Website not coming up properly on Google

[GPainter]

Hi what's the problem? It's coming up in searches for me. Side note though you've got 14 404's on site

Have you checked your webmaster tools for any errors also don't forget did you check both http and non webmaster tools?

[medved44]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your reply.

The problem is that our site does not appear to be indexed by Google.

Please see

site: http://www.roguevalleymicro.com/index.php

The site does not come up.

Mike

[GPainter]

I see it -

HKbbTwx

[medved44]

Chris, it's not indexed properly (what you are seeing is some sort of a different listing on Google; perhaps a Google Products page listing)

If you type in:

site: http://www.roguevalleymicro.com/index.php

the page does not come up.

site: page URL  is the way to test if a page is indexed by Google.

Do you see what I mean?

Mike

[GPainter]

Have you checked your webmaster tools and did you set up both http: & www. to set your preferred domain?  It is very strange.  If they are both set up it's also a good way to check if you have a penalty

[medved44]

Hi Chris,

Just to confirm, you are talking about Google Webmaster tools, correct?

If so, under what setting can we check that both http: & www. are set up as our preferred domain?

Also, how can we check if we have a penalty?

Many thanks,

Mike

[GPainter]

Hi Mike,

I just wrote a loverly long response but Moz thought it was spam and blocked me so in a shorter version here are the following helpful resources -

Setting up WMT - http://www.bruceclay.com/newsletter/volume117/set-up-google-webmaster-tools.htm

Setting preferred domain - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/44231?hl=en

Side note to preferred domain a lot of people also use canonical tag to do the same

Penalty guide - http://monitorbacklinks.com/blog/seo/identify-recover-google-penalty/

Even if that's not the problem it's still good knowledge to have. Any problems I'm sure the Moz community can help

[medved44]

Many thanks Chris!

Mike

[medved44]

Many thanks Chris!

By the way, would you be able to email me your other response to mikepinelis@earthlink.net

Mike

[spencerhjustice]

This is mostly speculation but it almost looks like Google is choosing to index http://www.roguevalleymicro.com/ instead of http://www.roguevalleymicro.com/index.php.

If you search for site:roguevalleymicro.com it shows http://www.roguevalleymicro.com/ with the title and meta description for http://www.roguevalleymicro.com/index.php.

It might be doing that because almost every single link, including the google+ page link to http://www.roguevalleymicro.com instead of http://www.roguevalleymicro.com/index.php.

I would actually advise that you rewrite http://www.roguevalleymicro.com/index.php to http://www.roguevalleymicro.com/ which is more aesthetically pleasing and will probably fix your issue.

[medved44]

Hello Spencer,

Many thanks for your feedback.

Could you please comment further on what you mean by "rewriting" http://www.roguevalleymicro.com/index.php to http://www.roguevalleymicro.com/ ?

Mike

[spencerhjustice]

Via .htaccess file in the root of your site you can use mod rewrite to display http://www.roguevalleymicro.com/index.php as http://www.roguevalleymicro.com/ instead.

It would look something like:

Rewrite index.php to root

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} index.php
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.php$ /$1 [R=301,L]

I can't say I'm master at .htaccess files, so that may not be 100% correct.

It would be better if someone with a little more experience with rewrites could add their input.

[medved44]

Got it -- thank you very much!

Mike