De-indexed site - a cautionary tale

[crabfoot]

I recently moved a site onto a free host. No point in paying for hosting - four pages and the pics are linked - but now it has been de-indexed by Google.

Fishing around in Webmasters and Analytics help, I found the reason is in the way that Google indexes sites in the first place - if the site is indexed as
htttp:// www. mydomain .com initially, and the host has the preference set to
htttp:// mydomain .com , the indexing gets lost! Same thing happens if the preferences are the other way round.

So - how can I check the way Google has indexed a site before I move it next time?

Also, how do I know which is my host's preferred setting? Most do not bother you with the question when you are setting up an account.

I do remember being asked once, and thinking "what does it matter"? Now I know why it matters ...

 

[Skinner]

Use htaccess settings to set preference

My sites are accessible by both, and my servers have no preference.

As or checking which is indexed, google site:dom.ext to see if you have www. or not.

 

[crabfoot]

Ta - nice to know somebody cares!

 

[Skinner]

domain lore - Google Search

No WWW listed there for example

 

[squarerobot]

Use htaccess settings to set preference

For those of you that don't know, this is the code to use to make the non www version of your site redirect to the version with the www. Simply add the following to your .htaccess file and hey presto!

# 301 redirect non-www. to www.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.co.uk [NC] 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]

I also use the following to redirect any requests for index.php to just mydomain.co.uk - this helps prevent both being indexed (better for SEO imho).

# 301 index.php to /
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3, 9}\ /.*index\.php\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(.*)index\.php$ /$1 [L,R=301]

 

[Skinner]

I think you missed a bracket

I keep missing braces in PHP lately, not really done that since I moved from VB to C years ago but lately I keep doing it

 

[squarerobot]

Fixed! (that'll teach me to copy and paste!)

 

[crabfoot]

It's all good stuff! I'm learning ... but where do I put that code?

LOL I can't even remember how to program the alarm clock these days ...

 

[Admin]

Put it in your .htaccess file (which should be in the root of your domain)

 

[aZooZa]

Steve rules!

 

[crabfoot]

Yes, I agree ... and I'll have half a pint of whatever you recently swallowed ...

TY Steve.

 

[namealot]

I recently moved a site onto a free host. No point in paying for hosting - four pages and the pics are linked - but now it has been de-indexed by Google.

Fishing around in Webmasters and Analytics help, I found the reason is in the way that Google indexes sites in the first place - if the site is indexed as
htttp:// www. mydomain .com initially, and the host has the preference set to
htttp:// mydomain .com , the indexing gets lost! Same thing happens if the preferences are the other way round.

So - how can I check the way Google has indexed a site before I move it next time?

Also, how do I know which is my host's preferred setting? Most do not bother you with the question when you are setting up an account.

I do remember being asked once, and thinking "what does it matter"? Now I know why it matters ...

Is the server on a blacklist alot of the free ones are not spidered by goole etc as they just have so much junk on them ?
is the dns set up properly


If you are paying for service from a hosting , and www. example.com works but example.com doesn't, then your hosting company needs to fix that Contact technical support.There is no valid reason why they can't make both names work for you. It is a very simple change to the web server's configuration and they ought to be doing it automatically for every new customer anyway


if you are running the web server yourself -- here are the steps you need to follow to do the job:
1. Adjust the DNS settings for example.com. Make sure you have address records (type A records) for both example.com and www. example.com, with the same IP address. This is not hard to do at all with both Windows and Linux DNS servers.
2. If you are using virtual hosting to provide many websites on a single IP address, you will also need to tell your web server about the alternative name for the site. In your web server's configuration, add example.com as an alias for www. example.com In an Apache server httpd.conf file, this typically looks like:
<VirtualHost *>
DocumentRoot /home/www/web
ServerName www. example.com
ServerAlias example.com
</VirtualHost>
Only the ServerAlias directive is new. the rest is shown to provide context. Your Apache VirtualHost configuration may not be identical.
After the configuration file is edited the Apache web server must be signaled to reload its configuration. On a typical Unix system this can be done with the following command:
service httpd reload