Hi,
I have a peculiar problem the last 8 or 9 months and can't seem to crack it. We have a few popular domains in which I'm able to add a 'year' as the third level to differentiate between different years of the same event. I have always kept the root domain redirected to the upcoming event (year) - for example, ****.org was redirected to 2012.****.org and now redirects to 2016.****.org. The domain names are the search terms themselves.
Our 2012.****.org domains did very well and not only topped all search engines but we got the super listing with the 8 sub-listings in Google and 6 sub-listings in Yahoo/Bing. We hold the top positions until this day.
About a year ago, Google dropped the 2012 from the url and used only the root ****.org. It didn't bother me as we were still in top positions and I was looking forward to the change of years and how SEO would react. In November of last year, following the 2012 event, I switched the redirect to 2016 and awaited the results. Our 2012 pages reverted back to 2012.****.org and held the top position - cool. The 2016 pages (all new content) took on the root ****.org and held the second position for a few days before dropping out of site. I didn't think much of it and knew that I'd have to put in the normal effort to move back into top positioning.
About 4 months ago, the 2016 pages started listing 1st, 2nd or 3rd position of the first page on Yahoo/Bing and have held to this day.
In Google, I noticed that sub-pages in the 2016 site were moving into 2nd and 3rd page positions but the root domain ****.org was nowhere to be seen. When searching site:****.org the main index page was there. When searching 2016.****.org it was not.
I have multiple domains in the same quagmire and have been trying different configurations over the past months. One interesting test was to redirect the root to a different sub-page in the site thus thinking the main page would revert to the 2016.****.org version as it had for 2012. After a couple of days, I confirmed that the root ****.org had taken the sub-page listing but now, nearly two months later, the main index page for 2016 has not been indexed and is nowhere to be found.
Any ideas appreciated. As I mentioned, we have multiple sites in the same predicament and are able to test different theories at the same time.
Thanks
I have a peculiar problem the last 8 or 9 months and can't seem to crack it. We have a few popular domains in which I'm able to add a 'year' as the third level to differentiate between different years of the same event. I have always kept the root domain redirected to the upcoming event (year) - for example, ****.org was redirected to 2012.****.org and now redirects to 2016.****.org. The domain names are the search terms themselves.
Our 2012.****.org domains did very well and not only topped all search engines but we got the super listing with the 8 sub-listings in Google and 6 sub-listings in Yahoo/Bing. We hold the top positions until this day.
About a year ago, Google dropped the 2012 from the url and used only the root ****.org. It didn't bother me as we were still in top positions and I was looking forward to the change of years and how SEO would react. In November of last year, following the 2012 event, I switched the redirect to 2016 and awaited the results. Our 2012 pages reverted back to 2012.****.org and held the top position - cool. The 2016 pages (all new content) took on the root ****.org and held the second position for a few days before dropping out of site. I didn't think much of it and knew that I'd have to put in the normal effort to move back into top positioning.
About 4 months ago, the 2016 pages started listing 1st, 2nd or 3rd position of the first page on Yahoo/Bing and have held to this day.
In Google, I noticed that sub-pages in the 2016 site were moving into 2nd and 3rd page positions but the root domain ****.org was nowhere to be seen. When searching site:****.org the main index page was there. When searching 2016.****.org it was not.
I have multiple domains in the same quagmire and have been trying different configurations over the past months. One interesting test was to redirect the root to a different sub-page in the site thus thinking the main page would revert to the 2016.****.org version as it had for 2012. After a couple of days, I confirmed that the root ****.org had taken the sub-page listing but now, nearly two months later, the main index page for 2016 has not been indexed and is nowhere to be found.
Any ideas appreciated. As I mentioned, we have multiple sites in the same predicament and are able to test different theories at the same time.
Thanks
