Today I want to search old threads on driving WA --> Alaska. I searched using Google, with my keywords and then adding site :boards. straightdope .com (no spaces).
The Google search returned many SDMB threads from between 2002 and 2016. But every one I clicked took me to a SDMB page that said " Oops! That page doesn’t exist or is private." Every one.
I use this search method to look for old threads regularly. But apparently… something… has happened to the old threads.
Gonna take a bit for Google to update its results.
When we migrated, the URLs to the threads changed. So the old .php ones no longer work, and that’s what Google has on file right now. Give it a while and it’ll work again.
I’ve found it to be problematic and wonky so far — huge holes in the index (or at least that’s my interpretation; lots of missing stuff that should have been among the results, at any rate) — I’ll have to give it another shot and see if things have been fixed or refreshed yet.