Percentage decrease

[Lynn Robson]

Now then, there's something strange happening that is affecting my site's traffic considerably.
First off, I have two sites which I update aleternatively and resubmit to the SE's. I do this to avoid any potential drop in rankings by cocking something up in my updating code.
Anyway, the first site www.thebridesmother.co.uk gets lots of traffic and is really well placed for everything we sell. The second site which contains very much the same sort of wording etc is www.motherofthebrideoutfits.co.uk.
Since the very first submission to the search engines it's shown up on Google's search results as "%20www.motherofthebrideoutfits.co.uk"
Clicking on this result gives a 404 error.
Where the hell Google is getting this %20 from which it puts in front of the site address I don't know.
It's the only search engine to do this.
I don't have a space infront of the submitted site address.
To see what I mean, do a Google search for Mother of the bride clothes. My first site is number one on page one and my second site is on page 4 and shows the %20 in front of the result. Click on this and it does a 404.
I have just copied the full content of my first site and submitted the second site again with all these details to see if it makes any difference but I rather doubt if it will.
The thing is that I know I am losing out on a lot of potential traffic because of this so am desparate to find the answer.
My site host says it's nothing to do with them.
Any ideas guys?

[incrediblehelp]

Has something to do with your htaccess. Check out WMW

[Lynn Robson]

I've taken a good look at Google results which show up the erroneous url details and I think I might have found the cause of the problem. The URL is shown as http:www.motherofthebrideoutfits.co.uk, that is without the two forward slashes in the address.
Now the site has been resumitted to google with the correct details and I'm hoping it will come through correctly in due course but I can't know for certain if it will.
Is there any way to check this out. I mean if I do a check for the correct url it's already in Google anyway. Why .............
Well I guess you know the why's. I really need to know what if anything I can do to correct the intial problem from my own end. I'm not in a position to make any amendments to server code etc, just plain old ftp'ing of my site changes to the host server.

[Lynn Robson]

I've continued chewing at this problem and have checked out all the incoming links.
Consequently I found that a site which links to mine shows the erroneous url with the space between the forward slashes and the www.
I've mailed then and asked them to rectify this.
Could this be the sole cause of the problem?
If so is it likely it will be picked up on the next google crawl and rectified?

[incrediblehelp]

Lynn have you read the thread I posted and checked your htaccess file that is handling your redirection?

[Lynn Robson]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Lynn have you read the thread I posted and checked your htaccess file that is handling your redirection?

I've checked it out in as much as I've looked at the link.
I'm very much lost in all this stuff.
As far as I can make out, I have to put code into my server which I don't have access to. I can't do this can I?
I can alter anything on my own site at server level but nothing on the general server root.
Don't know if you can spare the time but if you could step me through this I'd be VERY grateful.

[incrediblehelp]

Lynn send this thread and these questions to your host support. Yes you would need access to control the htaccess file in the root of the sever.

Lets see what they say first.

[Lynn Robson]

Thanks Incrediblehelp.
It looks as if I'm pretty well stuffed here.
I gave my host's technical team the thread to this a couple of days ago and all they can come up with is that I should remove the url from Google and resubmit in a couple of months time when they've taken the site out of their directory listing.
I've shot them another request to put an htaccess file on the server but am waiting for an answer. I guess I know what it will be though.
I might very well have to remove the url from Google as they suggest if they won't do this for me.
In the meantime I've run a few other searches for the site name and relevant keywords that should be picked up etc and have found that apart from some dead cache stuff on other search engines the site is invisible.
My incomings from all sources shown on Statcounter these last few days relate almost entirely to the links from this article.
I stuck an htaccess file on the root of my own site but as the problem is "Server is not found" then I don't expect this to do anything worthwhile.
I'll post again once I get an answer from UK2.net

[incrediblehelp]

OK hosts suck. They are lazy and most of the time think they know it all. Get a real host....submit to Google??? Well that doesn't even work anymore and the fact they told you do that would scare me out of there.

I use HostGator and I can do all the SEO work I need with them. If you cant get a htaccess file to work on your server move to someone else.