874 pages back in Google's index — a 20-year-old domain rescued
A 20-year-old domain was completely unreachable, its sitemap had not been read in 7 years and robots.txt was missing. A 301 consolidation, console reconnection and item-by-item triage of 65 dead URLs brought 874 pages back into Google's index — with zero impact on business email.
← Back to case studiesClient: Client A (a B2B site with a 20-year-old domain — name and domain anonymised at the client's request)
A 20-year-old corporate site, quietly losing its authority
Client A is a traditional B2B manufacturer whose site is built around a product catalogue, news and enquiry forms, with 874 URLs of legacy content. Long-standing customers type the primary domain directly, and organic search has always been the main acquisition channel — both routes were dead when we took over.
Client A — B2B website with a 20-year-old domain
20+ year-old domain · 874 URLs of content · DNS and hosting run by two separate third-party vendors
12 technical findings: far more than “the site is down”
The unreachable domain was only the part above the waterline. The full audit surfaced 12 issues across four layers: availability, index status, DNS assets and page structure.
- Primary domain：Completely unreachable, requests timed out
- Sitemap：Failed to read, 0 pages discovered
- 874 URLs：All dead while the domain was down
- robots.txt：No such file on the site
- Search consoles：No platform connected
- 404 pages：65, untriaged, no direction
- Duplicate pages：49 sets, no canonical tags
- DNS records：14 legacy records left behind
- Primary domain：Serving normally, 301 consolidates authority
- Sitemap：Read successfully, 874 pages discovered
- 874 URLs：All reachable, index entry points restored
- robots.txt：Live, recognised by Google as fully valid
- Search consoles：Google and Bing both connected
- 404 pages：65 triaged, 22 mapped to redirects
- Remediation plan：P1–P3 list handed to the build vendor
- Business email：Zero impact, sending and receiving intact
From connection timeouts to one 301 that consolidates authority
The primary domain is the entry point for every historical backlink. Restoring reachability is only step one — the real work is redirecting the scattered authority to the canonical site in a single 301 hop, preserving full paths and query parameters so every legacy link lands somewhere useful.
| Item | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Primary domain | Completely unreachable, persistent timeouts | Serving normally |
| HTTP access | Connection could not be established | Returns a 301 permanent redirect |
| HTTPS access | Connection could not be established | Returns a 301, certificate valid and auto-renewing |
| Redirect target | No canonical destination | www.(client-site).com |
| Authority | Split across two separate sites | Consolidated on the main site, legacy authority keeps flowing |
| Security warning | Browser flagged the site as unsafe | Valid certificate, warning gone |
Source: post-deployment measurements (DNS records and HTTP response headers re-checked item by item)
A broken sitemap that sat unnoticed for years
The sitemap was first submitted in December 2011, and read records stop after July 2019 — meaning Google had no way to discover new content through this channel for years. Once resubmitted, the indexing pipeline came back online.
Source: Google Search Console › Sitemaps report · Bing Webmaster Tools
robots.txt: from missing entirely to 1,946 crawl requests the next day
robots.txt is the first file a search engine reads before entering a site. No such file existed, so crawlers were working blind. Once deployed, Google recognised it as fully valid and crawling resumed.
- File status：No robots.txt present
- Crawl requests：No records
- File contents：None
- File status：All files valid
- Crawl requests the day after：1,946
- File contents：Allow all crawling + sitemap declaration
Source: Google Search Console › robots.txt report
65 404s, triaged into six categories — not simply deleted
The point of 404 handling is deciding what to save and what to let go. All 65 dead paths were traced individually, grouped into six categories, and given a graded action plan by impact.
| Category | Count | Share | Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legacy section and content paths (left over from a redesign) | 38 | 58.5% | High-value sections get redirects; the rest leave the sitemap |
| Long-tail content pages (bulk-generated, later retired) | 16 | 24.6% | Restore or retire after checking business value |
| Old static-site files | 4 | 6.2% | Redirect where a matching new page exists, otherwise retire |
| Retired content-hub modules | 3 | 4.6% | Restore the module or redirect to the new news listing |
| Platform-generated junk paths | 3 | 4.6% | Block crawling and fix the source in the CMS |
| Trailing-slash URL variants | 1 | 1.5% | Standardise URL rules site-wide |
Source: full-site 404 crawl and triage sheet (all 65 covered)
All 30 DNS records audited, zero impact on email
DNS is the invisible foundation of a site. Auditing all 30 records surfaced 14 legacy entries pointing at retired services — both an operational and a security risk. Every change deliberately avoided mail-related records, so the client's enquiry channel was never at risk.
What we did right
A repeatable playbook for legacy sites: diagnose first, restore the entry points, then triage item by item — with measurements at every step.
Full technical audit
12 issues across availability, index status, DNS assets and page structure
301 edge deployment for the primary domain
Server + valid certificate + permanent redirect, with DNS and response headers verified on the spot
robots.txt + sitemap resubmission
Google Search Console and Bing connected together; sitemap reads restored
404 triage and redirect map
65 dead URLs in six categories; 22 mapped with source, target, priority and owner
Acceptance testing and handover
10 acceptance checks archived; P1–P3 plan handed to the build vendor; 3 documents delivered
All figures come from official search-engine consoles and post-deployment measurements. Shared with client authorisation; verification channels available on request. Client details anonymised. JW Digital
Your site may be losing search authority in silence too
An unreachable domain, a dead sitemap, a missing robots.txt — none of these trigger an alert. They just shrink your index coverage and enquiries year after year. Our four-dimension audit works through technology, content, layout and on-page, and puts every issue on the table.
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