We operate an e-tail web site and have archieved very favorable Google search rankings. We have a need to take the site down for 8-10 hours and since Googlebot usually hits us every day, we'd like to know the most Google 'search friendly' technique to ensure that this temporary outage doesn't affect our search rankings. We are currently planning on doing a simply site maintenace page but not sure if that's the right approach-??
If you have another host to put a page explaining that your are currently undergoing maintenance (this helps your users), you could set up a "307 Temporary Redirect" to that page, which will tell Google that the new page is only temporary.
> We operate an e-tail web site and have archieved very favorable Google > search rankings. We have a need to take the site down for 8-10 hours > and since Googlebot usually hits us every day, we'd like to know the > most Google 'search friendly' technique to ensure that this temporary > outage doesn't affect our search rankings. We are currently planning > on doing a simply site maintenace page but not sure if that's the > right approach-??
Thanks for stopping by again! ShoreTel is on the right track about returning a 307. Googlebot may index the new content, but should also continue to crawl the original URL, and any ranking or snippet hiccoughs should disappear after we crawl your restored site.
However, you should probably consider returning a '503 Service Unavailable' with a 'Retry-After' header indicating when you expect your site to be back up. This is a more by-the-books way of explaining that your site is down for maintenance, and you can still send along a page explaining the error. Under most situations, Googlebot will not index your error page, and will come back looking for updates some time after the date specified in the 'Return-After' header.
Either way, good luck with your server upgrade! -Bergy
> If you have another host to put a page explaining that your are > currently undergoing maintenance (this helps your users), you could > set up a "307 Temporary Redirect" to that page, which will tell Google > that the new page is only temporary.
> On Oct 26, 7:44 am, Business-Supply.com wrote:
> > All,
> > We operate an e-tail web site and have archieved very favorable Google > > search rankings. We have a need to take the site down for 8-10 hours > > and since Googlebot usually hits us every day, we'd like to know the > > most Google 'search friendly' technique to ensure that this temporary > > outage doesn't affect our search rankings. We are currently planning > > on doing a simply site maintenace page but not sure if that's the > > right approach-??
> Thanks for stopping by again! ShoreTel is on the right track about > returning a 307. Googlebot may index the new content, but should also > continue to crawl the original URL, and any ranking or snippet > hiccoughs should disappear after we crawl your restored site.
> However, you should probably consider returning a '503 Service > Unavailable' with a 'Retry-After' header indicating when you expect > your site to be back up. This is a more by-the-books way of > explaining that your site is down for maintenance, and you can still > send along a page explaining the error. Under most situations, > Googlebot will not index your error page, and will come back looking > for updates some time after the date specified in the 'Return-After' > header.
> Either way, good luck with your server upgrade! > -Bergy
> On Oct 26, 10:11 am, ShoreTel wrote:
> > If you have another host to put a page explaining that your are > > currently undergoing maintenance (this helps your users), you could > > set up a "307 Temporary Redirect" to that page, which will tell Google > > that the new page is only temporary.
> > On Oct 26, 7:44 am, Business-Supply.com wrote:
> > > All,
> > > We operate an e-tail web site and have archieved very favorable Google > > > search rankings. We have a need to take the site down for 8-10 hours > > > and since Googlebot usually hits us every day, we'd like to know the > > > most Google 'search friendly' technique to ensure that this temporary > > > outage doesn't affect our search rankings. We are currently planning > > > on doing a simply site maintenace page but not sure if that's the > > > right approach-??
