pixpixpix
09-26-2005, 02:21 AM
My host updated the server to a new version of Apache and for a while
some of the pages listed in my site map were returning a 404 not found
error. This was during a crawl. To make it worse all the pages ending in dot-html which previously returned a 301 redirect to a page without the dot-html started returning a 200 page found code. This turned all of them into duplicates and this was the case for about four days until I discovered and fixed it. As a result some of the real pages ended up as supplemental results. Previously only the dot-html pages were supplemental.
Is there a way to easily reverse this penalty? The sitemap has already
been resubmitted.
projectphp
09-26-2005, 02:52 AM
Mate, you lost me. Your post is a strange combination of facts and theories, problems and solutions. You need to be a bit more specific and perhaps try point form. Otherwise, it is just too hard to see what you want. Try this:
What Happenned
1. Host changed to new Apache version.
2. You have pages that that 301 redirect to new pages. These returned 200, meaning they were now live and indexed.
3. Some pages listed on your sitemap threw 404 errors
4. Subsequently, some of the pages throwing 404 errors ended up in the supplemental index.
5. You resubmitted the sitemap. I have no idea whether that is a Google Sitemap thing, using the XML feed or just teh stupid old submit button.
What you want: to know how to have your pages back in the main index and not listed as supplemental.
Am I on track?
If so, your issue is that some pages ended up in the supplemental index. Well, if they were not found (404 Response code), count your lucky stars, they could have just been dropped altogether! This is in no way a penalty; if anything, it is a bonus.
So, what can you do? If you have a Google sitemap, submit it, and then, and you need to really read this: do nothing and wait.
I know that is not what you want to hear, but that is the answer. SEO is a fre service, and despite the advances, you still get what you pay for, and have to accept these sorts of issues.
IMHO, you also need to make sure that you have no links to the old pages that 301 redirect anywhere on your site. That way, in the future, you won't have this problem. Others may disagree, but that is what I would do.
pixpixpix
09-26-2005, 01:37 PM
Actually projectphp you summed it up just about right even if I hadn't expressed it so clearly.
Yes it is a real XML Google sitemap and I did resubmit it yesterday and it was downloaded by Google.
Your answer about waiting is actually what I suspected. In my experiece Google has sorted out these kinds of things eventually. But I have also heard people make special requests to Google if there is a miscategorization. In this case I don't know how many of the 30,000 pages are now supplemental aside from the old pages which are 301 redirected and should be. Many of my real pages are fine. And there 's no search option for supplemental results.
Also I did double check all links to see if they have html suffixes and cleaned them all up.
Thanks