Cms Symlink No Rank And Rank, 2 sites, one symlink, one only in Yahoo? Options

[jjspencer]

Hi,

My first post here, with a strange occurrence to understand.

We created the site flagresearchcenter dot com in a cms. It went online maybe 5 weeks ago.

The owner had purchased vexillology dot com many years ago and had intended to develop the site under this domain name.

I encouraged to purchase the domain name for his company name and develop the site under that name, which he did.

Meanwhile, Martha Stewart living published an article on him and used the vexillology dot com name.

About a week ago we created a subdirectory and a symbolic link on the server from the sub directory to the flagresearchcenter web site and added vexillology dot com.

Two reasons, to capture any traffic that came from the article and to have statistics available to see which domain name brought in more traffic.

Now you may already have advice for me at this point.

But, what has happened is, that vexillology dot com appeared in the Yahoo directory in two days. If you search for Flagresearchcenter dot com in Yahoo, 2 listings show up, but both are for vexillology dot com.

So far, there is nothing in Google at all for flagresearchcenter dot com. I have seen sites show up in Google much faster than this.

One more note, there are a ton of references to the owner, his company name and the term he coined, vexillology all over the web. He is the foremost expert in the world. NYT, Wikipedia, Voice of America and many others quote him online. I thought it would be easy for him to rank really well.

1) Why has vexillology showed up in Yahoo and not flagresearchcenter?
2) Why hasn't flagresearchcenter showed up in Google?
3) Is there a better way to have two identical websites with different URL's and separate statistics available? The server offers awstats for a starter.

Any other suggestions are welcome.

Thanks,

Jim.

[Randy]

Welcome Jim !

First, I'm not clear on what you mean by creating a symlink. Are you basically saying the one site is parked on top of the other? So that there are two domains people can arrive at but only one site?

If that's the case, what you're seeing is completely normal. The engines will normally pick whichever site they consider to be the most important and the other will be pretty much ignored. They just don't like showing duplicate content, with good reason.

[jjspencer]

Hi,

Yes, a symlink is a unix command that points the vexillology website visitors to the flagresearchcenter website pages, although the URL in the browser continues to show vexillology.

The SE's had about three weeks to include flagresearchcenter (FRC) and did not. Two days after linking up vexillology, boom that domain was found in Yahoo.

However, there remain no entries at all in Google for either domain.

Any suggestions?

[Randy]

Google has changed the way they spider the web over the last several months. Not only are they not nearly as aggressive as they once were, they were never as aggressive at Yahoo. Plus in the last few weeks Google has been doing all sorts of flip-flops.

Since it's only been a few weeks, and with all that Google has been going through recently, I certainly wouldn't be too concerned at this point. If there are links pointing towards each domain they'll eventually find them.

Realize though, that probably only one or the other is going to show up in the SERPs when people search for the terms you're targeting.

[jjspencer]

Hi,

Many thanks for the quick replies and useful insights.

1) So, your recommendation is to shutdown the vexillology website and just leave up the flagresearchcenter?

2) If we had a choice between the two domain names, how would you recommend choosing the one that would provide the most traffic, useful traffic?

3) I have read some and understood less about 301/2 redirects. Is something like that effective here?

4) So, people don't have multiple domain names pointing at one website any more then. Is that it?

All the best,

Jim.

[Jill]

You don't need to shut anything down, you have one site with 2 domains. Jus do a 301 redirect as per our [url=http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=5644]301 redirect thread[/url] and you'll have no problems.

But even if you don't do this and just park them, you probably won't have any problems anyway.

[Randy]

What Jill said, but I'll expand on the subject a bit.

You state that the original domain has been up and active for several years. The new web site is approximately 5 weeks old. This could be an important point, since Google now has an aging delay filter for newer sites. See our [url=http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=12535]aging delay thread[/url] for more on this subject.

Long story short, the new domain probably isn't going to rank well for any remotely competitive phrase for several months, no matter what you do. So unless there is an overriding Business reason (eg Branding) to change the domain name, I personally wouldn't do it. At the very least you'll want to tread lightly.

If you do decide to change the domain name to the newer one, you'll want to use a 302 Redirect. This should keep the old domain ranking well while the new domain works its way through the aging delay filter over the next 6-12 months. You'll of course need to start building some links to the new domain to get it recognized and get the clock started ticking.

Then once the new domain has emerged from the aging delay you can change the 302 Temporary Redirect to a 301 Permanent Redirect, and try to get as many links that are pointing to the old domain changed to point to the new domain.

Needless to say, it's not a change for the faint of heart.

To get to your specific questions:

1) So, your recommendation is to shutdown the vexillology website and just leave up the flagresearchcenter?

I wouldn't shut down either site. I would either park one on the other similar to what you've done with the Symlink, or set up one to Redirect to the other. Which Redirect code to use depends upon which domain you're going to be pointing to the other. If you're redirecting the new domain to the old one, then a 301 is probably called for. If you're redirecting the old domain to the new one, then I would go with a 302 Moved Temporarily server response because of having to deal with Google's aging delay filter.

2) If we had a choice between the two domain names, how would you recommend choosing the one that would provide the most traffic, useful traffic?

This really comes down to Branding.

If the first site is already well branded (and on the surface it sounds like it may be) then it may be the one to keep. Branding is quite important to Business, even on the 'Net.

3) I have read some and understood less about 301/2 redirects. Is something like that effective here?

Yes. As mentioned above.

Normally you would want a 301 Moved Permanently response because this sends a clear signal to the engines that the site has indeed moved. Plus this will change the URL address in users browsers, so is effective for branding purposes.

The one exception to this rule is when you're changing from an old domain to a new one. In this case a 302 Moved Temporarily response will let the older domain continue to rank in Google while the newer domain works its way through the Aging Delay.

4) So, people don't have multiple domain names pointing at one website any more then. Is that it?

Not really. Lots of people still park or alias multiple domains so that they all deliver the same site content. It's not really a problem for the search engines. They'll simply choose the domain that they consider to be the most important to display in their SERPs.

The only problem with Parking/Aliasing is that you can end up dividing some of your link authority. Meaning if some people are linking to one domain and some are linking to another one, those links count only towards the domain they point to. Whereas if you had a single domain or set up 301 Redirects, all links pointing to any of the domains will end up counting towards your actual domain.

Hopefully that helps, and is not too overwhelming.

The bottom line is that you'll need to first decide which domain you want to use for Branding purposes gonig forward. Mull it over and make sure you're commited to the decision you ultimately make. Once you have that part sorted a path forward will be pretty evident.

You didn't ask this part in your last post, but regardless of whether you're 301'ing, 302'ing or Parking you can certainly set up some tracking to see where the traffic is first arriving. Basically, it's just a matter of setting up some tracking to pick up this data.

I'm not sure the knowledge is going to gain you much at the moment though because of the new-ness of the newer domain I would hazard to guess that the older domain is going to be delivering the most traffic for some time. Several months at the very least.

I personally wouldn't use this as a determining factor. I would instead look totally to Branding and decide where I wanted to be a couple of years down the road.

[jjspencer]

Hi,

Thanks a ton for the thorough answers.

First off, "the website" came online about 5 weeks ago. It is brand new.
The symlink was added about a week ago. In times past I have seen sites show up in Google in 1-2 weeks.

The vexillology domain will eventually have it's own website. It is at least 3-6 months from now before it will have it's own website with unique content (it will be for a non-profit foundation).

I still find it strange that the domain name with the symlink (vex) came up in Yahoo two days after the symlink was created and the other domain (FRC) has yet to show up at all after 5 weeks.

1) Is there a difference between the symlink and a 30* redirect? Do I need to remove the symlink and add a redirect now?

2) We would like FRC to develop it's own ranking. From a branding standpoint FRC is FRC. Vex was linked purely because of the Martha Stewart article referencing that domain in name. Right now it seems the Vex is kind of high jacking it's rankings. Would you agree?

3) Part of the tracking question aroses when we considered whether there would be a benefit for the owner purchasing flag-research-center dot com and if he did, how to tell if it was better than flagresearchcenter dot com. One theory is that they hyphenated name would be better for the search engines and the other for people. I remember your point about diluting inbound links. I guess we should just stick with what we have.

4) You mentioned tracking. Can you point me more specifically to something that is free. Awstats is provided on the server. I guess my question is for the what and the how.

Thanks again for sharing your experience and knowledge,

Jim.

[jjspencer]

Hi,

I have added a site map through G sitemaps.

It shows the following, I removed the info that had a grey bar next to it and left the ones with a green bar next to it.

Status Distribution
HTTP errors / Not found

The PageRank of your pages in Google Distribution
PageRank not yet assigned

Your page with the highest PageRank
Jul www.mysite.com/
Jun www.mysite.com/
May www.mysite.com/
this seems to indicate that G has known about the site for longer than I thought.

I read from Google Sitemaps:

Status Distribution
HTTP errors / Not found

Is there something wrong with the way the site was constructed?

This post has been edited by Jill: Jul 15 2006, 10:57 PM

[Randy]

re: G Sitemap - I'll have to leave that question to someone else. I don't use it so don't know if that HTTP errors / Not Found message is a standard one or if it means there are are actual problems.

As to the rest, you have a bit of a conundrum !

Since the vex site is going to turn into an entity unto itself you may be better off to simply develop the new domain and prepare yourself to pay the price of having a new site. If the content you're moving is in a separate sub-dircectory you could still use some form of Redirection. This would at least help to pass any link love this section has to the new domain eventually.

If I'm understanding the full scope of the situation, I really don't see much of an option. You're going to end up with two separate sites, so you'll want to make sure this fact is clear to the search engines.