There has been an awful lot of people coming to the group with their entire site still indexed and cached except the home page. This doesn't seem like another -950, -30, MSSA conspiracy theory WMW penalty but a real problem.
Is there a possiblity to get a Googler to at least acknowledge that they've taken notice to the multitude of questions?
There is no where to point them to unless of course it's been discussed on www.searchenginewebsitelandforumMOZroundtable.com, and I haven't seen it. If so could you tell us where you are officially giving people guidance?
> There has been an awful lot of people coming to the group with their > entire site still indexed and cached except the home page. This > doesn't seem like another -950, -30, MSSA conspiracy theory WMW > penalty but a real problem.
> Is there a possiblity to get a Googler to at least acknowledge that > they've taken notice to the multitude of questions?
> There is no where to point them to unless of course it's been > discussed onwww.searchenginewebsitelandforumMOZroundtable.com, and I > haven't seen it. If so could you tell us where you are officially > giving people guidance?
> There has been an awful lot of people coming to the group with their > entire site still indexed and cached except the home page. This > doesn't seem like another -950, -30, MSSA conspiracy theory WMW > penalty but a real problem.
> Is there a possiblity to get a Googler to at least acknowledge that > they've taken notice to the multitude of questions?
> There is no where to point them to unless of course it's been > discussed onwww.searchenginewebsitelandforumMOZroundtable.com, and I > haven't seen it. If so could you tell us where you are officially > giving people guidance?
Yes - please can someone help? This is costing my business "big- time" and the worst is that I have no idea why the home page index and its cache have disappeared and so can seemingly do absolutely zip to try resolve the problem. If Google were just to acknowledge this...I'd wait patiently for the fix...and if they were to reply saying "nothing wrong on their side"...at least we all could get working on what we need to do to make our sites re-appear..
> There has been an awful lot of people coming to the group with their > entire site still indexed and cached except the homepage. This > doesn't seem like another -950, -30, MSSA conspiracy theory WMW > penalty but a real problem.
> Is there a possiblity to get a Googler to at least acknowledge that > they've taken notice to the multitude of questions?
> There isnowhere to point them to unless of course it's been > discussed onwww.searchenginewebsitelandforumMOZroundtable.com, and I > haven't seen it. If so could you tell us where you are officially > giving people guidance?
> Yes - please can someone help? This is costing my business "big- > time" and the worst is that I have no idea why the home page index and > its cache have disappeared and so can seemingly do absolutely zip to > try resolve the problem. If Google were just to acknowledge this...I'd > wait patiently for the fix...and if they were to reply saying "nothing > wrong on their side"...at least we all could get working on what we > need to do to make our sites re-appear..
Howdy,
I've been waiting for over two years now for Google to resolve their problems with corrupted data and the trash their scripts generate on their cheap overloaded Linux servers.
They are aware of it but won't spend the money to buy a commercial grade operating system with memory isolation or add enough servers with good load balancing to stop the memory overlaps between too many executing scripts.
They also won't spend the money for properly qualified web designers, much less real webmasters.
> > Yes - please can someone help? This is costing my business "big- > > time" and the worst is that I have no idea why the home page index and > > its cache have disappeared and so can seemingly do absolutely zip to > > try resolve the problem. If Google were just to acknowledge this...I'd > > wait patiently for the fix...and if they were to reply saying "nothing > > wrong on their side"...at least we all could get working on what we > > need to do to make our sites re-appear..
> Howdy,
> I've been waiting for over two years now for Google to resolve their > problems with corrupted data and the trash their scripts generate on > their cheap overloaded Linux servers.
> They are aware of it but won't spend the money to buy a commercial > grade operating system with memory isolation or add enough servers > with good load balancing to stop the memory overlaps between too many > executing scripts.
> They also won't spend the money for properly qualified web designers, > much less real webmasters.
> > > Yes - please can someone help? This is costing my business "big- > > > time" and the worst is that I have no idea why the home page index and > > > its cache have disappeared and so can seemingly do absolutely zip to > > > try resolve the problem. If Google were just to acknowledge this...I'd > > > wait patiently for the fix...and if they were to reply saying "nothing > > > wrong on their side"...at least we all could get working on what we > > > need to do to make our sites re-appear..
> > Howdy,
> > I've been waiting for over two years now for Google to resolve their > > problems with corrupted data and the trash their scripts generate on > > their cheap overloaded Linux servers.
> > They are aware of it but won't spend the money to buy a commercial > > grade operating system with memory isolation or add enough servers > > with good load balancing to stop the memory overlaps between too many > > executing scripts.
> > They also won't spend the money for properly qualified web designers, > > much less real webmasters.
> > > Yes - please can someone help? This is costing my business "big- > > > time" and the worst is that I have no idea why the home page index and > > > its cache have disappeared and so can seemingly do absolutely zip to > > > try resolve the problem. If Google were just to acknowledge this...I'd > > > wait patiently for the fix...and if they were to reply saying "nothing > > > wrong on their side"...at least we all could get working on what we > > > need to do to make our sites re-appear..
> > Howdy,
> > I've been waiting for over two years now for Google to resolve their > > problems with corrupted data and the trash their scripts generate on > > their cheap overloaded Linux servers.
> > They are aware of it but won't spend the money to buy a commercial > > grade operating system with memory isolation or add enough servers > > with good load balancing to stop the memory overlaps between too many > > executing scripts.
> > They also won't spend the money for properly qualified web designers, > > much less real webmasters.
If you've suddenly dropped from the index, check to make sure you do not have any key spam items that would flag Google to think that your site is spam. One of the more common items is duplicate content. Check to make sure you do not have sub-domains that have the exact same content, or other pages that are running on different URLs, but contain the same content.
That may not be the complete answer, but it's a start.
Keep in mind that once you've resolved problems on your end, it still takes time to get re-indexed.
> > Yes - please can someone help? This is costing my business "big- > > time" and the worst is that I have no idea why the home pageindexand > > itscachehave disappeared and so can seemingly do absolutely zip to > > try resolve the problem. If Google were just to acknowledge this...I'd > > wait patiently for the fix...and if they were to reply saying "nothing > > wrong on their side"...at least we all could get working on what we > > need to do to make our sites re-appear..
> Howdy,
> I've been waiting for over two years now for Google to resolve their > problems with corrupted data and the trash their scripts generate on > their cheap overloaded Linux servers.
> They are aware of it but won't spend the money to buy a commercial > grade operating system with memory isolation or add enough servers > with good load balancing to stop the memory overlaps between too many > executing scripts.
> They also won't spend the money for properly qualified web designers, > much less real webmasters.
> If you've suddenly dropped from the index, check to make sure you do > not have any key spam items that would flag Google to think that your > site is spam. One of the more common items is duplicate content. Check > to make sure you do not have sub-domains that have the exact same > content, or other pages that are running on different URLs, but > contain the same content.
> That may not be the complete answer, but it's a start.
> Keep in mind that once you've resolved problems on your end, it still > takes time to get re-indexed.
> On Sep 8, 1:27 pm, Chris Gunn wrote:
> > On Sep 8, 4:27 am, SteveG wrote:
> > > Yes - please can someone help? This is costing my business "big- > > > time" and the worst is that I have no idea why the home pageindexand > > > itscachehave disappeared and so can seemingly do absolutely zip to > > > try resolve the problem. If Google were just to acknowledge this...I'd > > > wait patiently for the fix...and if they were to reply saying "nothing > > > wrong on their side"...at least we all could get working on what we > > > need to do to make our sites re-appear..
> > Howdy,
> > I've been waiting for over two years now for Google to resolve their > > problems with corrupted data and the trash their scripts generate on > > their cheap overloaded Linux servers.
> > They are aware of it but won't spend the money to buy a commercial > > grade operating system with memory isolation or add enough servers > > with good load balancing to stop the memory overlaps between too many > > executing scripts.
> > They also won't spend the money for properly qualified web designers, > > much less real webmasters.
> I don't think duplicate content will get you deindexed when Google > just went out of their way to explain how they handle URLs that are > duplicated.
> > If you've suddenly dropped from the index, check to make sure you do > > not have any key spam items that would flag Google to think that your > > site is spam. One of the more common items is duplicate content. Check > > to make sure you do not have sub-domains that have the exact same > > content, or other pages that are running on different URLs, but > > contain the same content.
> > That may not be the complete answer, but it's a start.
> > Keep in mind that once you've resolved problems on your end, it still > > takes time to get re-indexed.
> > On Sep 8, 1:27 pm, Chris Gunn wrote:
> > > On Sep 8, 4:27 am, SteveG wrote:
> > > > Yes - please can someone help? This is costing my business "big- > > > > time" and the worst is that I have no idea why the home pageindexand > > > > itscachehave disappeared and so can seemingly do absolutely zip to > > > > try resolve the problem. If Google were just to acknowledge this...I'd > > > > wait patiently for the fix...and if they were to reply saying "nothing > > > > wrong on their side"...at least we all could get working on what we > > > > need to do to make our sites re-appear..
> > > Howdy,
> > > I've been waiting for over two years now for Google to resolve their > > > problems with corrupted data and the trash their scripts generate on > > > their cheap overloaded Linux servers.
> > > They are aware of it but won't spend the money to buy a commercial > > > grade operating system with memory isolation or add enough servers > > > with good load balancing to stop the memory overlaps between too many > > > executing scripts.
> > > They also won't spend the money for properly qualified web designers, > > > much less real webmasters.
Quite agree. I still see occasional sites that seem perfectly indexed except the actual home page is nowhere to be found, even on a site: search when there are only four pages on the site. Google shows three of 'em but not the index.html - it's really weird and it would be nice to know that Google is at least aware it's happening.
The other search engines don't seem to have this deficiency.
Has anyone discovered a solution to this issue? It's really begining to irritate. Especially as my server logs show that googlebot is visiting my homepage often.
> Quite agree. I still see occasional sites that seem perfectly indexed > except the actual home page is nowhere to be found, even on a site: > search when there are only four pages on the site. Google shows three > of 'em but not the index.html - it's really weird and it would be nice > to know that Google is at least aware it's happening.
> The other search engines don't seem to have this deficiency.
> Has anyone discovered a solution to this issue? It's really begining > to irritate. Especially as my server logs show that googlebot is > visiting my homepage often.
Hi all-- Although there'd be a nice sense of closure in being able to say that these incidents were all due to a single cause, or could all be resolved by a one-time fix, after sleuthing around it seems such is not the case. I looked into six sites who had reported that their homepage wasn't indexed, and in each case it was due to something different.
The good news is that out of these six, five now have their homepages indexed. Most cases were due to some sort of temporary error that resolved itself in a subsequent crawl. But what was going on, and what can you as a webmaster do to prevent or resolve such a situation?
1) Check your server's health. Most of these pages were unavailable (in some fashion) when we tried to crawl them. The more uptime you have, the more likely it is that your content will be available for us to crawl. If we can't crawl it, we can't index it.
2) Make sure that, if your server does go down or your site becomes unavailable, it sends the correct error or status. Of course, no one has 100% uptime. But returning the correct status while your server is down can influence how Googlebot subsequently crawls your site. Imagine calling a friend and hearing this message on their voicemail: "Thanks for calling; I've stepped out to lunch for a bit, please call back later." You'll probably try calling them back in an hour or two, right? Whereas if you heard this message: "Hey; I'm on vacation in the Adirondacks all this month with no cell phone service," you're probably going to wait several weeks before trying to reach them again. The same is true of Googlebot; if your site is sending the message "I don't exist anymore" when it really only needed a 503 (Temporarily Unavailable), we may wait some time before attempting to recrawl it, even if its actual downtime is very brief.
3) If you have several ways of accessing your homepage, think about which one you want to be the official ("canonical") version, and redirect the others to that version. One of these sites had its homepage content accessible via more than one URL, and the URL that Google chose to index wasn't the homepage URL. Check out Maile's post on duplicate content for more details about causes and solutions: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/google-duplicate-c...
4) Get custom error pages. One of the sites in question returned an error page for awhile: "We're having server trouble, please stay tuned." However, other sites hosted by the same hosting company were also returning that same page (it looked like a template error page provided by the hosting company). Since we saw that same content on more than one URL, we ended up only indexing one version of it, and (to the dismay of the webmaster who reported it here) it wasn't his version.
5) Make sure that your Sitemap is up to date. If your homepage hasn't gotten crawled for awhile, make sure that you have a Sitemap that lists your homepage URL. Although a Sitemap doesn't guarantee that we'll crawl all listed URLs, it's a good way of letting us know that that URL is important to you and that you want it included in our crawl. A Sitemap can also help with #3 above; if we find several URLs on your site that point to the same content, but only one of them is in your Sitemap, we'll use that URL as the canonical URL.
6) Give it time. I know how webmasters love hearing this, especially since even a day can seem like an eternity in internet-time; but see #2 above. If your server has told Googlebot that it's down for the count, sometimes the only thing you can do (after trying #1-5 above!) is to keep your server healthy and wait until we come back to crawl again.
When you say 6) Give it time - what kind of time frame are we talking about? Some of these posters mentioned Google hitting their site regularly even while it wasn't showing and is that an indication that you will be able to expect things to jump back into place within a few days/weeks/months?
How about a site like ours that has been penalized for 5 months yet isn't breaching any of Google's terms? Is this due to the hour or two of downtime we suffered a few days before the drop when we changed server locations?!
> Hi all-- > Although there'd be a nice sense of closure in being able to say that > these incidents were all due to a single cause, or could all be > resolved by a one-time fix, after sleuthing around it seems such is > not the case. I looked into six sites who had reported that their > homepage wasn't indexed, and in each case it was due to something > different.
> The good news is that out of these six, five now have their homepages > indexed. Most cases were due to some sort of temporary error that > resolved itself in a subsequent crawl. But what was going on, and what > can you as a webmaster do to prevent or resolve such a situation?
> 1) Check your server's health. > Most of these pages were unavailable (in some fashion) when we tried > to crawl them. The more uptime you have, the more likely it is that > your content will be available for us to crawl. If we can't crawl it, > we can't index it.
> 2) Make sure that, if your server does go down or your site becomes > unavailable, it sends the correct error or status. > Of course, no one has 100% uptime. But returning the correct status > while your server is down can influence how Googlebot subsequently > crawls your site. Imagine calling a friend and hearing this message on > their voicemail: "Thanks for calling; I've stepped out to lunch for a > bit, please call back later." You'll probably try calling them back in > an hour or two, right? Whereas if you heard this message: "Hey; I'm on > vacation in the Adirondacks all this month with no cell phone > service," you're probably going to wait several weeks before trying to > reach them again. > The same is true of Googlebot; if your site is sending the message "I > don't exist anymore" when it really only needed a 503 (Temporarily > Unavailable), we may wait some time before attempting to recrawl it, > even if its actual downtime is very brief.
> 3) If you have several ways of accessing your homepage, think about > which one you want to be the official ("canonical") version, and > redirect the others to that version. > One of these sites had its homepage content accessible via more than > one URL, and the URL that Google chose to index wasn't the homepage > URL. Check out Maile's post on duplicate content for more details > about causes and solutions:http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/google-duplicate-c...
> 4) Get custom error pages. > One of the sites in question returned an error page for awhile: "We're > having server trouble, please stay tuned." However, other sites hosted > by the same hosting company were also returning that same page (it > looked like a template error page provided by the hosting company). > Since we saw that same content on more than one URL, we ended up only > indexing one version of it, and (to the dismay of the webmaster who > reported it here) it wasn't his version.
> 5) Make sure that your Sitemap is up to date. > If your homepage hasn't gotten crawled for awhile, make sure that you > have a Sitemap that lists your homepage URL. Although a Sitemap > doesn't guarantee that we'll crawl all listed URLs, it's a good way of > letting us know that that URL is important to you and that you want it > included in our crawl. > A Sitemap can also help with #3 above; if we find several URLs on your > site that point to the same content, but only one of them is in your > Sitemap, we'll use that URL as the canonical URL.
> 6) Give it time. > I know how webmasters love hearing this, especially since even a day > can seem like an eternity in internet-time; but see #2 above. If your > server has told Googlebot that it's down for the count, sometimes the > only thing you can do (after trying #1-5 above!) is to keep your > server healthy and wait until we come back to crawl again.
Thanks for the information. I have a specific question I hope you can address:
I am the webmaster for a small hotel in Gutemala near Tikal. The site I built for the hotel has been number 1 on Google for the last 7 years. A month ago I upgraded the site with the hosting service to a secure site with security certificate. About two weeks ago the site dropped out of Google's index. I am baffled as is the owner of the site. Business has dropped off as Google was one of our major sources for visitors to the hotel.
Yesterday, I registered through Google's process, and got it verified/ authenticated and made sure the site was 'ok' (though it has been number 1 for all this time) and had someone else look at it.
Any suggestions or insight will be very very very helpful. the site's owner is considering paying a good deal of money to 'correct' this, but I am not certain of what will help get the site restored or at least indexed and ranked higher.
Thanks in advance and I would appreciate an email if you have time as I am struggling with the myriad links to get to this page.
> Hi all-- > Although there'd be a nice sense of closure in being able to say that > these incidents were all due to a single cause, or could all be > resolved by a one-time fix, after sleuthing around it seems such is > not the case. I looked into six sites who had reported that their > homepage wasn't indexed, and in each case it was due to something > different.
> The good news is that out of these six, five now have their homepages > indexed. Most cases were due to some sort of temporary error that > resolved itself in a subsequent crawl. But what was going on, and what > can you as a webmaster do to prevent or resolve such a situation?
> 1) Check your server's health. > Most of these pages were unavailable (in some fashion) when we tried > to crawl them. The more uptime you have, the more likely it is that > your content will be available for us to crawl. If we can't crawl it, > we can't index it.
> 2) Make sure that, if your server does go down or your site becomes > unavailable, it sends the correct error or status. > Of course, no one has 100% uptime. But returning the correct status > while your server is down can influence how Googlebot subsequently > crawls your site. Imagine calling a friend and hearing this message on > their voicemail: "Thanks for calling; I've stepped out to lunch for a > bit, please call back later." You'll probably try calling them back in > an hour or two, right? Whereas if you heard this message: "Hey; I'm on > vacation in the Adirondacks all this month with no cell phone > service," you're probably going to wait several weeks before trying to > reach them again. > The same is true of Googlebot; if your site is sending the message "I > don't exist anymore" when it really only needed a 503 (Temporarily > Unavailable), we may wait some time before attempting to recrawl it, > even if its actual downtime is very brief.
> 3) If you have several ways of accessing your homepage, think about > which one you want to be the official ("canonical") version, and > redirect the others to that version. > One of these sites had its homepage content accessible via more than > one URL, and the URL that Google chose to index wasn't the homepage > URL. Check out Maile's post on duplicate content for more details > about causes and solutions:http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/google-duplicate-c...
> 4) Get custom error pages. > One of the sites in question returned an error page for awhile: "We're > having server trouble, please stay tuned." However, other sites hosted > by the same hosting company were also returning that same page (it > looked like a template error page provided by the hosting company). > Since we saw that same content on more than one URL, we ended up only > indexing one version of it, and (to the dismay of the webmaster who > reported it here) it wasn't his version.
> 5) Make sure that your Sitemap is up to date. > If your homepage hasn't gotten crawled for awhile, make sure that you > have a Sitemap that lists your homepage URL. Although a Sitemap > doesn't guarantee that we'll crawl all listed URLs, it's a good way of > letting us know that that URL is important to you and that you want it > included in our crawl. > A Sitemap can also help with #3 above; if we find several URLs on your > site that point to the same content, but only one of them is in your > Sitemap, we'll use that URL as the canonical URL.
> 6) Give it time. > I know how webmasters love hearing this, especially since even a day > can seem like an eternity in internet-time; but see #2 above. If your > server has told Googlebot that it's down for the count, sometimes the > only thing you can do (after trying #1-5 above!) is to keep your > server healthy and wait until we come back to crawl again.
Thanks for the reply Susan, but my home page is gone again. What is there about the home page that makes it the first to disappear when things go amiss? Why is Google perfectly happy with the rest of my site, but not the home page? My site is w3c compliant throughout, has totally unique content, has many links from it to the outside world and vice versa etc. etc. My hat is so white that it is blinding, but still Google ignores my home page. Yahoo and MSN have had absolutely no problem with my home page or the rest of the site, they update pages within 3 days of any changes. Google reads my robots.txt file every day or so, so just what is it doing with it when it reads it? This has been happening for over a year and a half now, so patience does not seem to be the answer. Could you please just kill a few chickens for me and sprinkle the blood over the servers where my site is indexed? I will light a few candles at this end.
> Thanks for the information. I have a specific question I hope you can > address:
> I am the webmaster for a small hotel in Gutemala near Tikal. The site > I built for the hotel has been number 1 on Google for the last 7 > years. A month ago I upgraded the site with the hosting service to a > secure site with security certificate. About two weeks ago the site > dropped out of Google's index. I am baffled as is the owner of the > site. Business has dropped off as Google was one of our major sources > for visitors to the hotel.
> Yesterday, I registered through Google's process, and got it verified/ > authenticated and made sure the site was 'ok' (though it has been > number 1 for all this time) and had someone else look at it.
> Any suggestions or insight will be very very very helpful. the site's > owner is considering paying a good deal of money to 'correct' this, > but I am not certain of what will help get the site restored or at > least indexed and ranked higher.
> Thanks in advance and I would appreciate an email if you have time as > I am struggling with the myriad links to get to this page.
> > Hi all-- > > Although there'd be a nice sense of closure in being able to say that > > these incidents were all due to a single cause, or could all be > > resolved by a one-time fix, after sleuthing around it seems such is > > not the case. I looked into six sites who had reported that their > > homepage wasn't indexed, and in each case it was due to something > > different.
> > The good news is that out of these six, five now have their homepages > > indexed. Most cases were due to some sort of temporary error that > > resolved itself in a subsequent crawl. But what was going on, and what > > can you as a webmaster do to prevent or resolve such a situation?
> > 1) Check your server's health. > > Most of these pages were unavailable (in some fashion) when we tried > > to crawl them. The more uptime you have, the more likely it is that > > your content will be available for us to crawl. If we can't crawl it, > > we can't index it.
> > 2) Make sure that, if your server does go down or your site becomes > > unavailable, it sends the correct error or status. > > Of course, no one has 100% uptime. But returning the correct status > > while your server is down can influence how Googlebot subsequently > > crawls your site. Imagine calling a friend and hearing this message on > > their voicemail: "Thanks for calling; I've stepped out to lunch for a > > bit, please call back later." You'll probably try calling them back in > > an hour or two, right? Whereas if you heard this message: "Hey; I'm on > > vacation in the Adirondacks all this month with no cell phone > > service," you're probably going to wait several weeks before trying to > > reach them again. > > The same is true of Googlebot; if your site is sending the message "I > > don't exist anymore" when it really only needed a 503 (Temporarily > > Unavailable), we may wait some time before attempting to recrawl it, > > even if its actual downtime is very brief.
> > 3) If you have several ways of accessing your homepage, think about > > which one you want to be the official ("canonical") version, and > > redirect the others to that version. > > One of these sites had its homepage content accessible via more than > > one URL, and the URL that Google chose to index wasn't the homepage > > URL. Check out Maile's post on duplicate content for more details > > about causes and solutions:http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/google-duplicate-c...
> > 4) Get custom error pages. > > One of the sites in question returned an error page for awhile: "We're > > having server trouble, please stay tuned." However, other sites hosted > > by the same hosting company were also returning that same page (it > > looked like a template error page provided by the hosting company). > > Since we saw that same content on more than one URL, we ended up only > > indexing one version of it, and (to the dismay of the webmaster who > > reported it here) it wasn't his version.
> > 5) Make sure that your Sitemap is up to date. > > If your homepage hasn't gotten crawled for awhile, make sure that you > > have a Sitemap that lists your homepage URL. Although a Sitemap > > doesn't guarantee that we'll crawl all listed URLs, it's a good way of > > letting us know that that URL is important to you and that you want it > > included in our crawl. > > A Sitemap can also help with #3 above; if we find several URLs on your > > site that point to the same content, but only one of them is in your > > Sitemap, we'll use that URL as the canonical URL.
> > 6) Give it time. > > I know how webmasters love hearing this, especially since even a day > > can seem like an eternity in internet-time; but see #2 above. If your > > server has told Googlebot that it's down for the count, sometimes the > > only thing you can do (after trying #1-5 above!) is to keep your > > server healthy and wait until we come back to crawl again.
> Thanks for the reply Susan, but my home page is gone again. What is > there about the home page that makes it the first to disappear when > things go amiss?
Phil, you come up with the most amazing discoveries! That second link is beyond bizarre. I picked the non-www version in webmaster tools over a year ago. Freeservers won't let me do the 301 redirect. They have not allowed sites to have .htaccess files since about the end of August. (I know move somewhere else and be totally lost for the next six months.) None of this should have anything to do with whether Google can index my home page. If Yahoo can find and index the page, why can't Google?
> > Thanks for the reply Susan, but my home page is gone again. What is > > there about the home page that makes it the first to disappear when > > things go amiss?
Sara, you should move and it shouldn't mean you will be totally lost for the next six months. If you own that domain (faithweb.com), it's just a matter of changing host but that 'shouldn't' matter to the search engines. I put that in quotes, because I'm not so sure anymore, but theoretically it shouldn't :)
> Phil, you come up with the most amazing discoveries! That second link > is beyond bizarre. > I picked the non-www version in webmaster tools over a year ago. > Freeservers won't let me do the 301 redirect. They have not allowed > sites to have .htaccess files since about the end of August. (I know > move somewhere else and be totally lost for the next six months.) > None of this should have anything to do with whether Google can index > my home page. If Yahoo can find and index the page, why can't Google?
> On Oct 9, 1:53 pm, Phil Payne wrote:
> > > Thanks for the reply Susan, but my home page is gone again. What is > > > there about the home page that makes it the first to disappear when > > > things go amiss?
> I picked the non-www version in webmaster tools over a year ago. > Freeservers won't let me do the 301 redirect. They have not allowed > sites to have .htaccess files since about the end of August. (I know > move somewhere else and be totally lost for the next six months.)
You have to move.
As long as you retain the domain name, you will certainly not be "lost for six months".
I suggest moving, getting the 301 set up, clearing out any other rubbish and then submitting a reinclusion request from the Webmaster Tools console explaining the difficulties you had getting Google's recommended configuration from your old host.
If the move is done properly, the most you should be out is a day or so. With real skill and co-ordination between old and new suppliers, it could be minutes.
Thanks at lot Phil, I am convinced, I will look into moving. The problem is that freeservers owns faithweb.com. I don't know if I can own congregational.faithweb.com and simply move it to another server. Plus, I can't redirect from congregational.freeservers.com to a new URL. If you have any ideas how to move from this mess, I would be very grateful.
> > I picked the non-www version in webmaster tools over a year ago. > > Freeservers won't let me do the 301 redirect. They have not allowed > > sites to have .htaccess files since about the end of August. (I know > > move somewhere else and be totally lost for the next six months.)
> You have to move.
> As long as you retain the domain name, you will certainly not be "lost > for six months".
> I suggest moving, getting the 301 set up, clearing out any other > rubbish and then submitting a reinclusion request from the Webmaster > Tools console explaining the difficulties you had getting Google's > recommended configuration from your old host.
> If the move is done properly, the most you should be out is a day or > so. With real skill and co-ordination between old and new suppliers, > it could be minutes.
> Thanks at lot Phil, I am convinced, I will look into moving. The > problem is that freeservers owns faithweb.com. I don't know if I can > own congregational.faithweb.com and simply move it to another server. > Plus, I can't redirect from congregational.freeservers.com to a new > URL. If you have any ideas how to move from this mess, I would be > very grateful.
Then there's only the long and painful way.
Get your own new domain, get it set up, and get your pages loaded onto it. Having potentially to do this sort of thing is one good reason to use relative addressing within a site - with that, offline use in handhelds, and offline testing I can't understand Matt Cutts' supposed preference for complete URLs.
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