Hi all,

I am having a slightly frustrating situation with Google at the moment, and I hope someone here can help.

I just created a new site (a couple of weeks ago) which also has a forums section (SMF). As a result there are two index pages:

http://example/index.html

and

http://example/forums/index.php (the SMF forums home page)

I put both links in a major site that google indexed (I put the main page as http://example).

Now here's the problem: Google chose the forums main page (http://example/forums/index.php) as the main page for the site.

It is not even showing the proper main page (http://example) on the google search results. The main reason I think this happened was because the main page was all images and no text (yes, I know that was a mistake. I since added text to it).

Since then I tried the following things to fix the situation:
1. Submitted a sitemap file telling it the proper main page had the highest priority and the forums page the lowest
2. Put a robots.txt file disallowing it to index anything in /forums
3. Added links to the main page (http://example) in other sites

I thought about renaming http://example/forums/index.php to something else, but SMF will probably break as a result. And also, the major site with the link to that file does not allow updates (at least not quick ones). On hindsight I should have put the link as http://example/forums instead of http://example/forums/index.php.

So far nothing has helped (a few days have passed since I made the changes above). I'm currently tearing my hair out trying to figure this out.

j

when it's been 3 or 4 months start wondering.

Your site is 2 weeks old, it takes weeks or months for things to stabilise.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

when it's been 3 or 4 months start wondering.

Your site is 2 weeks old, it takes weeks or months for things to stabilise.

Thanks, Chris.

In the meantime, I'm redirecting the forums page to the site index page. Having it redirect like this looks a bit unprofessional (and it makes the forums in-accessible), but it's better than having all the visitors from google hitting the forums instead of hitting the proper main page.

j

Just take time for all the changes to take effect. And while you work on the way you want it. Try to disallow the robots.txt file and allow it after you are finished doing what should be done. In that way, you won't make the robots crawl your site at any moment.

Originally Posted by johnwinds

Thanks, Chris.

In the meantime, I'm redirecting the forums page to the site index page. Having it redirect like this looks a bit unprofessional (and it makes the forums in-accessible), but it's better than having all the visitors from google hitting the forums instead of hitting the proper main page.

j

Nes site no need to worry and do like this .. make the forum well and finish it all the site then launche . Leave the lin kby under cunbstruction. This typoe redirection is not a professionel way

In the meantime, I'm redirecting the forums page to the site index page. Having it redirect like this looks a bit unprofessional

Why on earth would you do this.

If you want SE traffic, you had better get used to your "home" page being the LEAST visited page from SE referrals.

It will probably take a while for google to recognize the changes you made.

are you sure that google did not index your actual home page?
Did you use the 'site:' parameter?

Thats because your http://example/forums/index.php more popular than you http://example/index.html

Ans your website inside-link are point to http://example/forums/index.php

So google think the first page is your homepage.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Why on earth would you do this.

If you want SE traffic, you had better get used to your "home" page being the LEAST visited page from SE referrals.

Its almost seems like he enjoys denying and driving away customers.