Google and me

**Bethers** · 08-02-2007, 01:42 AM

Re: What Happened To My Site?

I don't know what you mean Google can't access your site - do you mean Google analytics can't access the site? If so, did you do anything on the site to move your coding? Google is indexing the site - so that isn't a problem.

**Trilobit** · 08-02-2007, 08:34 AM

Re: What Happened To My Site?

I mean, google's bot is unable to crawl it since a month. I have a google webmasters account (http://www.google.com/webmasters/) which is different from google analytics, it's about 'Statistics, diagnostics and management of Google's crawling and indexing of your website, including Sitemap submission and reporting'. Very useful tool.

In order to get reporting one has to prove web site ownership. This happens by uploading a specific html file in the root of the site. I did that for catbehaviortraining long time ago and it was fine, the site was immediately verified. Then suddenly this month, when I log in to my webmaster tools account I am not able to see any reports because seemingly my catbehavior site has not been verified.

I tried to upload the verification file again but I always get message that they cannot find that verification file and to make sure it's named correctly and sits on right location. It does. And they also say that the way to test if it is on the right location is to type the URL: "my domain name/specified file" and it should show. It does.

On the other hand I verified the findaloop.com (the main domain) the same way and it was immediately verified.

Both sites are indexed indeed, but since I started to use my main domain (findaloop) which got indexed within 2 days, there may be danger that they will index my cat behavior site under findaloop (as the path is also www.findaloop,com/catbehaviortraining . I will also loose my ranking and position in Google for cat site if google bot cannot crawl it.

I think the problem may be caused by the fact that my catbehaviortraining domain is a subdirectory of the main domain (although it's a separate domain) and perhaps the .htaccess file (part of WordPress) sits now in my main root and prevents the google bot to crawl my cat domain. But I'm not sure.

**Karen Mac** · 08-02-2007, 09:38 AM

Re: What Happened To My Site?

The only way they would be finding it that way is if you LINKED to it that way as you just did. Tell them the preferred URL in webmaster tools, and they will then index all references to it the way you put it in preferences.

Htacess is part of many applications and not just Wordpress. Only reason that would block them indexing other sites on your account is if you had some syntax in that file that prevented it, or your robots txt file prevented it, or, your sitemap for the main domain includes links to the sub domain. All easily fixed. I checked google and they last indexed you on June 30th, so I dont know where you got the idea they arent indexing you. If you have errors in webmaster tools if you look further they will tell you why and how to fix it. They are indexing it, they just arent giving you stats on it.

Karen

**Trilobit** · 08-02-2007, 09:58 AM

Re: What Happened To My Site?

Thanks Karen,

Re changing my preferences in my webmaster tool : It doesn't allow me to do anything before my site is verified (but as I remember, I linked to it as www.catbehaviortraining.com).

Re If you have errors in webmaster tools if you look further they will tell you why and how to fix it. I don't have access to errors report or anything else until I verufy. All they say is to check if the verification file is on correct place (in the root of the domain) and they provide a link to check if it's on the correct place. When I click that link it's all OK. But they still cannot find it! So it's a vicious circle

Re .htaccess file: this file wasn't there before uploading WP and all what's in it is:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

However, I don't understand what's it about ... and that's why I didn't touch this file. I don't have any robot txt foile or a site map.

Re: They are indexing it, they just arent giving you stats on it. My site was crawled every couple of days before ...

Jana

**Trilobit** · 08-02-2007, 11:54 AM

Re: What Happened To My Site?

ADDITIONAL INFO:

I have a google analytics account for catbehavior site and it worked fine. I just added my findaloop site and now my catbehaviortraining site disappeared! I added it again but it says that the it cannot find the google analytics code. But it's there, right before the closing body tag!

So the same story as with the Google webmaster tools. There is something seriously wrong here! But I don't know what.

**Karen Mac** · 08-02-2007, 04:16 PM

Re: What Happened To My Site?

Even on the google verification file process theres a question mark or a link to click on for more information

Inside Google Sitemaps: If you see a "we couldn't find your verification file" error when you try to verify

http://sitemaps.blogspot.com/2006/03/if-you-see-we-couldnt-find-your.html

Theres one explanation. And heres another

404 Not Found

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3327638.htm

Google isnt going to spider you forever every couple of days. Theres 9 billion websites out there and they intend to spider all of them. They may have finished spidering your content totally now, and revisiting for changes etc.

Every now and then those tools get bugs in them that have to be updated and fixed. You will drive yourself insane trying to figure it out.

Karen

**Karen Mac** · 08-02-2007, 04:28 PM

Re: What Happened To My Site?

Also, this most likely isnt a Voda Host issue. Its most likely a GOOGLE issue so putting in a support ticket and starting up duplicate threads wont fix it any faster. Your htacess file is fine. You could create one in your addon domain as well and it has beans to do with your indexing. Put in an email support issue with google. They will answer you, might take em two weeks but they will answer you. Chances are its a bug or you are running a cached page as descriped in the links above and will have resolved itself by then. In the mean time .. type in the browser some link to your site that doesnt exist and see what error code is generated. I will bet its 404 page not found, and is simply a flaw within the google bot or their statistics.

In either case, spazzing over whats beyond your control wont fix it either. Your sites are working correctly and support can do nothing to fix what google does or displays.

Karen

**Trilobit** · 08-02-2007, 05:31 PM

Re: Google and me

Thanks for your answers ... I was just getting really frustrated because it's going on for a couple of weeks now. I strated to think that perhap[s I didn't set the add-on domain correctly.

I went to other forums as well and somebody adviced me to put this in my .htaccess file:

RewriteRule ^catbehaviortraining/([^.]*)\.com(.*)$ http://$1.catbehaviortraining.com$2 [R=301,L]

I tried to type an non existing page (www.catbehaviortraining.com/somethingthatdoesn'texist) into my browser but instead of 404 error I get another one : 500 Internal server error:
Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request. Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@catbehaviortraining.findaloop.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

I will go bananas, LOL . This is a painful learning curve, now I have to find out what the heck is wrong there ...

Anyway, I do appreciate your replies, thank you

Jana

**Karen Mac** · 08-02-2007, 11:24 PM

Re: Google and me

Remove that document.. thats what caused the 500 internal server error more than likely, because its an inaccurate 301 redirect.&. htacess file would require more syntax than that i believe.. im not an expert, i just know what i read up on and experiment with. That line is a 301 redirect attempting to redirect your domain to your domian.. when it should have been at the minimum catbehavior.loopwhatever.com to catbehavior.com. See the difference? So take that redirect out cuz you are driving the dns server nuts. Dont play with that stuff if you dont understand what it does.. and dont drive yourself nuts over google when NOBODY understands what it does. If your site is accessible and works for the general public, why are you stressing over what google stats is going to tell you? Its nice, but its not worth getting grey hair over, and wouldnt and shouldnt be my priority. WAit for real issues to hit rather than these minor ones. And understand that while google hasnt verified your ownership, it doesnt mean they arent indexing you.

Karen

**Karen Mac** · 08-02-2007, 11:30 PM

Re: Google and me

OOPS I forgot, if you go to your cpanel and look at your error log you will see what caused the 500 internal server error most likely.

Karen

**Trilobit** · 08-02-2007, 11:41 PM

Re: Google and me

Thanks Karen!

Luckily I haven't uploaded that code to the existing .htaccess., I thought that I would check first with someone else.

One more thing which I discovered and is strange: when I type in the browser mydomain/nonexistent file then I get weird things:

1. I type " www.findaloop.com/whatever-nonsense-I-type-will-show-as-my-wp-empty-page.hehe" - just try it yourself and you'll see what I mean
2. I type "www.catbehaviortraining.com/non-existent-file" and it will give 500 Internal server error

Shouldn't one get 404 error if a file doesn't exist?

Jana

P.S. You're right, I'll stop worrying about webmaster tools and keep my sanity, LOL

**Trilobit** · 08-03-2007, 12:28 AM

Re: Google and me

I just looked in my error log on my CPanel and its empty!

**Karen Mac** · 08-03-2007, 02:20 AM

Re: Google and me

Now thats a reason to put in a support ticket. I dont know about installing wordpress or its errors, but you shouldnt get 500 internal server error and you should have something in the error log.

Karen

**Karen Mac** · 08-03-2007, 03:40 AM

Re: Google and me

Jana..

I just read up on wordpress a bit. You might want to go join their forum.. there were some similar errors mentioned over there to yours. Its in configuring the wordpress itself and ITS htacess file. Voda wont be able to help you there either as they dont support configuration of software errors for this. You also want to read the help files or find a buddy to coach you on installing it in its own folder rather than the main domain folder..etc.

Karen

Google and me

Google and me

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