Hello David, Thanks for jumping in!

The old URL was  http://www.easydigging.com/Garden_Cultivator/wheel_hoe_push_plow.html  and the new one it 301's to is  http://www.easydigging.com/wheel-hoe-hoss.html   Please reply back here so I know what the situation is.

Since it appears that Index updates only happen monthly, and it takes a few months for data to fully migrate over to redirected URLs, it would be really nice to change the little message that shows on OSE when an analyzed page is redirected (currently something like "Do you want to see the data for page this redirects to") to something that describes the lag, like.. "It takes a few months for Moz data to transfer to redirected URLs, so be sure to check both the old and the new URL since the one with higher statistics is the accurate one"

Hi again Chris.  Mostly I was wanting to use Moz to evaluate my site for SEO reasons and frustrated that I kept having to use "old" page URLs to get data.

Also I have just started to experiment with the Penguin Analysis tool from Virante, and it uses Moz data mixed with data from other SEO programs - so I get corrupt results there whether I input the old URL or the new URL.  http://www.penguinanalysis.com/

If they really updated the Mozscape index on the 18th, it seems it should show by now...

Thanks Chris. But unfortunately that makes the situation even worse. I did these 301 redirects weeks ago, and your quote say that there was a Mozscape Index update was a few days ago on October 18th.

I just checked again in OSE and the old page data and strength still has not transferred over to the new page. I have attached a screenshot from OSE showing this.

Any ideas?

page-difference.jpg

I redirected a few pages that had funky URL issues (capitals and underscores and useless words) to the same page renamed with proper URLs. The sitemaps were changed also, and re-submitted.

Like this:  mydomain.com/Not_Pertinent_Words.html  >>>  mydomain.com/good-words.html

Google seems to have found them and changed the search engine results listing in about 8 days.

But it's been about a month now and Moz and OSE still have not transferred all the strength and link data from the old URLs to the new ones.

Question 1: How long does it usually take Google to transfer all the link and strength data for a 301?

Question 2: How long does it take Moz and OSE to do the same? Is there something I need to do to tell them about the changes?

Everything I've read has said to redirect everything to either the www or non-www version. Usually in the htaccess file.

It may be time to dump GoDaddy and get a more full-featured hosting company. I used to use Yahoo for my hosting and they also did not allow things like access to the htacess file and 301 redirects. Once I went to a better hosting company I was so much better off.

Now I use GreenGeeks.com for all my hosting. They have a full cpanel and all the good features. They will do your site migration for free. If you don't know how to do the techy Server stuff, they have great free phone support that will actually do things like alter the htaccess while you are speaking to them (which they have done a few times now for me).

Hi Ron.  If the keywords and phrases for your niche are REALLY LOW volume (like some of mine are), then I suggest using Google Adwords by running a few short PPC campaigns.

A two week run with your keywords set as a Broad match will gather enough data to activate an interesting Adwords report. This report is found on the "Keywords" screen of an individual campaign. Click the "Details" button then select "Search Terms / All" on the dropdown. This will list exactly what phrase people typed in the search box, how many times it was searched (Impressions), how many Clicks those phrases got, etc.

Just peeked at one of my campaigns and for the last 30 days it only had 2400 impressions. That's pretty low volume and those small volumes do not show up well in any free tool that I know of. Though they used to in the old Adwords Keyword Tool. I miss it...

Yes. I did keep in most of the old domains that had been in the original Disavow file.

Since the things I learned after doing the original file showed that I had mistakenly disavowed a few domains that were OK, I did omit them from the new file. And I added some that had not been in the original.

Nobody but Google knows for sure, but my understanding is that a particular Disavow only has an effect while that particular file is active on your Google Webmaster account. So if you delete it or upload a new one, then you will eventually see the old effect disappear and be replaced by the effect of having no or a different disavow file.

I just wish the effect wasn't so slow on Google. The effect of disavowing linking domains in Bing Webmaster Tools seems to be very quick. But it's rarely needed there since Bing doesn't have nasty Pandas and Penguins to battle...

Hi Daniel,

I also submitted a Disavow file, then learned new things and updated the file to reflect the new knowledge.

You can only have ONE disavow file. So you simply create a new file (which may or may not contain many domains that were in the original) and then go to Google Webmaster Tools and delete the original file and upload the new one.

This article has good info on how you should create your Disavow file: http://moz.com/blog/google-disavow-tool

Especially this part from the article:

Google rejects many disavow files because of bad formatting, but webmasters usually never know. Guidelines state the file type should be .txt only and “must be encoded UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII.”

Good luck!

Hi Jen. I'm curious to hear what answers you receive. Especially since they are NOFOLLOW links...

My understanding is that NoFollow links do not effect ranking at all - whether they are good or bad or even all have the same anchor text. That is supposedly a featuire of Google's Disavow tool - it let's you turn bad links into NoFollow links and make them "disappear".

I just spent many days working on a Disavow project, and the first thing we did to our spreadsheet of links was sort out and delete all the NoFollows. What a mess if we misunderstood the effects of NoFollows!

Thanks you Chris and Gagan!

Your responses were fast and valuable

Setting up canonical tags for an old site. I really need advice on that darn backslash / at the end of the homepage URL.

We have incoming links to the homepage as http://www.mysite.com (without the backslash), and as http://www.mysite.com/ (with the backslash), and as http://www.mysite.com/index.html

I know that there should be 301 redirects to just one version, but I need to know more about the canonical tags...

Which should the canonical tag be???

(without the backslash)

or

(with the backslash)

Thanks for your help!