Google search results gone

[fgh]

Hey there,

I noticed all EAB google search results are gone, probably after the server move.

Any chance you could help google get them back?

EAB was the top provider of amiga related search results, would be a shame to loose that.

I see your robots.txt doesn't intentionally limit results.
(Not sure if the allow: feature works reliably though? I though it would be enough to just not have * disallowed but I'm not up to date on SEO.)

[derSammler]

Google indexes by URL. A server move will not have any effect on that, as Google won't even notice that.

I have no issue getting results from EAB in Google. Only issue that there is for some time now: the website name is shown as "Hall Of Light".

What search term(s) did you try?

[Bren McGuire]

i just think things shifted around and now you get reddit results on top

[TCD]

Google changed the way their searches work. Before it would match text you enter pretty much 1:1, so if a thread title here on EAB matched your search it would be listed pretty high. Now it doesn't work like that anymore. It might be to combat 'SEO' spam in webpages, but it surely also pushed popular websites way higher and useful niche ones to the bottom of the search results.

[derSammler]

Btw, you can use this search term:

* site:eab.abime.net

to get what is currently indexed. I get 845 entries, which seems to be on the low side. But it may filter on my location, prefs and whatnot..

[arcanist]

There are several posts I once found through Google which are no longer in the 'keyword site:eab.abime.net' results. I recall they disappeared a year ago or so.

Google's index of EAB is quite sparse now so I have to use vBulletin's crappy search feature.

[fgh]

I've been using google to find EAB threads for more than 10 years and while I do still find a few threads, there has been an significant (feels like 99%) reduction lately.

Couple of example searches + hits:
"amiga site:eab.abime.net": Google: 7900. Bing: 980 000
"a2386sx site:eab.abime.net": Google: 0. Bing: 517

Dersammler: I'd be very surprised if google doesn't notice a server move even though it primarily uses URL's.
I don't know if it's related, but this did happen at least more or less at the same time as the server move.

[derSammler]

Originally Posted by fgh

Dersammler: I'd be very surprised if google doesn't notice a server move even though it primarily uses URL's.

A server move just means the IP changed. Since changing IPs are pretty normal these days (CDN, multiple routes for load-balancing etc.), Google does not care for indexed website addresses. Google's domains do not have fixed IPs either.

It does care for the IP for SMTP, however. But that's a different case.

[fgh]

Ok, that could be. In this case the server was changed, so possibly the web server software as well, so I just assumed if google bothered to have ~1 million entries stored for a site, it might store a string or three of data about the server as well

Edit: But again: It was mainly that these two events possibly happened at the same time that made me think of the connection.
Perhaps robots.txt was changed, and * was disallowed by mistake, but then allowed again. (it is allowed now). Not sure if google would be that quick to purge the entries though?
Perhaps it will rebuild over time, I don't know.

[RCK]

The server move is not yet done, so I change nothing on my side.
I don't know why google is less indexing EAB than before

but it sucks now:

request = "amiga site:eab.abime.net"
google.com = 1300 results
bing = 983000 results

request = "amiga site:amiga.abime.net"
google.com = 11500 results
bing = 48000 results

[RCK]

Originally Posted by fgh

I don't know if it's related, but this did happen at least more or less at the same time as the server move.

Hum, there was no server move yet, but the addition of GPT disallow into the robots.txt was done on "2023-10-03"

User-agent: GPTBot
User-agent: CCBot
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /
User-agent: *
Allow: /

Maybe it's simply that ?

[RCK]

Okay so I rolled back robots.txt to one empty file as before
Let's hope it will help us to have much more result on google.

[RCK]

I also asked to the Google Search Console to reindex EAB.
And yes, it confirmed EAB has vanished from his index.

[stx2199]

google now is not the best search engine anymore
it was long time ago but now it sucks
I changed the default search engine on all my browsers around 1 year ago

is better to use yahoo or bing or duckduckgo, I don't know exactly which one is better now, but those are better than google for sure

[TCD]

Just saw this article today: https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/
It's not abime, it's Google.

[khph_re]

Glad it's not just me that noticed this, I thought I was going crazy.

While setting up an amiga A600, I went looking for help on google, I expected lots of Amiga.org and EAB posts, but got almost nothing.

[Retroplay]

Fear not khph_re, Quack-Fu to the rescue.
https://is.gd/b2J9gt

[S0ulA55a551n]

Originally Posted by TCD

Just saw this article today: https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/
It's not abime, it's Google.

That was a really interesting and enlightening article

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Retroplay

Fear not khph_re, Quack-Fu to the rescue.
https://is.gd/b2J9gt

Slowly migrating to it myself. So far it's pretty decent.

[malko]

Originally Posted by stx2199

[...] I changed the default search engine on all my browsers around 1 year ago

is better to use yahoo or bing or duckduckgo, [...]

For daily use, my choice went for startpage.com (think it's older than duckduckgo), which like duckduckgo has an interesting privacy browser plugin as well.