Dropped from Google

#1

"Murray R. Van Luyn" <vanluynm (AT) NOSPAM (DOT) iinet.net.au> wrote:

Quote:

Hi,

I had a commercial site setup in a directory of my homepage account.
Google listed maybe 90% of the 236 pages, and it did well for a while.

Then I registered 2 new domain names for the same site, and setup the 3
identical sites with the 3 different domain names. I submitted sitemaps
for all 3 sites to Google, and soon after they began to drop the pages
that were initially listed beneath my homepage. I haven't seen any of the
new site pages list yet, but Google's webmaster tools reported that they
accessed one the sites on the 12th, 17th and 19th of this month.

It sounds like you created duplicate content. Search engines don't like
that.

It's hard to say what to do without seeing the sites, but usually, the extra
domain names should do a 301 redirect to the main domain name. If there are
many extra domains, an IP funnel is another option.

Quote:

I've seen plenty of sites listed with Google that are exactly the same
site setup under different domain names. All the other major search
engines had no problems with there being 3 sites, and are currently adding
pages to all 3 sets of listings. Could this definitely be the problem that
I'm having with Google listings, or are there other likely causes?

That is probably the problem, but would need to see the sites. "Other
sites" will get away with things, especially if they are very old domain
names and have a lot of link popularity.

Quote:

Okay, so maybe Google don't want 3 identical sites for some unearthly
reason. How do I get just one of the sites listed with Google, without
having to take down the other 2 sites? Do I just remove 2 of the 3
sitemaps and listings in Google's webmaster tools? Please don't just tell
me yes if you do not know absolutely for sure. I'm finding PageRank and
search engines a very precise science, and I really only want the proven
facts to work with.

Generally, in a situation like what I think you are describing, one would
remove all duplicate sites from the Web entirely. The extra domains would
301 redirect to the main domain. There would only be a Webmaster Account
and sitemap for the one main domain name.

If you post the URLs I could take a look.

--
http://tips.webdesign10.com/

#2

"Murray R. Van Luyn" wrote ...

Quote:

Then I registered 2 new domain names for the same site, and setup the 3
identical sites with the 3 different domain names.

You can't have it all ways.

Have three sites and no Google, or one site and Google.
Your choice.
--

Andrew
Editor
http://www.seo2seo.com/

#3

Hi,

I had a commercial site setup in a directory of my homepage account. Google
listed maybe 90% of the 236 pages, and it did well for a while.

Then I registered 2 new domain names for the same site, and setup the 3
identical sites with the 3 different domain names. I submitted sitemaps for
all 3 sites to Google, and soon after they began to drop the pages that were
initially listed beneath my homepage. I haven't seen any of the new site
pages list yet, but Google's webmaster tools reported that they accessed one
the sites on the 12th, 17th and 19th of this month.

I've seen plenty of sites listed with Google that are exactly the same site
setup under different domain names. All the other major search engines had
no problems with there being 3 sites, and are currently adding pages to all
3 sets of listings. Could this definitely be the problem that I'm having
with Google listings, or are there other likely causes?

Okay, so maybe Google don't want 3 identical sites for some unearthly
reason. How do I get just one of the sites listed with Google, without
having to take down the other 2 sites? Do I just remove 2 of the 3 sitemaps
and listings in Google's webmaster tools? Please don't just tell me yes if
you do not know absolutely for sure. I'm finding PageRank and search engines
a very precise science, and I really only want the proven facts to work
with.

Thanks very much if you can help me with this one.

Regards,
Murray R. Van Luyn.
--
http://www.review-a-gadget.com/
http://members.iinet.net.au/~vanluynm/

#4

Hi 1100000,

"1100000" <see_reply-to_address (AT) invalid (DOT) invalid> wrote

Quote:

It sounds like you created duplicate content. Search engines don't like
that.

Oh. That's not good.

Quote:

Generally, in a situation like what I think you are describing, one would
remove all duplicate sites from the Web entirely. The extra domains would
301 redirect to the main domain. There would only be a Webmaster Account
and sitemap for the one main domain name.

Hmm. I don't really want to remove the other sites from the web just yet. I
have 2 of the sites heavily linked into the main site, and hopefully
bleeding PageRank into it. I guess I should try just the one site and
associated sitemap registered in Google's webmaster tools. If that doesn't
work after a month or so, then I suppose there's nothing else I can do.

Quote:

If you post the URLs I could take a look.

The 2 new sites aren't working just at the moment. Some very strange people
at 8052.com took major offence to my trying to trade inlinks for some of my
microcontroller software on their message board. I think the outage may have
something to do with that. We'll see what my brother can tell me has
happened to his server after he wakes up a little later.

http://www.review-a-gadget.com/
http://www.reviewagadget.com/
http://members.iinet.net.au/~vanluynm/Reviews/

Regards,
Murray R. Van Luyn.
--
http://www.review-a-gadget.com/
http://members.iinet.net.au/~vanluynm/

#5

Hi,

"Murray R. Van Luyn" <vanluynm (AT) NOSPAM (DOT) iinet.net.au> wrote

Quote:

Hmm. I don't really want to remove the other sites from the web just yet.
I have 2 of the sites heavily linked into the main site, and hopefully
bleeding PageRank into it. I guess I should try just the one site and
associated sitemap registered in Google's webmaster tools. If that doesn't
work after a month or so, then I suppose there's nothing else I can do.

How weird is this? Remove the sitemap, and Google starts relisting the
deleted pages!

Regards,
Murray R. Van Luyn.
--
http://www.review-a-gadget.com/
http://members.iinet.net.au/~vanluynm/

phantom96 · #6

robots.txt should allow you to block 2 of the 3 sites from the googlebot and avoid any duplicate content penalties shouldn't it? or am I missing something?

#7

Hi Andrew,

"Andrew Heenan" <andrew3 (AT) heenan (DOT) net> wrote

Quote:

You can't have it all ways.

Have three sites and no Google, or one site and Google.
Your choice.

Hmm, it's starting to look very much like the situation. Never the less, I
think I will persevere with the single webmaster tools sitemap and multiple
sites configuration for another week or two. I have plenty of time to waste
just now, and I'm very interested to see what happens.

I wonder if it would be possible to exclude just Google's webcrawler from
the 2 redundant sites with a robots.txt file? Maybe I'll give that a shot
later on, and see if it doesn't help me get the main site listed.

Thanks for the expert input Andrew.

Regards,
Murray R. Van Luyn.
--
http://www.review-a-gadget.com/
http://members.iinet.net.au/~vanluynm/

#8

On Sun, 21 Jan 2007 09:18:27 -0800, Murray R. Van Luyn <vanluynm (AT) NOSPAM (DOT) iinet.net.au> wrote:

Quote:

Hi,

I had a commercial site setup in a directory of my homepage account. Google
listed maybe 90% of the 236 pages, and it did well for a while.

Then I registered 2 new domain names for the same site, and setup the 3
identical sites with the 3 different domain names. I submitted sitemaps for
all 3 sites to Google, and soon after they began to drop the pages that were
initially listed beneath my homepage. I haven't seen any of the new site
pages list yet, but Google's webmaster tools reported that they accessed one
the sites on the 12th, 17th and 19th of this month.

I had such bad experience with sitemaps that I avoid them. I think
that they are not there for our benefit.

i

Quote:

I've seen plenty of sites listed with Google that are exactly the same site
setup under different domain names. All the other major search engines had
no problems with there being 3 sites, and are currently adding pages to all
3 sets of listings. Could this definitely be the problem that I'm having
with Google listings, or are there other likely causes?

Okay, so maybe Google don't want 3 identical sites for some unearthly
reason. How do I get just one of the sites listed with Google, without
having to take down the other 2 sites? Do I just remove 2 of the 3 sitemaps
and listings in Google's webmaster tools? Please don't just tell me yes if
you do not know absolutely for sure. I'm finding PageRank and search engines
a very precise science, and I really only want the proven facts to work
with.

Thanks very much if you can help me with this one.

Regards,
Murray R. Van Luyn.

#9

"Murray R. Van Luyn" <vanluynm (AT) NOSPAM (DOT) iinet.net.au> wrote

Quote:

Hmm, it's starting to look very much like the situation. Never the less, I
think I will persevere with the single webmaster tools sitemap and
multiple sites configuration for another week or two. I have plenty of
time to waste just now, and I'm very interested to see what happens.

I wonder if it would be possible to exclude just Google's webcrawler from
the 2 redundant sites with a robots.txt file? Maybe I'll give that a shot
later on, and see if it doesn't help me get the main site listed.

Yep, that worked. Just the one webmaster tools site entry and associated
sitemap, and the most important of the 3 existing sites appears to be slowly
listing.

The robots.txt file idea didn't workout for the home directory site as I
don't have access to a top level directory to place it there. Never mind, it
doesn't seem to be required.

Regards,
Murray R. Van Luyn.
--
http://www.review-a-gadget.com/
http://members.iinet.net.au/~vanluynm/

#10

On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 13:52:14 -0800, Murray R. Van Luyn <vanluynm (AT) NOSPAM (DOT) iinet.net.au> wrote:

Quote:

Hi I,

"Ignoramus20599" <ignoramus20599 (AT) NOSPAM (DOT) 20599.invalid> wrote in message
news:wMCdnaw3qZd5YSjYnZ2dnUVZ_s_inZ2d (AT) giganews (DOT) com...

I had such bad experience with sitemaps that I avoid them. I think
that they are not there for our benefit.

Yes, they tell you of the numerous benefits of sitemaps such as getting all
those hard to list pages indexed etc. The problems with Google didn't really
start for me until I had more that one sitemap with essentially the same
content. Then it was bye, bye Google listing.

To get pages indexed, they simply need to have links pointing to them,
no sitemaps required.

And google does not pick up pages that are only referred by sitemaps,
at least that has been my limited experience.

Quote:

Never mind. It's by no means a disaster at this very early learning stage.
It's just a tiny glitch. I've learned something valuable, and know precisely
what to watch out for when things do get a little more serious later on.

Yep. Cannot agree more.

i

Quote:

Thanks for the input Ig.

Regards,
Murray R. Van Luyn.