Google still showing older version of site on SERPs! Why?

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Google still showing older version of site on SERPs! Why?

born2run

5:54 am on Jan 24, 2014 (gmt 0)

Hi,

I changed my site layout on October 2013. All the links were changed and layout was different than previous site design.

However, when I search for my domain example.com on google.com, the result is still the same old site and links!

Is there anything that's going wrong with my site now? Why hasn't google, after these many months, not updated their results with my new site?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Kip

[edited by: brotherhood_of_LAN at 6:00 am (utc) on Jan 24, 2014]
[edit reason] example.com [/edit]

born2run

6:06 am on Jan 24, 2014 (gmt 0)

Hi I got the following output from Google Webmaster tool (fetch as google):

Googlebot Type: Web

Download Time (in milliseconds): 89

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 00:39:52 GMT
Server: Apache
Location: http://www.example.com/
Cache-Control: max-age=4545454
Expires: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 00:39:52 GMT
Content-Length: 233
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html><head>
<title>301 Moved Permanently</title>
</head><body>
<h1>Moved Permanently</h1>
<p>The document has moved <a href="http://www.example.com/">here</a>.</p>
</body></html>

Something is really wrong with the site settings so please assist guys!

Regards,
Kip
.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:46 am (utc) on Jan 24, 2014]
[edit reason] changed to example.com to disable auto-linking [/edit]

born2run

6:18 am on Jan 24, 2014 (gmt 0)

It seems to be directing example.com to www.example.com

How do I fix this? In httpd.conf ?

Regards,
Kip
.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:48 am (utc) on Jan 24, 2014]
[edit reason] example.com instead of xyz.com [/edit]

born2run

6:44 am on Jan 24, 2014 (gmt 0)

I fixed this I think. I had to remove the following code from .htaccess on the root folder:

# RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com$ [NC]
# RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Any reason why this code was there? Thanks!

Regards,
Kip
.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:35 am (utc) on Jan 24, 2014]
[edit reason] changed to example.com to disable auto-linking [/edit]

lucy24

7:57 am on Jan 24, 2014 (gmt 0)

Any reason why this code was there?

Yes, and you should either put it back or replace it with a redirect in the opposite direction. There are, at a rough estimate, eight thousand threads on the topic of domain-name canonicalization and duplicate content. Pick one preferred name and use it. If your preferred name is "example.com" without www., the rule says

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(example\.com)?$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Note that the rule is expressed as a negative.

And now go back into gwt and see whether there are listings for both with and without www. You need to verify both forms, and then tell google which one you prefer.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">

HTML TWO?! What on earth is on your site? :) Even auto-generated indexes are HTML 3.

Edit: Do have access to the config file? If so, there shouldn't even be any .htaccess. Put everything in config and disable overrides.

[edited by: aakk9999 at 12:06 pm (utc) on Jan 24, 2014]
[edit reason] Fixed typo on poster's request [/edit]

born2run

11:25 am on Jan 24, 2014 (gmt 0)

Also how do I tell google which one is preferred?

Your help is appreciated much!

born2run

11:41 am on Jan 24, 2014 (gmt 0)

Ok I figured out how to set preferred url.

However, I tried this code to set 301 redirect:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

This seems to work fine with example.com, but with www.example.com, GWT crawler says "301" moved permanently to example.com

So GWT crawler gives ok for example.com, but for www.example.com the crawler gives following output:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html><head>
<title>301 Moved Permanently</title>
</head><body>
<h1>Moved Permanently</h1>
<p>The document has moved <a href="http://example.com/">here</a>.</p>
</body></html>

[edited by: aakk9999 at 4:26 am (utc) on Jan 26, 2014]
[edit reason] Unlinked URL [/edit]

lucy24

11:49 am on Jan 24, 2014 (gmt 0)

but still gets a 301 error (Moved permanently).

301 is not an error. It's a redirect. If you are requesting the wrong form of an URL, then a redirect is the correct response.

This seems to work fine with example.com, but with www.example.com, GWT crawler says "301" moved permanently to example.com

Same again. This is good. It is what you want. It is not an error.

GWT says:

The page seems to redirect to itself. This may result in an infinite redirect loop

Does this really happen when you yourself try the URL? If not, gwt may be getting confused about which domain name is the correct one.

In gwt, each of your sites should be listed twice, like "example.com" and "www.example.com". You will need to register each one separately. And then there are two different things:

#1 within gwt, under the settings icon (is it supposed to be a gear? why can't they just say "Settings"?) pick "Site Settings". You have three choices:

Don't set a preferred domain
Display URLs as www.example.com
Display URLs as example.com

#2 Much more important: In your own htaccess or config file, at the very end of your redirects, put the rule quoted a--

Yikes! Did I really type that?

You need to say either

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(example\.com)?$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(www\.example\.com)?$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

:: wandering off in search of a moderator ::

born2run

12:17 pm on Jan 24, 2014 (gmt 0)

Thanks a lot Lucy. Another question, I also have example.net as well. How do I set that up with GWT and .htaccess?

Currently it's simply pointing to the same IP via the dns server.

Thanks!
Regards,
Kip

aakk9999

12:54 pm on Jan 24, 2014 (gmt 0)

What does example.net show? Is it pointing to the same webspace (showing the same content) as example.com or something else?

born2run

1:16 pm on Jan 24, 2014 (gmt 0)

It's (example.net) is pointing to the same IP as example.com. That's all. In other words the content is same.

netmeg

2:30 pm on Jan 24, 2014 (gmt 0)

I'd just 301 it to your .com - so that when you type it in, the address in the address bar ends up on the .com. You can usually do that in your domain registrar's control panel.

You don't want or need a GWT account for it.