When you can't see the cache in search, is it about to be deindexed?
-
Here is my issue and I've asked a related question on this one. Here is the back story. Site owner had a web designer build a duplicate copy of their site on their own domain in a sub folder without noindexing. The original site tanked, the webdesigner site started outranking for the branded keywords. Then the site owner moved to a new designer who rebuilt the site. That web designer decided to build a dev site using the dotted quad version of the site. It was isolated but then he accidentally requested one image file from the dotted quad to the official site. So Google again indexed a mirror duplicate site (the second time in 7 months). Between that and the site having a number of low word count pages it has suffered and looked like it got hit again with Panda.
So the developer 301 the version to the correct version. I was rechecking it this morning and the dotted quad version is still indexed, but it no longer lets me look at the cache version. Out of experience, is this just Google getting ready to drop it from the index?
-
Hey BCutrer,
Just wanted to make sure you'd seen a good solution to this and everything was deindexed properly?
I haven't heard anyone mention the lack of a cached version as a sign of deindexation about to occur, but would be curious if you still think that was the case. I would sooner guess that noarchive was placed on those pages.
-
It would solve it if you had control over the domain. Park it on top of the new domain, and do a htaccess rule that automatically forwards the user to the new site if the old domain is typed in.
-
The issue isn't the 301, that's already been taken care of. Unfortunately it is a branded url, so that can't be changed, even if they did start over though on a new URL that wouldn't solve the duplicate site floating around out there.
-
301 everything you find wrong. Waiting on them to do it will take forever, and most likely they will not find every instance.
Honestly, if possible I would just start over on a new site or domain. You can copy and paste all the content from the old domain into the new one, and request that the entire old site be unindexed. Since this is it's 4th(!) duplication, and you mentioned it was hit with a panda update, its not that it cant be fixed, its more about do you have the time available to wait for it to be (both in development costs and google re-indexing)?
-
Probably - I've never tracked something like this or read anything on the subject. In general, just 301 redirect from dev to live URLs and eventually the rankings will transfer. It may take a couple weeks though.
-
Face Palm - Probably want to start all over your making to much work for the search engines and they don't like it.
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
-
Can’t put a finger on, what is causing 12 year domain, SEO optimized and decent link profile to rank lower than other less superior domains.
Can’t put a finger on, what is causing 12 year domain, SEO optimized and decent link profile to rank lower than other less superior domains. I have dissected the site and link, content, etc profile using ahrefs tools, still no luck, and unfortunately they do not have a community to ask anyone opinion. Hoping someone on Moz will be able to provide me with a secondary opinion or something I obviously missing here. Looking for any constructive feedback/professional opinion with fresh look on what maybe the cause of our down rankings and what may be a cause of it. Any feedback is very much appreciated. Search Term: 3030 aventura condos / One of our link samples (SE Position #6): https://goo.gl/FbYj4V Competing Domains (SE Position #1): https://goo.gl/fLPKX5 Competing Domains (SE Position #2): https://goo.gl/GqXGse
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Im_Jake0 -
Site still indexed after request 'change of address' search console
Hello, A couple of weeks ago we requested a change of address in Search console. The new, correct url is already indexed. Yet when we search the old url (with site:www.) we find that the old url is still indexed. Is there another way to remove old urls?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | conversal0 -
Researching search volume drop
I am seeing a pretty precipitous drop in search volume traffic (see link). My keyword rankings don't seem to have suffered too much over this period. In fact, my #1 keyword have actually increased slightly in this timeframe. Two questions... Is there some way to assess overall search volume across my tracked keywords (to see if this is just a case of overall searches dropping)? Is there a recommended plan of attack for investigating drops like this - beyond overall search volume, what other data might be important in identifying the cause of this. In short, I'm looking for some logic/structure for how I investigate this, using Moz tools and reports. Thanks. Mark omE1VPc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarkWill0 -
How Google organic search results differ in Local Searches?
We all know Google displays nearby results by locating our ip address. My question is how does these results differ? For eg 1. If someone from Newyork search for "chinese Restaurant in Newyork" 2. Someone from California search for "chinese Restaurant in Newyork" 3. Someone from California changes his location to Newyork and search for "chinese Restaurant in Newyork" What are the factors the Google SERP looks into to display the result in local terms?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rajeevEDU0 -
Server responds with 302 but the pages doesn't appear to redirect?
I'm working on a site and am running some basic audits, including a campaign within Moz. When I put the domain into any of these tools, including response header checkers, the response is a 302 that says there is a redirect to an Error Page. However, the page itself doesn't redirect, and resolves fine in the browser. But all of the audit tools cant seem to get any information from any of the pages. What is the best way to troubleshoot what is going on here? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jim_shook0 -
Weird rankings on my website, can't figure it out
Hey guys, One of my post popular pages for "Rust Hacks" use to be - http://www.ilikecheats.com/01/rust-cheats-hacks-aimbot/ Now when searching Google for site:ilikecheats.com rust hacks This page shows as the highest ranking - http://forum.ilikecheats.com/forums/221-Rust-Hacks-Rust-Cheats-Public-Forum What's weird is it seems the entire front end (Wordpress site) isn't ranking well anymore on page #1 of Google and the forums are ranking better currently. I did have a huge penalty from backlinks last year but cleared it. I got Yoast to do a site review and I'm cleaning up everything now. I also cleared most of the bad links via the disavow tool. Another example is when I search for "warz hacks" the forums show up in 4th place but the main website isn't showing at all back to page 10. If I search site:ilikecheats.com warz hacks the links directly to the main site doesn't show until page #2. So is this still a penalty that is carried over or is something else going on? Can't seem to figure it out, thanks in advance for looking. 😃 Any ideas what's going on and why the main pages no longer rank - http://www.ilikecheats.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Draden670 -
Can I dissavow links on a 301'd website?
So we are performing link removal for a client on his old website (A), which is being 301 redirected to his new website (B). We have identified toxic links on site A and are removing, once complete we will undo the current 301, confirm a new GWT account for website A, and then submit the disavow report. We would then like to reapply the 301 redirect to site B while we are waiting for Google to process the disavow report, the logic being we can retain some current rankings on site B while waiting for the disavow to process on site A. Has anyone had experience with this method? I foresee some potential issues here but am interested to here from others on this. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOdub1 -
Removing URLs in bulk when directory exclusion isn't an option?
I had a bunch of URLs on my site that followed the form: http://www.example.com/abcdefg?q=&site_id=0000000048zfkf&l= There were several million pages, each associated with a different site_id. They weren't very useful, so we've removed them entirely and now return a 404.The problem is, they're still stuck in Google's index. I'd like to remove them manually, but how? There's no proper directory (i.e. /abcdefg/) to remove, since there's no trailing /, and removing them one by one isn't an option. Is there any other way to approach the problem or specify URLs in bulk? Any insights are much appreciated. Kurus
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kurus1