Google Tools 1

[1DMF]

I have been setting up the google webmaster tools and sitemap feature, all is well except I keep getting this error displayed on the summary page..

Pages from your site are included in Google's index. See Index stats. [?]
Googlebot last successfully accessed your home page on Oct 31, 2006.
We can't currently access your home page because of an unreachable error. [?]
You have submitted 1 Sitemaps. You have no Sitemap errors.

but there is nothing wrong with the site, it is working fine, so what error is google referring to?



"In complete darkness we are all the same, only our knowledge and wisdom separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you.

 

[1DMF]

i think i found the problem, the last crawl indexed a page that no longer exists, how do i resolve this?

should I add the index-1 page back in with a meta tag "robots, noindex" or just wait till it crawls again, now that I have added a sitemap.xml which should rectify the problem?

"In complete darkness we are all the same, only our knowledge and wisdom separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you.

 

[feherke]

Hi

Instruct your web server to send HTTP response 410 Gone when the removed file is requested.

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[1DMF]

how do I do that? it is 3rd party shared hosting, I have PLESK to admin my domain, is this something I could do there?

"In complete darkness we are all the same, only our knowledge and wisdom separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you.

 

[feherke]

Hi

I saw Plesk only for one site, even that only until I found the FTP address...

Most important is to know the web server's name.

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[1DMF]

I've spoke with them and they said they could set up a permenant re-direct, but after discussions adviced that it would be best to simply set up a robot.txt with the url disallowed.

That way further trawls of the site won't index the page, and the sitemap.xml should also help, plus they should drop the page from the DB once the page no longer exists upon next trawl anyway.

is this the right advice?

"In complete darkness we are all the same, only our knowledge and wisdom separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you.

 

[feherke]

Hi

I think they are lazy and/or stupid.

The HTTP response codes serves this kind of communication between the server and the client. If the bot receives a 410 Gone response code, then will not ask for that page anymore.

Of course, using robots.txt will also work. But I already saw stupid misuse of the robots.txt, and you know what happens when people misuse things... ( I think to the already ignored [tt]meta[/tt] tags. )

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[1DMF]

i'll give it a few days, if google still reports this error, i'll worry about it monday, have a great weekend and thanks for the input.

"In complete darkness we are all the same, only our knowledge and wisdom separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you.

 

[ChrisHunt]

I imagine you could do something like that through PLESK, but don't know how.

You can certainly do this with a .htaccess file - if your web server is set up to look at them. See here for how to do it:

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/03/27/http_error_410_gone

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[1DMF]

unfortunately .htaccess doesn't work on windows, mores the pitty!

"In complete darkness we are all the same, only our knowledge and wisdom separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you.

 

[ChrisHirst]

On an IIS setup and with Plesk on you should be able to configure a configure a custom 404 page. Set the type to URL and the address to 404.asp (for instance)

You can then use ASP code on the 404.asp to send whatever response for any address you would like

The way to use this is to capture the querystring sent to the script [ request.servervariables("QUERY_STRING") ]. This will be constructed as

?404;[URL unfurl="true"]http://sub.hostname.tld/path/pagename.ext[/URL]

so with a bit of instr() matching for the pagename you can then send a response header to the requesting UA with

response.status = "410 Gone"

or if you want to redirect use;

response.status = "301 Moved Permanently"
response.addheader "Location","new_url_to_go_to.ext"

make sure that for all other instances the page returns a "404 Not Found" response


Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Woo Hoo! the cobblers kids get new shoes.
People Counting Systems

So long, and thanks for all the fish.