"Via this intermediate Link" how do I stop the madness?

[MarieHaynes]

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.

[robdob12]

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...

[robdob12]

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..

[MarieHaynes]

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!

[robdob12]

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,

[KeriMorgret]

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.

[MarieHaynes]

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.

[robdob12]

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,

[Njnbiure45r4]

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.