My domain is http://www.diablo3forum.co.uk

It was on page 1 of google not two days ago, and now has disappeared from the rankings altogether.

I did a site: operator search and my site is still there. However, when I just search my domain name, my site doesn't come up.

I have no messages/alerts in my Webmaster Tools panel indicating that I have breached the rules. I checked the quality guidelines thinking I might have accidentally triggered the site to be down ranked. I found that the forum software I was using was pinging google every time the sitemap was updated, which I thought went against one of the guidelines. I have now turned this feature off and sent a reconsideration request detailing the issue and changes made.

Also, my site uses phpBB - am I likely to have created duplicate content inadvertently? I've run phpBB systems before and never had this issue.

Can someone let me know if I have taken the right steps to getting things back to normal? Apart from the google pinging, my site is in line with the guidelines as far as I can see. It's really frustrating that the site has gone down now of all times, when people will be looking for a Diablo 3 forum just after release date. My site has been a labour of love for 2 years and this is incredibly demoralising.

Thanks,

Teeba

Stephen26 wrote:The site loads really slow. Your homepage is indexed and accessible via four different URLs <snip> = duplicate content.

Decide which version you want to keep and then solve the issue with 301 redirects.
Also use the "Fetch as Google" + "Instant Preview" features in the Webmaster Tools to diagnose problems.

teeb wrote:Does this affect my ranking on Google? How fast my page loads?

teeb wrote:[Say I want to keep http://diablo3forum.co.uk/index.php as the one URL. How would I go about arranging these 301 redirects? In my hosting panel? I don't know how to do this.

Code: Select all

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^diablo3forum\.co\.uk$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://diablo3forum.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} index\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)index\.(.*) /$1 [L,NC,R=301]

Stephen26 wrote:

teeb wrote:Does this affect my ranking on Google? How fast my page loads?

Yes, it's a ranking factor, but normally one not too much to worry about, except when load time is really excessive.

Stephen26 wrote:

teeb wrote:[Say I want to keep http://diablo3forum.co.uk/index.php as the one URL. How would I go about arranging these 301 redirects? In my hosting panel? I don't know how to do this.

This should help: http://www.seo-consultant-services.co.u ... blems.html
So keep the non-www version and also redirect /index.php to root /

Code: Select all

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^diablo3forum\.co\.uk$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://diablo3forum.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} index\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)index\.(.*) /$1 [L,NC,R=301]

The .htaccess file has to be placed in your domain's root folder.

teeb wrote:I got 75/100 for the speed page test, so it can't be excessive.

teeb wrote:Thanks man, I used your code and put it in the .htaccess file under the comment "HERE IS A GOOD PLACE TO FORCE CANONICAL DOMAIN". I used the exact code - is that right?

Code: Select all

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^diablo3forum\.co\.uk$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://diablo3forum.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} index\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)index\.(.*) /$1 [L,NC,R=301]


teeb wrote:So will this solve the duplicate content issue now? As in, will Google's bots find it and improve my ranking again?

teeb wrote:Also, could you possibly answer this question for me?

I want Google to crawl my HTML and RSS sitemaps, but I don't want them to show up as search results. How do I configure it so that the sitemaps continue to be crawled yet standard google searchers won't see the sitemaps in the search results?

Code: Select all

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} index\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)index\.(.*) /$1 [L,NC,R=301]

Code: Select all

Redirect 301 /index.php http://diablo3forum.co.uk

Code: Select all

#RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} index\. [NC]
#RewriteRule ^(.*)index\.(.*) /$1 [L,NC,R=301]

Code: Select all

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} index\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)index\.(.*) /$1 [L,NC,R=301]

Code: Select all

Redirect 301 /index.php http://diablo3forum.co.uk

Stephen26 wrote:Remove that:

Code: Select all

Redirect 301 /index.php http://diablo3forum.co.uk

You can't combine it with the other rules. The www to non-www redirect should work fine and is the important one.
I'll have a look about the /index.php to / part tomorrow or maybe you find something on Google.
The guys here http://www.webmasterworld.com/apache/ know that stuff really well by the way.

Code: Select all

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.php\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}/ [R=301,L,NC]