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
-
Should I no-index categories of my blog?
I have blog with lots of articles & it also has lots of categories. These categories are currently indexed in the google and moz showing missing title and description for these categories. Should I place no-index tag in all the categories or leave it as it is?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jhakasseo0 -
Indexing is live what about rankings ?
I noticed that when I request indexing in the webmaster tool my new content is live within minutes. Does it take longer to update the ranking or is the ranking updated as soon as the new page has been indexed. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
How would you handle these pages? Should they be indexed?
If a site has about 100 pages offering specific discounts for employees at various companies, for example... mysite.com/discounts/target mysite.com/discounts/kohls mysite.com/discounts/jcpenney and all these pages are nearly 100% duplicates, how would you handle them? My recommendation to my client was to use noindex, follow. These pages tend to receive backlinks from the actual companies receiving the discounts, so obviously they are valuable from a linking standpoint. But say the content is nearly identical between each page; should they be indexed? Is there any value for someone at Kohl's, for example, to be able to find this landing page in the search results? Here is a live example of what I am talking about: https://www.google.com/search?num=100&safe=active&rlz=1C1WPZB_enUS735US735&q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fpoi8.petinsurance.com%2Fbenefits%2F&oq=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fpoi8.petinsurance.com%2Fbenefits%2F&gs_l=serp.3...7812.8453.0.8643.6.6.0.0.0.0.174.646.3j3.6.0....0...1c.1.64.serp..0.5.586...0j35i39k1j0i131k1j0i67k1j0i131i67k1j0i131i46k1j46i131k1j0i20k1j0i10i3k1.RyIhsU0Yz4E
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FPD_NYC0 -
Index or noindex mobile version?
We have a website called imones.lt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FCRMediaLietuva
and we have a mobile version for it m.imones.lt We originally put noindex for m.imones.lt. Is it a good decision or no? We believe that if google indexes both it creates double content. We definitely don't want that? But when someone through google goes to any of imones.lt webpage using smartphone they are redirected to m.imones.lt/whatever Thank you for your opinion.0 -
Blogs and E-Commerce websites
I have recently launched an e-commerce website which has a whopping domain authority of 1! I was thinking about adding a blog to it (it's in open cart), but that would mean creating it in a wordpress but using the same domain name. Would this be beneficial from an SEO stand point (i.e sending traffic to w blog that isn't actually on the e-commerce website itself) , or am I better off creating content as blogs/articles on other people sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lindsayjhopkins0 -
Linking Within Website
Hello - I have about 10 landing pages that I am focusing on ranking for and I'm doing okay. My question is should I have all these pages on a drop down menu from my home page or is the innerlinking too much? http://www.kasplacement.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ksundheim10 -
Purpose of a Blog in a website
How internal blog or external blog is helpful in SEO?why it is good to have a site with blog?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alick3000 -
Best Product URL For Indexing
My proposed URL: mydomain.com/products/category/subcategory/product detail Puts my products 4 levels deep. Is this too deep to get my products indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | waynekolenchuk0