Hi there,
The problem is almost certainly* duplicate content. Google guidelines
to webmasters state:
"Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with
substantially duplicate content."
://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
Google last indexed www.kstrode.co.uk on June 5, and if there was any
re-direct in place at that time, Google didn't pick up on it. This is
what Google saw:
http://search.cometsystems.com/search.php?qry=allinurl%3Awww.kstrode.co.uk&gg_ca=hB9EjmB5J_UJ:www.kstrode.co.uk%2F&origin=unknown
As far as Google is concerned, the same content appears in three
places:
www.kstrode.co.uk
www.kstrode.net
http://www.media-paradigm.com/kstrode/homepage.html
Without any penalties, it is possible for the sites to fill the first
three places in a search result, whereas Google would prefer to list
your content just once.
Solution
--------
You need to change things so that Google only sees your content in one
place.
1) Get media-paradigm.com to remove the test site. Once it has been
deleted from the servers, submit the URL of every page at the site to:
://www.google.com/addurl.html
When Google sees that it has gone, it will remove it from the index.
2) Insert this code into the <HEAD> section of the homepage of
www.kstrode.co.uk :
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">
This will tell the Googlebot to ignore this page.
More info:
http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/meta-user.html
3) Go to Open Directory and let them know that you are now using a
different URL:
http://dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/Business_and_Economy/Legal_Services/Lawyers_and_Law_Firms/Intellectual_Property/
Click on "Update URL" at the top of the page and follow the
instructions. Don't suggest any changes to the title or description,
as they are fine.
4) After you have done the above three things, contact Google at
help@google.com , and let them know what the problem was, how you have
remedied it, and ask them to remove the PR0 penalty. It's the official
email address to use for problems like yours.
You might also want to contact sites that link to www.kstrode.co.uk
and get them to change the link to www.kstrode.net. This will help the
PageRank of your site a lot.
AlltheWeb finds 70:
http://www.alltheweb.com/search?q=%2Blink.all%3Awww.kstrode.co.uk+-site%3Akstrode.co.uk&c=web&cs=utf-8&co=1&no=off&l=any
* "almost certainly". It is also possible your site received a PR0 for
breaking other Google guidelines. I checked all the usual things (like
link-farming, hidden text...) and your site, as it stands now, is
clean. The only other possiblilty is if you ever used Web Position
Gold or any other software that checks your Google ranking in an
automated manner. If you have, then you need to mention this in the
email, and never use such software again, as Google doesn't like us to
use them.
If any part of my answer is unclear, or if you need more advice
concerning this problem, just ask for a clarification and I'll get
back to you.
Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga |
Clarification of Answer by
robertskelton-ga
on
09 Jun 2003 14:50 PDT
(1) Link farms are for the sole purpose of tricking search engines
into believing some sites have more regular links pointing to them
than they ordinarily would have. Link popularity is a big factor in
Google ranking, so they try hard to find cheats.
If the site, such as PIPERS, does not require a link back, then you
should be fine.
Google doesn't have any problem with reciprocal linking, because it's
quite common for similarly themed sites to have mutual respect for
each other and to swap links. Google dislikes any attempt to automate
the process.
(2) The only tool I know of is at Comet Search (it uses Google):
http://search.cometsystems.com/search.php
In the search form, enter allinurl:www.your-domain.com (in your case
you could use allinurl:www.kstrode.net).
On the results page click the link that reads ... Archived copy ... At
the top of the resulting page the date is when it was last indexed
|