"Via this intermediate Link" how do I stop the madness?
-
Hi,
Thank you for your reply, I'm sorry for complicating things..
Is there a way to safely forward users from oldsite to newsite without passing juice from oldsite to newsite and getting rid of the "via intermediate site" warnings?
I've also added the page to the robots.txt file, hopefully doing this will accomplish what I want..
i.e.
User-Agent: *
Disallow: /index.html -
I think this is the right time to use "nofollow, noindex" what i will do is change the content of the page where your visitors visits the most and want to redirect to the new one. Change it contents and warn visitors that you will be redirected to a new site and then do a meta refresh (do not use domain forwarding as some hosting converts it to 301, do not use canonical as well) meta refresh it for 5 seconds or more enough for your users to read the content just not shorter than 5 seconds (just to be safe) do not place a link on the content (just to be safe again) just remember to use "nofollow, noindex" on all the pages of your old site and disallow on your robots.txt
hope this helps
-
I think that the main problem here is that no one knows for sure what kind of things can pass on a link related penalty. So, from what I know of your situation, here's what I'd say:
-Change your home page content on the new page so that it is significantly different from the old page. The reason for this is that Google seems to be able to recognize that the links that used to point to that exact content should now be pointing at the new page. If the new page changes then the "via this intermediate link" should really go.
-Remove any canonical tags that point from the old site to the new
-Most likely having a nofollowed link saying "we've moved" and pointing at the new site would be safe. I can't say that 100% for sure though.
-I actually would not block the old site by robots.txt UNTIL you have noindexed the page and have seen that it is no longer in the Google results. So, add to the page and then use the url removal tool found in Webmaster Tools to ask Google to completely remove that page from the index and the cache. (You'll get a choice of just the index or index+cache - Choose the latter.) That should result in the page leaving the index within 24 hours. You'll know if it is in the index if you do a site:yoursite.com search and see "no results". Once that has happened, then you can add the robots.txt directive to disallow the home page (or really, all of the site).
The reason why you want to do it in this order is that if you add the robots.txt block right now then Google won't be able to recrawl the page to recognize that you've changed the canonical and the noindex status.
I did this for one other site and the "via this intermediate" link notices disappeared in about 2 weeks.
I would love if you could update this thread with what happens.
-
Thank you very much for the lengthy great explanation. I am doing what you have suggested and I will report back shortly..
Thank you..
-
Hi,
It appears as if the oldsite is no longer in google's index and that the has done wonders as far as that is concerned. However it now also appears as if my newsites main page is also no longer in googles index.. my newsites subpages are still in the index but its main page is no longer. I'm hoping that this might just be a temporary problem in googles index while they are doing a refresh or something... , I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Any suggestions should I just wait it out and see if it comes back or is there something I should manually be doing to get my newsites main page back in googles index.
-
Hmmmm....that's odd that your homepage is out of the index. Some things to check:
-are you absolutely sure that the homepage is gone? If you do a site:search does the homepage exist anywhere?
-Check you haven't accidentally blocked your home page with robots.txt or accidentally noindexed it instead of the old site.
-Are you absolutely sure you haven't done a url removal for the new site by mistake?
You could also ask Google to fetch that page via webmaster tools and that may help it reappear quicker.
-
Hello,
Thank you for your reply,
-1- Yes it appears as if both sites main pages have disappeared from the google index, if I do a site:mynewsite the main page is nowhere to be found, however I'm able to see the other pages from the newsite there.
-2- I have checked and actually my newsite doesn't even contain a robots.txt and I have also verified the contents of my newsite main page tomain sure that it doesn't contain a
-3- Hi, no url removal of either site, I did however disavow some links a couple of weeks back, but I have once again looked through my disavow list that I uploaded and made sure that I hadn't disavowed anything from either of the main sites, which woun;t have but just wanted to double check.
-4- I have asked Google to fetch my newsites main page via webmaster tools,
Should I remove the from my oldsite main page and perhaps do a Google fetch on this page also, just incase something is carrying over?
thanks once again for all your time and great advice..
-
This is really odd. I can't see any real reason for Google to noindex your current site.
I wouldn't remove the tag from the old site. It doesn't make sense that this would affect your new site.
Would you be interested in sharing your url with me? This case really interests me and I'd love to help you sort it out. Feel free to contact me via my Moz profile. I'm currently at MozCon right now, so I might not be able to reply right away but I'd like to sort this out as it is an odd case.
-
Hi,
thank you so much for offering to look at the site, I tried to send you a private message via moz, and it doesn't work, it can't find you even thought I'm on your profile page and click on "Private Message this User".
-
Interesting. I see you've reached me via my contact form. I've flagged your question so that the Moz staff can look into it and see if there is an issue with private messaging.
-
Hello,
Thank you, you are correct, and thank you for the response, for which I have responded back, not sure if you have received it..
Anyway its really strange, within a week after I added the to the oldsite then the new sites main page also disappeared... I would really like to get this new sites main page back in the google index...
-
An Update!!
I have just noticed something else interesting.. within my GWT sitemap section (new Site ) it shows 9 URLs being submitted yet only 8 URL being indexed, the one missing from the indexing is my homepage. I have updated the last modified date of the sitemap as they were in the past and have resubmitted the index, I have also resubmitted the one main page itself using the "Fetch as Google" -> Submit to Index Option.
I have also changed the contents of the main page on my newsite so thats its now less of a duplicate then that of the oldsite's new mainpage.
BTW its to bad that when Submitted pages to the index are not indexed via the sitemap that google doesn't give you the reason. According to google there are no errors in my sitemap..
-
Sorry I haven't been able to respond again by email. I'm at Mozcon right now and typing from the airport. It's been a crazy, busy, fun week.
I'll respond here though rather than by email as it may help others.I am fairly certain that the problem here is all because your new site has the exact same content on the homepage as the old site does. As the old page was the one that Google first saw with that content, the new page is automatically being canonicalized to the old (even though you have the correct canonical on the new.) What I think is happening is that when you noindexed the old page, because of the invisible canonical, the new page got noindexed as well.
I remember Matt Cutts or John Mueller saying something before about how you should not point a rel canonical at a noindexed page because it can confuse Google. You didn't point the canonical there, but Google has probably assigned it because it was a duplication of the old page.
If this is true, then here are the possible solutions that I can think of:
-Create new content on the new page (which you have already done.) I would then use fetch as googlebot to get google to refetch that page. If I'm right, it should be back in the index quickly.
-If that doesn't work, consider removing the noindex from the old page until you see the new page pop back in the index. You'll likely also have to remove any robots.txt block of the old page so that Google can see that you want it indexed again. Then, once you see the new page is back in the index, and that the new content on your new page is in the cache, you can go back and reapply the noindex on the old page.
Hopefully that's not too confusing.
I want to hold off for now on answering your question about how to redirect users from the old site to the new without passing along a penalty. The reason is that no one knows for sure which methods work safely to do this and be guaranteed that you're not passing along link juice from unnatural links. Does link equity travel through a meta refresh? I'm guessing no, but I can't say for sure. I want to say that you can 301 the old page to an intermediary page that is blocked by robots.txt and then redirect it back to the new page, but I have to do some more tests before I am comfortable saying this with certainty. There are other solutions that may work as well.
I currently have some tests going on that will help me determine which method is safe for redirecting without passing on a penalty and I'll post something to my site once I've got the tests complete enough.
Perhaps someone with more experience in doing this type of thing will see your question and respond too...I'm open to suggestions!
-
Hi,
Thank you, upon
-1- changing the content ( of the OLDSites main page ), which was almost an exact copy of the newsites main page and
-2- also removing the noindex on the oldsites main page and then
-3- doing the good fetch, submit ( on both OldSite and New Site ) and then
-4- resubmitting my NewSite sitemap.Viola just checked and both sites main pages are now back in the google index. what I have noticed so is this.. The OldSite Url which now currently only has a main page to is is ranking #6 for my main kw, and the NewSites main page even thought its in the index doing a site: isn't ranking at the moment..
Ideally I would like to just do a permanent redirect on the OldSite to the NewSite, but as said before I had never done that because of a manual link penality which was placed against the OldSites main page, the penailtiy has since been removed and I have also tried to clean up and spammy links using disavow. Do you think it is safe to do a redirect or should I wait a bit...
I guess it was like you had said google had automatically thought that my new sites main page was actually a redirect from my old sites page because as the two pages were 99% the same., and as such ranked my newsite well using I think some push from my oldsite. The fact that this is no longer occuring and my oldsite is ranking well makes me think that it might be safe to manually do the redirect as we thought google was doing for us..
Please let me know what you think?
Thanks,
-
Hi! You do need to type in the nickname of the user when you click Private Message this User. I know it's not very intuitive, but you'll want to type in MarieHaynes to send a message to Marie.
-
Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I should have some information on my tests on ways to safely redirect penalized sites. I'm reluctant to give advice until then. On one hand, you could say that because your penalty is removed you could just go ahead and institute a 301 redirect now. However, I would not recommend this. The reason for that is that even though you've had a manual penalty removed, there is still a possibility that there are links out there that could harm your sites in the eyes of Penguin. I would not want to redirect any of the bad links to the new site.
When I do have my tests done I'll post here. In the meantime, if others have ideas, it would be awesome to hear of their experiences.
-
Hi,
It reverted back to my listing my new sites name instead of my old sites name a day later, no change in SEO position, just the name of the Site listed changed.
Anyway how are your tests going? do you think I can safely do a 301 or should I just leave it the way it currently is...
thanks,
-
There are possible approaches around this that I can see. The first might be to get rid of your new web site from the web after which absolutely noindex your antique site (blocking through robots.Txt may not do it - I've attempted.) You can then use the URL of office chair elimination tool to do away with the old web site absolutely from the index.
-
07105
-
13102
-
04179
-
043.5k
-
081.3k
-
081.0k
-
171.3k
