Ok. Was having a problem with a host, so I moved about 4 sites off it to a new host.

All are suddenly completely deindexed from G. And dropping on Y.

A look at the logs and G hasn't been by once since the move (hundreds/thousands per month before).

Also, 1000+ 302 errors. Mostly on /robots.txt which I've never had.

So, I added /robots.txt and changed htaccess to drop 404s to the /index.

Any other ideas? What the heck?

I've read a little about this problem here and there, but was hoping someone here could clarify.

Thanks

I'd point those 404s to a special "whoops" page. And who is getting these 302 errors? googlebot or some hacker?

using the logs you should be able to trace them. Care to post a portion?

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These are snippets... of the 302s.. not all of them, or all the log.

/robots.txt
Http Code: 302 Date: Mar 15 14:19:27 Http Version: HTTP/1.0 Size in Bytes: 230
Referer: -
Agent: msnbot/0.9 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
/favicon.ico
Http Code: 302 Date: Mar 15 16:34:16 Http Version: HTTP/1.1 Size in Bytes: 242
Referer: -
Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/417.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/417.8
/robots.txt
Http Code: 302 Date: Mar 15 12:15:33 Http Version: HTTP/1.0 Size in Bytes: 230
Referer: -
Agent: msnbot/1.0 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
/robots.txt
Http Code: 302 Date: Mar 15 13:40:59 Http Version: HTTP/1.0 Size in Bytes: 230
Referer: -
Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)

As I said, since the move, G is MIA

Those guys are no biggies.

as you've done, an empty text file called robots.txt will sort that out

and it's easy enough to make a favicon

It could well be that your new host has more sensitive reporting of errors.

__________________
█ How to Survive and Prosper in a falling property market
█ RealState for Real Estate - Directory
█ Property Management Broker