in issue or something else? Moreover, if I search some of my post text (article content), I can't see relevant post on Google search. I use following code to protect my articles. Is it SEO friendly? .content {
Technical SEO | | Godad
-webkit-user-select: none;
-khtml-user-select: none;
-moz-user-select: none;
-ms-user-select: none;
user-select: none;
} my site:- http://goo.gl/tD2fS Thanks!0 -
My 404 page shows in the report as an error.
How can i make my actual 404 page not show up as a 404 error in the report?
Technical SEO | | LindseyNewman0 -
Status code 404??!
among other things... I'm getting this error: http://worldvoicestudio.com/blog/"http://worldvoicestudio.com/" http://worldvoicestudio.com/blog/"http://worldvoicestudio.com/" Any ideas on how to fix this? many thanks!!
Technical SEO | | malexandro0 -
How can i get the Authors photo to show in the Google search result?
I added the rel="author" tags to the blog posts last week and updated the authors page with a link to the Google+ account, but I have yet to see the authors photo surface in the Google Results. Example URL: http://spotlight.vitals.com/2011/10/dr-richelle-cooper-testifies-against-dr-conrad-murray-in-trial/ Can anyone identify what else needs to be done?
Technical SEO | | irvingw0