Website not being indexed after relocation
-
I have a scenario where a 'draft' website was built using Google Sites, and published using a Google Sites sub domain. Consequently, the 'same' website was rebuilt and published on its own domain.
So effectively there were two sites, both more or less identical, with identical content.
The first website was thoroughly indexed by Google.
The second website has not been indexed at all - I am assuming for the obvious reasons ie. that Google is viewing it as an obvious rip-off of the first site / duplicate content etc.
I was reluctant to take down the first website until I had found an effective way to resolve this issue long-term => ensuring that in future Google would index the second 'proper' site.
A permanent 301 redirect was put forward as a solution - however, believe it or not, the Google Sites platform has no facility for implementing this.
For lack of an alternative solution I have gone ahead and taken down the first site. I understand that this may take some time to drop out of Google's index, however, and I am merely hoping that eventually the second site will be picked up in the index.
I would sincerely appreciate an advice or recommendations on the best course of action - if any! - I can take from here.
Many thanks!
Matt.
-
Nice catch, Lynn. That's got to be (at least the majority of) the problem.
-
Hi Matt,
It looks like you have no index headers being sent out on your site. if you have the web developers toolbar installed on firefox and view the response headers on your homepage you will see:
X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow, nosnippet
So this is like a noindex, no follow meta tag and is basically blocking the search engines from spidering and indexing your site. If you find out where those headers are getting set and get rid of them you should see your site getting indexed pretty quickly.
-
Hi Matt,
Majestic, Open Site Explorer and ahrefs are all showing zero links pointing to the entire domain, waydownunder.com.au.
I'm not suggesting this proves that you don't have enough links for Google to crawl/index the site, as I have also repeatedly seen Google index sites that don't have links yet. However, if these three major link indexes are showing zero links, there's a good chance Google's not discovering the site through regularly crawling as well.
Have you tried creating and submitting a sitemap via Webmaster Tools?
Best,
Mike -
Thanks Lynn and Mike - really appreciate your feedback. What you've both said about duplicate content being a ranking rather than indexing issue certainly makes sense.
Unfortunately the old site is unable to be restored. On the other hand, regular links have been posted to the site through social media (facebook) as well as a blog site (which IS being indexed regularly).
So - this has me entirely stumped!!!! I just cannot see any reason why the site is not being indexed at all! The site has been live now for around 2 -3 months; and I've had other sites with far less content / active links etc etc being indexed in no time at all.
The website in question is www.waydownunder.com.au - if anyone had a minute to take a quick look and see if I've missed anything obvious, I would really really appreciate it.
Thanks kindly,
Matt.
-
Hi Matt,
I would echo Lynn's recommendations here.
I doubt Google is actively filtering the 2nd site from search results (the duplicate content filter is employed scarcely, you'll find no shortage of duplicated sites that are indexed - it's also more of a results filter than an index filter, meaning duplicate content is still indexed, it just isn't shown in SERPs when the filter is active).
It's more likely that you simply haven't sent Google a strong enough ping that the site is worth indexing. Generate some marketing activity around the site, link to it from the current site as Lynn suggested (esp. with turning those pages into summaries), and I expect the site will show up in the index within a couple of weeks.
Best of Luck,
Mike -
Hi Matt,
It can take some time to index new sites. Submitting a sitemap to GWT, building a couple of links and sharing it a bit on social channels will usually help speed up the process. I am not very familiar with google sites, but if you can re-enable the google hosted site then maybe it is an idea to announce there that the site is now hosted elsewhere and link to it. You could reduce the content on the google site pages to just an abstract/intro on each page and link to the full content which is now on the new site which should take care of duplicate content issues and also show a clear connection between the two of them (for both incoming users and search engines).
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
-
Please have a look at my website. I am stuck here.
Here might be the reason. I had loads of unnecessary content so I given them the noindex tag. I tried to change the robot.txt file but that shouldn't be a problem in SEO. First my site had a country specific domain and then a year later I changed it to .Com, as to target globally (Mainly US). My site is ranking well in that specific country (never been close to page 1) on page 3 almost every time. It's not ranking in other countries, despite the fact that I've not targeted it to any specific country since the domain was changed. A month ago, I deleted 404 pages and all the thin content which was indexed in the SERP and also deleted the duplicated contents and as well as the copied contents. Meanwhile I've also tried changing the headings in some of the products articles as they were causing the duplicate heading issue. I've recently switched my hosting from the UK based server to the Us based server because the last hosting has bad downtime. So far until now nothing seems to be working in my favor. I'm just tired of resolving issues and in return finding a zero result. This is my devil site: 10stuffs.com plz check it out and tell me why my site is not ranking at all and what sould I do.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anshu14320 -
Please Help me! I need advice for my website
I have 2 Domains with the same name vps nine and vpsn ine with same content. How to solve that problem? Do I need to change the content from my main website. My Hosting is having different plans, but with the same features. So many pages were having the same content, and it is not possible to change the content, what is the solution for that? Please let me know how to solve that issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alexa.Hill0 -
Website dropped out from Google index
Howdy, fellow mozzers. I got approached by my friend - their website is https://www.hauteheadquarters.com She is saying that they dropped from google index over night - and, as you can see if you google their name, website url or even site: , most of the pages are not indexed. Home page is nowhere to be found - that's for sure. I know that they were indexed before. Google webmaster tools don't have any manual actions (at least yet). No sudden changes in content or backlink profile. robots.txt has some weird rule - disallow everything for EtaoSpider. I don't know if google would listen to that - robots checker in GWT says it's all good. Any ideas why that happen? Any ideas what I should check? P.S. Just noticed in GWT there was a huge drop in indexed pages within first week of August. Still no idea why though. P.P.S. Just noticed that there is noindex x-robots-tag in headers... Anyone knows where this can be set?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DmitriiK0 -
Bing seriously hitting our website
Hi I have a strange query, Bing in the last four weeks have been seriously crawling our site, and while at the moment this isn't affecting our servers, coming into the busy time of the year I am just wondering if anyone else is seeing this. They are basically crawling the entire site (including nofollow pages) even though according to Bing Webmaster tools, they know our sitemap. Is anybody else seeing any unusual activity with the Bing bot. Thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andy-Halliday0 -
Convertinh Website for Mobile ?
Dear All, My website (a rental website where you can hire anything online) currently has approx 1/3 of it's traffic from mobile devices , ipads, iphones, blackberry , HTC etc etc. The bounce rate is slightly higher for these at 47% but we have not optimised our site to be mobile friendly as yet. This is something I want to do. Do we just make it fit well into a 320 pixel screen or should we do new wire frames etc and essentially make a cut down website just for mobile. One of the things I know we will do is to make it pick up someones location and retrieve results nearest to them but is there any other do's and don'ts when going down the mobile route ?. I seem to find conflicting infomation when researching this , one example is about using a different url for mobile , one site says it gets you more traffic whilst another says don't use a different url. Also does anyone know of any good tips or sites where I can get some useful info about making the site Mobile Friendly >? thanks Sarah.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SarahCollins0 -
Duplicate content from development website
Hi all - I've been trawling for duplicate content and then I stumbled across a development URL, set up by a previous web developer, which nearly mirrors current site (few content and structure changes since then, but otherwise it's all virtually the same). The developer didn't take it down when the site was launched. I'm guessing the best thing to do is tell him to take down the development URL (which is specific to the pizza joint btw, immediately. Is there anything else I should ask him to do? Thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
How the hell do you find good PR websites?
Hi Guys Can someone please help! How do you find high relevant PR sites that can be easiliy located using the SEO MOZ tools? How can I best use the SEO MOZ tools to locate good websites that will help me with linking building? Are the SEO MOZ tools any good?? Please can you help guys..?? Thanks Gareth
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GAZ090 -
How long until Sitemap pages index
I recently submitted an XML sitemap on Webmaster tools: http://www.uncommongoods.com/sitemap.xml Once Webmaster tools downloads it, how long do you typically have to wait until the pages index ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | znotes0