New site uploaded to exisiting domain - how long before it is picked up?

[fence4fun]

Hi - I have just relaunched my site www.swordfightingevents.co.uk on it's own hosting after I had been pointing the domain at my old (laboriously slow) flash site on moonfruit for a while.

The new html version has been uploaded now for four days yet google is still using the old cache with it's now invalid page references, even though I've been to their webmaster tools and uploaded a new sitemap.

Does anyone know how long it will take for google to pick up on the changes? Or will they (for some reason known only to the great googlegod) frown upon the change of host and a random upload of a completely new site.

Might sound paranoid but I've put a lot of work in and would hate for it to not be picked up for any reason.

Cheers

Darren

[fisicx]

At the moment Google has no incentive to visit the new site, even having a site map won't speed things up since you are already in the index. Get rid of the site map, make sure you have redirects in place from the old to the new site and do a bit of link building to bring the new site to the attention of the search engines.

[fence4fun]

Cheers for that - but why get rid of the sitemap?

[fisicx]

If you read the google sitmap info page it explains that the site maps is only really useful if you have lots of dynamic content, hard to find pages and so on.

Because google already knows you exist it will revisit in its own good time not because you have submitted a site map.

The other issue with the site map is because it can adversly affect your ranking unless you have properly set the page importance settings.

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156184

[fence4fun]

Cheers Graham - as always your help has been invaluable on this project and for anyone else listening in I would highly recommend your services.

Have just linked from my old site and will get on to the sitemaps prob today.

Darren

[oldeagleeye]

Darren.
It may not be ramking but my site was picked up by Google after I hit the url link from this forum without even registering it. Not sure how it works but I have hit all 3 of your links.

As they say every little helps.
Robert

[fence4fun]

Cheers oleagleeye - yeah it's ok from direct links but googles index query for my site here (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&rlz=1C1GGLS_en-GBGB317GB318&q=site:www.swordfightingevents.co.uk&btnG=Search&meta=) is still showing my old site in google's index.

Like Graham said, maybe the links from other sites such as this will eventually do the job.

[FLAUK]

You should re-direct your old pages asap.

A search for sword fighting events in google has an indented result to:

http://www.swordfightingevents.co.uk/venue-requirements/4530740776

As this page no longer exists you will lose potential visitors and it might harm your serps in future.

[fence4fun]

Am on to it but until google update their indexing I'm stuck.

I've heard of something called a 301 redirect? Does that having anything to do with it? E.g. could I ask for all invalid urls starting with www.swordfightingevents.co.uk to go to the home page?

[FLAUK]

Am on to it but until google update their indexing I'm stuck.

I've heard of something called a 301 redirect? Does that having anything to do with it? E.g. could I ask for all invalid urls starting with www.swordfightingevents.co.uk (http://www.swordfightingevents.co.uk) to go to the home page?

Yes, you can use a 301 redirect to your new pages - this will also help get them indexed.

http://www.isitebuild.com/301-redirect.htm

[fence4fun]

Thanks Flauk - sounds ideal for my needs.

Just one question - as I have 17 obsolete urls on google's index, do I add a different line in the .htaccess for each url referring to it's new equivalent?

I don't really want a catch all as won't that redirect my new correct urls too, thus losing me the benefit of my SEO work for different pages?

[Coppock]

When we make websites we submit them to google and submit a sitemap as well just to help - I know a leading SEO guru who says that submitting to Google doesn't actually do anything but I do it anyway to help!

Our sites normally show up on google after 2 weeks,
one of the best place to list your website though is dmoz.org but it can take from 2 hours to 200 years for it to accept your site!

The other way of helping google pick up your site is by adding as many backlinks around the internet as possible without spamming, and also setting up webmaster tools.

I hope this helps
Jen

[FLAUK]

I would recommend getting someone who knows what they are doing to implement the redirects. You could end up doing more harm than good.

There are probably people on here who will do it for a small fee - make sure to test fully afterwards.

[debbidoo]

In webmaster tools you can ask for old pages to be removed from the index. This probably sounds like a thick question, but... wouldn't that help? Remove the old pages and then add a brand new sitemap? :|

(edited to add: I'm making drastic changes to my own website soon, so I'd really love to know the answer to this question!)

[Coppock]

In webmaster tools you can ask for old pages to be removed from the index. This probably sounds like a thick question, but... wouldn't that help? Remove the old pages and then add a brand new sitemap? :|

(edited to add: I'm making drastic changes to my own website soon, so I'd really love to know the answer to this question!)

I don't 100% know - but removing the pages will remove the old site but won't put your new ones on...

If you remove them then the old links won't show up until google crawls the new site which you're most likely to be in a queue for...

You're probably just going to have to wait until google picks up your sitemap or follows this thread and finds your link here (so it will depend how frequently they crawl ukbf).

Its just a waiting game sorry!
They normally crawl our site every 2-3 weeks, so it shouldn't be too long.
You're best just trying to make backlinks in the meantime

Jen

[debbidoo]

Cheers for the advice Jen :)

I have a couple of 'debbidoo quick links' areas on my blog (one in the blogroll, another in the 'about' page) and my blog is WordPress hosted, so it's crawled and indexed really quickly, from what I can tell. I mean, sometimes I post an article and it's in Google within a few hours :)

I'll make sure I update those 'quick links' when I re-do my site :)

Thanks again

Debs :)

[Coppock]

Cheers for the advice Jen :)

I have a couple of 'debbidoo quick links' areas on my blog (one in the blogroll, another in the 'about' page) and my blog is WordPress hosted, so it's crawled and indexed really quickly, from what I can tell. I mean, sometimes I post an article and it's in Google within a few hours :)

I'll make sure I update those 'quick links' when I re-do my site :)

Thanks again

Debs :)

Wordpress are really good for getting onto google quickly, wordpress and drupal tend to be the best ones :)

Jen

[debbidoo]

Wordpress are really good for getting onto google quickly, wordpress and drupal tend to be the best ones :)

Jen

Absolutely - it's a very good reason to keep all my blogs hosted at WordPress, I always think ;) :D

[Coppock]

Absolutely - it's a very good reason to keep all my blogs hosted at WordPress, I always think ;) :D

If its good enough for mr stephen fry then why not :)

[fence4fun]

Morning all - thanks for your great advice here - I've had 75% success with the 301 redirect but some of my lines in my .htaccess file fail to work.

As we're moving into tech support I've started a dedicated thread for it here (http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=973048#post973048) so cheers for now and see you there.

Darren

[Coppock]

Morning all - thanks for your great advice here - I've had 75% success with the 301 redirect but some of my lines in my .htaccess file fail to work.

As we're moving into tech support I've started a dedicated thread for it here (http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=973048#post973048) so cheers for now and see you there.

Darren

Don't you have a control panel with your hosting?
Jen

[gocommerced]

I would consider re-submitting to Google to remind them that you exist and submit a new sitemap to Google... I believe it does make a difference.

Obviously.. including in a forum, like this is also a good idea to revitalise. Give it another 2 weeks and I am sure it will be fine.

Only other thing I would say is, if you haven't already done it, make sure you have analysed your page and made sure the tags are all okay.

Good luck :)