9/23/2003 11:36:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|301 Permanent Redirect
Have you ever had a search engine emergency? Well, I didn't think it was possible, but I just had one.
I had a client call me bright and early today and inform me that all of his main positions had fallen out of Google. That's not news you want to hear.
I checked and sure enough all the big phrases were gone. I had to run off to a meeting and told him it might be a problem at Google.
As I was driving to and back from the meeting I was thinking all this through. What could have possibly happened?
When I got back to the office, I ran a search on Google to see all of the pages they have indexed from the site.
Incidentally, I did this by doing this search:
site:www.company.com -lsosoos
This shows all of the pages on www.company.com that don't have the phrase "lsosoos". So, basically, it shows all of his pages that are registered in Google.
What to my wondering eyes did appear? His home page was not listed and an identical page was swapped out in its place.
The main home page is titled Default.asp and this new page was Default1.asp... and it had no title!
This looked to be a page that possibly his developer was using to test the layout of the home page. It, somehow, got indexed. And because it was indentical to the home page, Google chose to index that page instead of the home page. So there went all of his link popularity and his title.
Viola, no listings.
This is what I did to fix the problem. It's real easy. This is on a Windows server. So all I did was replace the Default1.asp with a file that simply had this in it:
<%
Response.Status = "301 Permanent Redirect"
Call Response.AddHeader ("Location","http://www.company.com/Default.asp")
Response.End
%>
Now, when Google comes to that page they will see that it is permanently redirected to the home page. This should do the trick.
The 301 is an important code for an engine. Doing a simple redirect might not have the same impact.
You can learn more about HTTP status codes and redirects here.
And you can check to make sure the statis code is correct here:
Server Header Checker
Hope this helps you if you ever have a search engine emergency.|W|P|106433497337109659|W|P|301 Permanent Redirect|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com9/22/2003 02:47:00 PM|W|P|Sage|W|P|Advertising: Search Needs Better Labeling:
"An in-depth study of people unaware how pay-for-placement search found that they are surprised, and often negative, when they find out how paid listings work."|W|P|106426005661759758|W|P||W|P|sagerock@gmail.com9/19/2003 08:04:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|Ah, finally I don't have to explain to clients when their Overture cost-per-click ad may or may not appear in MSN. They're always appearing now, plus some:
MSN Expands
Overture Ads|W|P|106397667016751451|W|P||W|P|sagerock@gmail.com9/11/2003 01:50:00 PM|W|P|Sage|W|P|"Search is interesting again"
An Open Source Search Engine
Why does open source make search more interesting, you ask? Well, for one thing, no one will be able to ultimately say what are the best results for you. Because ultimately, anyone will be able to put up an engine and tweak the results to their and their visitors liking. And 1000's of open source developers updating and adding to code can often provide a much better platform than anything one company can do. Just look at Linux.|W|P|106330622124257221|W|P||W|P|sagerock@gmail.com9/09/2003 11:20:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|Rocky is featured this week in a great article she wrote for "Snips" magazine.
Every so often, we like to offer up an article that wraps online marketing all up into a neat, clearly-and-simply-defined package.
This time, we wrapped it up with a manufacturing angle for Snips Magazine readers -- covering how to make manufacturing (and truly all) websites effective sales and marketing tools for a company. While we know our readers are often beyond this level in their online-marketing education, we thought it would be valuable as a general education piece for new clients, employees, and anyone else you know starting to learn about the �whys� and �hows� of online marketing.
Check it out. It's a good read:
Overview of Online Marketing|W|P|106312441577212467|W|P|Untangling the Web|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com9/09/2003 07:15:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|Will Yahoo turn to Looksmart model for their new search engine?
I'm surprised Yahoo hasn't come to this conclusion months ago.
If I were you, I'd start saving your pennies for paying Yahoo directory listings on a per click basis.|W|P|106310971289819767|W|P||W|P|sagerock@gmail.com9/08/2003 12:16:00 PM|W|P|Sage|W|P|Happy Birthday, Google!|W|P|106304137290371864|W|P||W|P|sagerock@gmail.com9/04/2003 07:26:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|Traffick | Online Advertisers Say "Good Riddance" to August from Hell: "Anecdotal evidence (and some hard data) were showing large spikes of traffic (or in some cases, simply steady increases) in August with sharp slowdowns in conversions. "|W|P|106267839801228477|W|P||W|P|sagerock@gmail.com9/02/2003 04:14:00 PM|W|P|Sage|W|P|Here's a handy, reader's digest version of all that has recently been happening at the major engines. It will get you caught up in a hurry.
Internet Search Engine Update|W|P|106253728047305255|W|P||W|P|sagerock@gmail.com