302 error removing site from results

[webfeatseo]

I have a client who had a screwy url structure based off of parameters and all. They hired a developer that added the keyword to the end of the url and set up 302 redirects to the new keyword included url.

Since then the entire site has virtually gone missing in the results but it is not penalized. I put in a request with webmaster tools for reconsideration and they said there was no penalty.

I only just found the 302 problem today and think this is probably the problem. Could this remove a site from the search results?

[Keszi]

Hey webfeatseo,

First of all what you need to understand is what 302 redirect means: for that I advice you to check Dr. Pete's infographic: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/an-seos-guide-to-http-status-codes

Now to go further to your question, would it be possible for us to see an URl? It would easy our job to help you out.

Cheers,

Istvan

[NakulGoyal]

Is the homepage also 302'd ? Are the pages indexable ? Have you tried to do fetch as Google Bot ? Check the HTTP headers to see what it returns for the homepage as well as some example URLs linked from the homepage. Also check to make sure there's no meta noindex or anything like that. I would also check the robots.txt In my opinion, the 302 could be the least likely culprit, but it might be something either related to that or something from the above. I hope it helps. If not post or pm me the URL.

[Dr-Pete]

It's a little tough to tell without seeing the URLs in question, unfortunately, but it is possible, yes. When you say "has virtually gone missing", what do you mean, precisely? It usually boils down to a continuum:

(1) Not indexed

(2) Indexed but not ranking

(3) Ranking but poorly

A bad 302 setup is more likely to cause (1) and maybe cross into (2) then (3), but it really does depend. The first step is to see how you're being indexed. The other question is if the 302 is creating duplicates or causing crawl/index problems - for example, are both versions of the URL being indexed (that could also be bad)?

If the correct URL is being indexed and it's ranking, but it's just not ranking very well, then I suspect you've got more going on than the 302s. If nothing else, fixing the problem will make the situation cleaner and easier to diagnose. If you add technical problems on top of other problems (like link profile issues), sorting out the mess can be extremely difficult.

[webfeatseo]

The site is indexed but does not rank for anything at all. It used to and now it doesnt ever since the 302s were added

For instance

http://www.metalsforasteel.com/Catalog.aspx?Level1=01&Level2=01

goes to

http://www.metalsforasteel.com/Catalog.aspx?Level1=01&Level2=01&C=Steel_Angle

The site is ugly and has poor navigation but that is not something they wish to change. On page is ok but not the best. Their link profile is again not the best but webmaster tools says there are no problems and when I put in a reconsideration request they said nothing was wrong.

It does not rank for anthing, not even its own company name. Nowhere in the top 100.

I want a brand new, more modern and clean site to be done. That however is not really viable.

The home page does not have a 302 but everything else essentially does.

There is no robots.txt file. There is no noindex.

The 302 is the only major thing that we have come across. Been looking into this for weeks and not finding anything that should be causing this to happen

[webfeatseo]

I added more info

[Dr-Pete]

It's a little funky, but a couple of things I'm seeing:

(1) Some of your internal links (your catalog links) have the special character code (&) for the ampersands. Although browsers can resolve it, those are definitely not appropriate for URLs in href="" values and could be disrupting internal link-juice. I can't believe it's the whole story, but it isn't helping.

(2) Having your major categories 302-redirect is definitely not a good bet. Unfortunately, I also don't think it's the entire story. You're not even ranking for very specific brand terms, and the home-page is clearly indexed. I would fix (2) ASAP, but I don't know if it's the whole story.

(3) You've got the blog off on a sub-domain with a few indexed pages, but it seems to have no content. Unless you're going to ramp that up, it's probably counter-productive.

(4) I'm seeing some weird data in OSE and found that all of your non-www pages are 301-redirecting to the home-page, instead of the appropriate URL. For example:

http://metalsforasteel.com/Catalog.aspx?Level1=01&Level2=17

...this should go to a category page, but instead goes to the home-page. If you have links to the non-www version, this is potentially a problem. Add this to (1), (2) and (4) and you're compounding the mess.

(5) You have a fair chunk of links from low-value sources. I won't say spammy in all cases, but free link directories, link exchanges, etc. I don't want to list a bunch of examples, since this is a public question. You're teetering on the edge a bit, quality-wise, I suspect.

So, can I tell you definitively which of these it is? Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to completely separate them. I think you should tackle (1), (2) and (4) ASAP. Fix the internal problems, because then the picture will be MUCH clearer. I'd definitely take a look at your link profile and make sure there's nothing too questionable - you may have to tackle that at the same time.

[webfeatseo]

As for issue #4. I believe that is where they used to have pages for each dimension of a product. So it would be upper level, sub level, product level.

Some products have hundreds of the same thing but with one inch different so they removed those pages and redirected them.