Desperately seeking advise !!!

I have an issue with two sites. Scenario.

- One site I have is about 5 years old, good page rank (5) lots of
back links according to google, dmoz listing, yahoo listing. Site
theme and content deal with Internet Technology Services. The site is
on its own IP and server.

- Second site I just setup and launched, shortly received page rank
(2) no dmoz listing, has a yahoo listing. This site is also on its own
ip and own server. Completely different theme than the first. The web
site finally started leaking into search results.

Now my problem: During a DNS upgrade, the first sites bind file was
somehow routed to the ip and server of the second site, this caused
any requests for the first sites domain to go to the second sites
website. Google, yahoo and some other search engines came to the first
domain for their crawling and of course started indexing information
from the second site. I finally caught the issue when I noticed
referrers coming from the first domain! I immediately corrected the
problem of the dns issue but some indexed information is still coming
in?

Question 1: Do you think one of the sites will be penalized for this
mix-up? I surely do not want to get banned on either site.

Question 2: I know longer need to keep the first site/domain up but it
has so many backlinks and listing I do not just want to throw it away!
Is it possible to simply point the first domain to the second,
receiving a quite boost as well as dmoz listings etc... Or will this
hurt me in the long run?

Thanks All for the advice!

Does anyone have any advise for this type of situation??

Blake wrote in
<adb08a4b.0408131436.19948a40 (AT) posting (DOT) google.com>

Does anyone have any advise for this type of situation??

What type of situation?

--
PeterMcC
If you feel that any of the above is incorrect,
inappropriate or offensive in any way,
please ignore it and accept my apologies.

On 12 Aug 2004 18:23:36 -0700, blake (AT) shopwhatcom (DOT) com (Blake) wrote:

I have an issue with two sites. Scenario.

- One site I have is about 5 years old, good page rank (5) lots of
back links according to google, dmoz listing, yahoo listing. Site
theme and content deal with Internet Technology Services. The site is
on its own IP and server.

- Second site I just setup and launched, shortly received page rank
(2) no dmoz listing, has a yahoo listing. This site is also on its own
ip and own server. Completely different theme than the first. The web
site finally started leaking into search results.

Now my problem: During a DNS upgrade, the first sites bind file was
somehow routed to the ip and server of the second site, this caused
any requests for the first sites domain to go to the second sites
website. Google, yahoo and some other search engines came to the first
domain for their crawling and of course started indexing information
from the second site. I finally caught the issue when I noticed
referrers coming from the first domain! I immediately corrected the
problem of the dns issue but some indexed information is still coming
in?

Question 1: Do you think one of the sites will be penalized for this
mix-up? I surely do not want to get banned on either site.

Hi,

Unlikely to get a penalty per se, but you might see some problems in
the short term.

If I understand you correctly what you basically did as a search
engine spider would see it is, remove site 1s content and replace it
with site 2 for a short period of time then put it all back again.
This resulted in some of site 2s content becoming indexed on site 1.

Is that basically what has happened?

If so any problems will be short term. Your biggest problem will be
based on how long this mistake wasn't spotted for.

If it's under a week then I'd say the only problem will be some of
sites 2s pages will be indexed on site 1, probably not very many
though.

If a month you might see some of site ones pages getting dropped from
the index, but with the what I've been seeing with Google lately you
are more likely for any problems to manifest themselves as pages with
no cache. This will likely be a short term problem since as Google
respiders your site it will re index the pages content.

If it was much longer than a month, then some pages may of been
removed completely from the index loosing their SERPs. It will be like
starting again for those pages.

Question 2: I know longer need to keep the first site/domain up but it
has so many backlinks and listing I do not just want to throw it away!
Is it possible to simply point the first domain to the second,
receiving a quite boost as well as dmoz listings etc... Or will this
hurt me in the long run?

You can use a 301 redirect of the 1st domain to the 2nd and the second
should gain the firsts backlinks for any pages you do the redirect
for. So if you have any external links to internal pages you should do
a redirect from each page to a relevant page on the new site.

The only problem with this is you say the two sites are on different
themes. This means when you do the redirect the SERPs aren't going to
be relevant to the new site and since the content of the new site will
be different you will likely loose the first sites SERPs. You'll
likely keep any that you have that are mostly due to links/anchor text
and loose those that have a significant page content element.

I would keep both sites up and link the first site to the second. One
link from every page to the second sites home page isn't excessive.

In the past I've tried multiple links (i.e. the top 3 pages of another
site) to the same site from a complete site, but in general I shy away
from this now and stick to one link per domain from each page.

Thanks All for the advice!

David
--
http://www.search-engine-optimization-services.co.uk/

From Someone...

Question 2: I know longer need to keep the first site/domain up but it
has so many backlinks and listing I do not just want to throw it away!
Is it possible to simply point the first domain to the second,
receiving a quite boost as well as dmoz listings etc... Or will this
hurt me in the long run?

Link like this: Use the site that has lots of backlinks and pr that you
don't care about to feed the important site you do care about. Stick a
link on every single page of the site you don't care about to the site
you do care about using your main keywords for the anchor text of the
link but don't link back from the page you care about to the page you
don't care about. It's called one way linking and it works.

Question 2: I know longer need to keep the first site/domain up but it
has so many backlinks and listing I do not just want to throw it away!
Is it possible to simply point the first domain to the second,
receiving a quite boost as well as dmoz listings etc... Or will this
hurt me in the long run?

You can use a 301 redirect of the 1st domain to the 2nd and the second
should gain the firsts backlinks for any pages you do the redirect
for. So if you have any external links to internal pages you should do
a redirect from each page to a relevant page on the new site.

The only problem with this is you say the two sites are on different
themes. This means when you do the redirect the SERPs aren't going to
be relevant to the new site and since the content of the new site will
be different you will likely loose the first sites SERPs. You'll
likely keep any that you have that are mostly due to links/anchor text
and loose those that have a significant page content element.

I would keep both sites up and link the first site to the second. One
link from every page to the second sites home page isn't excessive.

In the past I've tried multiple links (i.e. the top 3 pages of another
site) to the same site from a complete site, but in general I shy away
from this now and stick to one link per domain from each page.

Thanks All for the advice!

David

David, thanks for the response! You hit the nail on the head with the
problem, the problem was very short lived maybe a couple of days but
in those two days the engines must have done quite alot of spidering
as they figured domain 1 now has a whole lot of new links and content!

Also great advise on the question 2, I will keep both domains
seperate, just in case I ever wish to activate the old business.

You mentioned linking from domain 1 (good page rank, etc.. site) over
to the home page of domain 2? I have done this already but am curious,
should I have a link from domain 2 back to the home page of domain 1
or just leave it one-way?

Thanks Again!!

On 14 Aug 2004 09:06:21 -0700, blake (AT) shopwhatcom (DOT) com (Blake) wrote:

David, thanks for the response! You hit the nail on the head with the
problem, the problem was very short lived maybe a couple of days but
in those two days the engines must have done quite alot of spidering
as they figured domain 1 now has a whole lot of new links and content!

Depending on the site and frequency of spidering a couple of days
could of easily been missed by most spiders. Sounds like you were
unlucky and made the error whilst Google was spidering :-)

Also great advise on the question 2, I will keep both domains
seperate, just in case I ever wish to activate the old business.

I have the same situation with a site, pulled the shopping basket in
March since we had problems obtaining stock. Will probably reopen the
shop to orders when I get around to finding new suppliers, until then
I'm doing nothing with the domain (leaving the content as it is minus
ordering system). This way it will take about 5 minutes to be up and
running taking orders.

You mentioned linking from domain 1 (good page rank, etc.. site) over
to the home page of domain 2? I have done this already but am curious,
should I have a link from domain 2 back to the home page of domain 1
or just leave it one-way?

Since you aren't actively interested in the SERPs of domain 1 I'd not
link back. You might see a reduction in the SERPs for site 1 (all
depends on the number of pages, PR and number of links from the
pages), but the site shouldn't be too difficult to bring back up to
speed in the future. If you ever plan to reopen site 1 to business
then consider a link back from site 2 a few months before the
reopening.

Thanks Again!!

No problem.

David
--
http://www.search-engine-optimization-services.co.uk/