302 redirect impairs search indexing

[lindamoran]

I just found out that because one of my websites is virtual, which means it shares an IP address with my main site and exists in a subfolder, my hosting company does a 302 redirect. But the 302 redirect impairs search. As a result, it appears that only my home page of each site is indexed, but none of the other pages are indexed. Does anyone know of a way of working around this, short of moving my entire virtual site to a new address? I'll do it if I have to, but the virtual site is free, and it will be a pain. Do other hosting companies do this 302 redirect? And do developers realize that it trashes search? My hosting company is Wyenet.

I hope I explained it right. I'm only pretending to be technical. I'm really an author with two websites that I built myself.

Regards, Linda Moran (aka "authorgonetek")


www.betterwaypress.com (main site) (http://www.betterwaypress.com)
www.lindamoran.net (virtual site) (http://www.lindamoran.net)

[AdamGundry]

A 302 redirect means the page has temporarily moved, and the HTTP/1.1 specification says the resulting page should not be cached, which Google complies with.

If possible, get your host to do one of two things:
1. Change the response to 301 (Moved Permanently), which means the target should be cached. A 303 (See Other) response might work as well, but I'm not certain.
2. Send a Cache-Control or Expires field with the response indicating it should be cached - this might work.

You could also try directly adding the resulting pages to Google, which you can do here (http://www.google.com/addurl.html).

Adam

[lindamoran]

I got to the bottom of this, by talking to the kind persons at Wyenet. They explained to me that the presence of my virtual website (one which shares an IP with my main site and exists in a subfolder of the main site) means that BOTH sites need to have an index.cgi, resulting in a 302 redirect. Since a 302 redirect trashes search ranking, my only choice was to move my virtual site to a new IP address and pay the extra twenty bucks a month. The virtual site, on the other hand, was free.

I want to tip off anybody who buys into the free virtual site offered by some hosting companies--don't do it unless you don't care about searchability at all, for example, if it's a family website or something. From Wyenet's point of view, they're not thinking about search. They're offering me a tricky way to get a second website for free. I think if they understood what they were really offering, they would forewarn their customers. I have found Wyenet to be stable, reputable and reliable otherwise.
Linda Moran
http://www.betterwaypress.com
http://www.lindamoran.net

[AdamGundry]

It depends very much on the host, and the particular hosting setup they offer. I run about 10 domains/subdomains through one hosting account but the server configuration is such that each has its own virtual directory within shared hosting space, and I don't need redirects.

I'm glad you got it sorted out, anyway. In case you're interested I use 1 & 1 Internet (www.1and1.co.uk), and they come highly recommended.

Adam