Rankings dropping like flies!

[allthingsgifts]

Hi
I changed hosts at the beginning of May and had to submit new sitemaps as the old ones didn't seem to work on a windows server. The urls etc are still all the same. Google scanned the site when i was changing hosts so index an error message on my highly ranked pages. I've been waiting for google to re-scan the site to update the pages where the error message were but nothing yet and my rankings have nearly all gone and have gone from about 800 visitors per day to less than 100, i don't know whether something is wrong with the site or i should just keep waiting for google to crawl the site again? Google used to crawl the site every week. Any help or advice would be much appreciated as i'm getting pretty worried!
Thanks
Lianne

[sirearl]

A hosting change can go all wrong.

You have something wrong with the site see :http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.allthingsgifts.co .uk%2F&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Not sure whats happened maybe someone else can explain.

Earl

[awebapart.com]

I changed hosts at the beginning of May
I don't think this has much to do with a hosting change in isolation, it could be related to a change in the version of MySQL or PHP used when you change hosts including configuration and error handling (which can open up a whole new can of worms, but PHP MySQL version issues can also arise when your existing hosts decide to upgrade versions).
You have something wrong with the site see :http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.allthingsgifts.co .uk%2F&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Not sure whats happened maybe someone else can explain.
The issue in question is due to your custom osCommerce being customised in a way to include search engine bots in the whos online data, perhaps you, or your developers, have customised your osCommerce code with a contribution like this one (http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,5558). The error in question is because the user agent field that google bot identifies itself with is over the max field size (64 chars) for the database table. You need to speak to your developers about sorting this issue out.

[awebapart.com]

Since google bot has been using a user agent string (http://www.useragentstring.com/pages/Googlebot/) of over 64 characters for years (2004? (http://www.free-seo-news.com/newsletter128.htm)) it is not a recent change at google that is causing the problem, so it is more like likely a change at your end that has caused this issue, either an osCommerce change to the whos online functionality, or a change in the PHP / MySQL versioning/configuration error handling and reporting - perhaps you had an earlier version of MySQL on your old hosting which just truncated the data, whereas on your new hosting you might have a newer version of MySQL which is more strict and reports an error.

[david64]

It is hard to say anything without knowing what your site is. Is it http://www.allthingsgifts.co.uk/?

[awebapart.com]

It looks like you're not the only one suffering from this issue, have a look at these other oscommerce sites (http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%221406+-+Data+too+long+for+column+%27full_name%27%22&hl=en&filter=0) who have the same issue, probably because they have customised their shop's whos online functionality in the same way.

[allthingsgifts]

Hi
Thanks to everyone who replied, my site is my username dot co dot uk. The whois online thing hasn't changed since moving host but the mysql thing has as they had to change it to the latest version as it was causing problems with the server being an old version so couldn't stay that way which caused a lot of errors which we thought we had fixed most of them. Will get him to look at this asap as i need to get my rankings back!
Thanks
Lianne

[allthingsgifts]

Hi
The error has now been fixed and google has accessed the site but hasn't updated the error messages as of yet. another problem is the google sitemaps i used before don't work on a windows server as i think we used cron jobs so it updates automatically and think to do this on a windows server you have to use scheduled tasks or something but can't get it to work, have tried asking on osc forum but no one has replied as yet, any osc experts out there know what i'm trying to do and how if its even possible?
Thanks in advance
Lianne

[OldWelshGuy]

Whi in gods name are you running a php application on a windows server? One of the problems a lot of people are suffering from lately is a timeout issue with regard Googlebot. Your site has 164 pages in google.

What is Webmater tools telling you? That is a real good source of information if you dig around in it.

It could be that the response time due to the windows/oscom setup has shot up, and as a result the pages are not being spidered.

Did you leave your site up at the old host? if you took it down too soon that will also cause a drop in trust as google spiders by IP over DNS records (until such time it catches up)

[allthingsgifts]

I had to change hosts quickly and didn't know that it was best to be on a linux server rather than windows, the hosting company said my osc site should work fine on windows and apart from this sitemap problem it seems fine. webmaster tools isn't bringing up loads of errors, only a handful but these are for pages that have been deleted. The site was forwarded to a dtemp.net domain and then changed back, only like that for the weekend.
The hosting company had to update the Mysql version which brought up loads of errors which we are still fixing so don't really want to move hosts again.

[david64]

Yes, if you have a PHP site you would be better off with a Linux server. They are cheaper and faster. PHP is a language that works in both operating systems. However, there are some environmental differences between Windows and Linux which mean that things can go wrong.

[OldWelshGuy]

I had to change hosts quickly and didn't know that it was best to be on a linux server rather than windows, the hosting company said my osc site should work fine on windows and apart from this sitemap problem it seems fine. webmaster tools isn't bringing up loads of errors, only a handful but these are for pages that have been deleted. The site was forwarded to a dtemp.net domain and then changed back, only like that for the weekend.
The hosting company had to update the Mysql version which brought up loads of errors which we are still fixing so don't really want to move hosts again.

Most 'errors' are not reported as errors, they are in the detail of the stats provided etc.

How many pages did you have indexed previously? How many pages does the site have?

Your rankings have plummeted for a reason, and it is very unusual for this to happen simply because of a bad server move, there HAS to be more than that (sorry)

[allthingsgifts]

the drop in rankings was as a result of an error which was stopping googlebot accessing the site as a result of updating the mysql version which as now been fixed, the problem i have now is getting a sitemap to update automatically when changes are made or say every week? which apparently isn't easy to do on a windows server?

[awebapart.com]

Just to clarify what the initial problem was a few days ago, when google was revisiting the site pages, it wasn't seeing the usual pages, because the website was just returning a database error message for each page, like:

1406 - Data too long for column 'full_name' at row 1

insert into whos_online (customer_id, full_name, session_id, ip_address, time_entry, time_last_click, last_page_url, http_referer, user_agent) values ('-1', 'Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http:// www. google.com/bot.html)', '66.249.68.72', '66.249.68.72', '1243384522', '1243384522', '/shop/index.php?', '', 'Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http:// www. google.com/bot.html)')

[TEP STOP]
This was being returned for every page, including the home page, but fortunately it now looks like the OP has fixed that particular website issue, and google is starting to reindex (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=site%3Awww.allthingsgifts.co.uk&meta=&aq=f&oq=) the pages without the errors (though this may still take some time for google to fully reindex the pages, and replace its old cache of error pages with the real pages).

The sitemaps issue is a separate issue to the original serious issue.

[david64]

Yes. Linux has a really simplistic way of triggering programs and scripts on your server. I think Windows has one, but I seem to remember it wasn't up to this sort of job. On the other hand, you can edit your PHP code, which could be a nightmare, particularly if you are running on a legacy eCommerce package like osCommerce.

the drop in rankings was as a result of an error which was stopping googlebot accessing the site as a result of updating the mysql version which as now been fixed, the problem i have now is getting a sitemap to update automatically when changes are made or say every week? which apparently isn't easy to do on a windows server?