When a "permanent" redirect is no longer permanent

[xtempore]

I am currently working on a new site, http://www.oam2.com and have a rather nasty problem that has developed because of a redirect.

The site is for an appointment diary product called OAM2. Originally the product was just covered under the company website...
http://www.digex.com.au

The OAM2.com domain was purchased some months ago, and an .htaccess 301 redirect placed from it to the product page for the appointment diary...
http://www.digex.com.au/oam.php

That was all fine, but now the company wants to separate the OAM2 appointment diary out into its own site.

The site (http://www.oam2.com) has been created, and some SEO efforts have been made (still work to be done). At the same time the .htaccess with the 301 Redirect was removed.

Although it was submitted to Google quite a few days ago it still is not appearing in the index, and I suspect the 301 redirect is to blame. It seems that Google (and therefore perhaps other Search Engines) cache the redirect.

Using the Google Webmaster tools I can see that the site was crawled a couple of days ago and found 22 pages, which is correct. But despite that a search in Google for site:www.oam2.com returns no documents.

AND if you do a info:www.oam2.com, what it shows is the old product page...
http://www.digex.com.au/oam.php

My concern is that the Google database has decided that because a 301 redirect is supposedly "permanent" that it should just continue to consider all pages on that site to be redirects. Or something like that.

Does anyone know how I can convince Google otherwise? Do you think this will also be having an affect in the other search engines?

[wige]

It will take a few days for the site to go through the crawl queue and get indexed - a wait time of over a week for a crawl of a site submitted through the suggest a site tool is not extremely unusual, because Google places a higher priority on crawling pages that are discovered through links.

However, 301 redirects are always cached. After the search engine has seen a permanent redirect several times, the search engine internally reprocesses references to the URL doing the redirection as pointing directly to the target URL. This allows the search engines to more quickly process the flow of link juice, as well as saving the time of looking up a page that it has been told does not and never will exist.

So, how to fix it? You have a couple options. First, create a Google Webmaster Tools account for the domain. Select "Meta Tag" for the authentication method. This will force Google to retrieve the home page of the domain, and hopefully see that the redirection is no longer in place. Second, and this might be a little bit risky, redirect the old target page back to the domain. This will hopefully cause the search engines to crawl the page immediately. I am basing this on the fact that I have been told that when search engines see a 301 redirect they place a high priority on crawling the target to verify that the redirection is valid. Even if that is not the case, the engines should see the potential endless loop of two redirects, and as a result reprocess both pages.

[frost]

Might be a silly question but is that page in your sitemap?

[virginislandgirl]

Is there a link from the primary business site to the new domain? And are there additional incoming links to the domain?

And what Wige said will definitely help.

Chris

[xtempore]

Thanks for the replies.

Here's some clarification...

The site has been crawled. I can see in the Google Webmaster tools that it crawled 22 pages, BUT it says there are 0 pages indexed.

Both sites have sitemap.xml files, but these only refer to pages on the respective sites. There are no cross domain references.

There are several pages on www.digex.com.au that link to www.OAM2.com. There are a couple of minor links from www.OAM2.com to www.digex.com.au.

I read everything I could find on the Google blog, but most of the stuff about 301 was just saying to use it when a redirect is permanent, and to otherwise use 302. There was nothing to do with what to do if that permanence no longer applies!

[ImageIsland]

For one, you say you have only had the new domain a couple months, right? New domains have an aging factor that will take months to build up, as far as general SEO goes. So, that will take time. Nothing to do much with redirects, but the SEO in that site will be impacted by the content change to the new domain.

Second, you didnt mention if you turned around and redirected your original company page to the new domain now, and what content looks like between the two? Seems like you would want to have that redirect up in the old site page redirecting to the new site, right? You also want to get as many external links that you have control over that link to the old page, and change them to point to the new domain page. That also will speed things up.

Last factor, if you moved the content from the old site its generally a good idea to keep as much of that intact and allow Google to index the redirect change, so the gains from the content online is very small. Google responds well to small changes to content and sites over time, not large comprehensive ones that change keyword authority focus. If you made the move and totally changed the content in the new site, you may have lost your original SEO gains in the new site, regardless of redirects. That, tied to any down time between the change, using sites under the same IP, new domains that have not aged, or were housed under bad different index content all could be small factors that cause you to lose some SEO traction when you redirect. That plus the fact a large number of links externally could be linking into the old site somain for the content or other pages, could mean your new site has lost some of that. All factors to think about, and which could be impacting the results you are seeing for the redirect. It may be indexed but there may be other factors affecting the results.

Overall, you do need to give the engines time to index the new site, the redirects and the new domains new content pages. You will eventually see the change. But as mentioned, dont expect to have captured 100% of your SEO gains in the old site in the new one unless you followed all of the above factors.

I know as I did this same thing in an old site I had years ago. I thought a simple redirect was enough to move content from one domain to a new one. I didnt think about factors surrounding the new domain, duplicate content, duplicate IPs, changes in content, affiliate links to the old site, etc. Because I changed the content to a very large degree, plus lost many of my external backlinks, I lost many gains I could have kept, and the result was the redirect failed to do what it was meant to do.....move all my SEO to my new domain. So, be sure to do this change carefully and not focusing on being indexed in engines, but thinking more about the consequences in terms of new content and the new domain and how that will impact long term SEO gains.

[xtempore]

Hi ImageIsland

I do appreciate that you took the time to reply, but you have seemed to missed a couple of important points...

Firstly, I said the domain was purchased "some months ago", not a couple. And I realise this will have an impact on the PR etc, but that's not what the question is about. It's not that the new site has low PR it is that it does not even exist in the index, despite the fact that it has been crawled.

Secondly, when I say "new" site I simply mean the most recently created one. It does NOT replace the existing site, but rather has taken the parts relevant to this particular product and created a new site. The new site also contains a lot of new information about the product.

The old site is still relevant though. Whereas the new site is specific to this product only, the old site remains relevant with regards to the company and it's other operations.

In that regard people arriving at the company site looking for this product will find links to the product site, and those viewing the product site who then want to know more about the company will find links to the company website.

Once the new site is more established there will be some content that can be completely removed from the old site and redirects would then be appropriate.

Thanks again for taking the time to post.

[SEO]

Submit the site to digg.com
Google will usually hit the site in a matter of minutes.

[flhu]

So, you worry that google won't look at OAM2.com because you already told it that there was nothing on it and probably never will?

Come out with OAM3 and buy that domain.


Ok, that wasn't helpful at all.

[xtempore]

Originally Posted by flhu

Come out with OAM3 and buy that domain.

Ok, that wasn't helpful at all.

No, not very helpful - but funny!

We do already own the OAM3.com domain name - but that's is for OAM3 which is currently in development.

Hmmm, perhaps I should go and buy OAM4.

[xtempore]

Originally Posted by SEO

Submit the site to digg.com
Google will usually hit the site in a matter of minutes.

Wow. I would never have thought of that, but it seems to have actually done the trick!

Shortly after Digging the site, I noticed a couple of pages appear in Google. Not the most important ones but it was a start. Now it's up to 7 pages.

From now on though I will be VERY careful about using a 301!

[xtempore]

Hmmm. I was starting to think the problem was solved, but the results are mixed.

I'm hoping it just means that in time Google will untangle itself, but there are still some odd things happening.

There are now 7 (out of 22) pages showing for...

site:www.oam2.com


BUT when I try...

info:www.oam2.com

... it only lists the OLD product page (www.digex.com.au/oam.php).


So that means that page is what Google sees as the primary page for that domain!

*sigh*

[full house]

how can a permanent redirect become not permanent? maybe you did something on the htaccess of it of change some configure.

[wige]

Other pages on that domain will probably get indexed more quickly than the root page, because that is the URL that was redirected. It will probably take some time for Google to straighten out the indexing of the site for that one page.

[webweber]

It seems that Google has well indexed your new domain. Seems to exit in the google database and certainly it was not a redirect that I got as I queried the domain. There are at present 19 pages listed in the index, all from this domain. However you are right, the info for this site displays your other domain and nothing else. It seems Google has no info about this domain other than the one it had about it from over a year ago! If you refine your search (limiting the time to one year) it simply does not find any info about this domain. But I personally have no idea, if info yourdomain is really that important for the traffic needed for your website. Think more important is the fact of your pages getting indexed and your users finding your pages. And that is happening in the usual unhurried google way. There is an article at highrankings website that deals with this specific problem. Check for issue 142 from guest contributor Scottie Clairborne. Had to fall back upon some queer phrases here, as I can not post direct links as yet at this site.

[xuchunfeng1984]

permanent redirect is not permanent redirect again? you should tell google. and do more work. i think after some time. google will trust you.