Q and A: Why aren't our pages indexed by Google or Yahoo?
Dear Kalena...
Hello and thank you for your most interesting newsletter which we as a company subscribe to.
1. Is there any obvious reason why none of the pages linked to 'Miscellaneous' at the link below are indexed by Google or Yahoo. These help pages were created months ago.
http://www.lowercall.com/faq.html
E.g. type into google or yahoo 'lowercall linksys camera' and nothing comes up. Type the same thing into MSN and pages are indexed fine.
2. If you type 'cheap calls' into google, one of our competitors called has managed to get themselves on the front page.
When I look at the source code for this competitor's page, right at the bottom there is some HTML code which is new to me - can you explain what this code does and if it is a way of optimising a page to further enhance search engine ranking.
[ a href="gben-server-PageServer?ARTICLE=SEARCH.SO.CHEAPCALL" class="searchterms">Cheap calls[ /a]
Kind Regards
Michael
Kalena's Answer:
Dear Michael
I've checked and your "miscellaneous" page IS indexed by Google AND Yahoo. In fact, Google has indexed 97 pages of your site. At my end, the search query lowercall linksys camera triggers a single site listing in Google - yours.
Perhaps there was a database shuffle going on at the time of your most recent search? Regardless, it's there now. A good way to ensure all your pages are indexed regularly by Google is to use their SiteMaps submit tool.
Regarding your competitor, I took a look at the site in question and you're right, it does seem like they are doing something a bit dodgy. There's nothing spammy about the code they're using, it's simply a way to call their database and request different content to appear based on their various products and services.
However, a few things trigger alarm bells:
1) They have stuck a whole bunch of links at the bottom of the page containing keyword-stuffed anchor text. This smells of search engine spam.
2) For these links, they have used tiny font in a color that is almost the same as the page background. This suggests they don't want human visitors to see them and so again, it reeks of search engine spam.
3) Each of these links leads to what I would classify as a "doorway page", optimised for a particular keyword or phrase but containing very little original content. Hmmm this isn't looking good.
4) Each of these "doorway pages" links to each other, creating a type of internal link network.
No question about it. I would definitely classify this as search engine spam, and so it seems, would Google. On their Webmaster Guidelines page they say:
I would just wait it out. Google will sort the wheat from the chaff eventually. Then again, maybe Google has bigger fish to fry. If you're concerned about it, you could always try bringing it to their attention by submitting a spam report.
[If you found this post helpful, you might benefit from downloading our free Search Engine Optimization lesson]
Hello and thank you for your most interesting newsletter which we as a company subscribe to.
1. Is there any obvious reason why none of the pages linked to 'Miscellaneous' at the link below are indexed by Google or Yahoo. These help pages were created months ago.
http://www.lowercall.com/faq.html
E.g. type into google or yahoo 'lowercall linksys camera' and nothing comes up. Type the same thing into MSN and pages are indexed fine.
2. If you type 'cheap calls' into google, one of our competitors called has managed to get themselves on the front page.
When I look at the source code for this competitor's page, right at the bottom there is some HTML code which is new to me - can you explain what this code does and if it is a way of optimising a page to further enhance search engine ranking.
[ a href="gben-server-PageServer?ARTICLE=SEARCH.SO.CHEAPCALL" class="searchterms">Cheap calls[ /a]
Kind Regards
Michael
Kalena's Answer:
Dear Michael
I've checked and your "miscellaneous" page IS indexed by Google AND Yahoo. In fact, Google has indexed 97 pages of your site. At my end, the search query lowercall linksys camera triggers a single site listing in Google - yours.
Perhaps there was a database shuffle going on at the time of your most recent search? Regardless, it's there now. A good way to ensure all your pages are indexed regularly by Google is to use their SiteMaps submit tool.
Regarding your competitor, I took a look at the site in question and you're right, it does seem like they are doing something a bit dodgy. There's nothing spammy about the code they're using, it's simply a way to call their database and request different content to appear based on their various products and services.
However, a few things trigger alarm bells:
1) They have stuck a whole bunch of links at the bottom of the page containing keyword-stuffed anchor text. This smells of search engine spam.
2) For these links, they have used tiny font in a color that is almost the same as the page background. This suggests they don't want human visitors to see them and so again, it reeks of search engine spam.
3) Each of these links leads to what I would classify as a "doorway page", optimised for a particular keyword or phrase but containing very little original content. Hmmm this isn't looking good.
4) Each of these "doorway pages" links to each other, creating a type of internal link network.
No question about it. I would definitely classify this as search engine spam, and so it seems, would Google. On their Webmaster Guidelines page they say:
Your competitor is doing all these things. BUT, it doesn't look like Google's anti-spam filters have picked up on this, which may be why you are still seeing your competitor high in the rankings. My guess is that the site will sink like a stone once those blatant techniques are discovered and penalized via spam filtering.
- Make pages for users, not for search engines.
- Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
- Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
- Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
- Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches
- Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank.
I would just wait it out. Google will sort the wheat from the chaff eventually. Then again, maybe Google has bigger fish to fry. If you're concerned about it, you could always try bringing it to their attention by submitting a spam report.
[If you found this post helpful, you might benefit from downloading our free Search Engine Optimization lesson]
Labels: search engine optimization (seo), search engine spam
2 Comments:
It is easy to get indexed by MSN. But it is not easy with Google. Every search engine got their own strategies for indexing. If your is fine with in its html for MSN, But the same page can be not friendly for google friendly. But nothing can say with out study about the pages and the site. It also depends whether these pages were unethical earlier or not
It has become apparent that typing a unique search term such as 'lowercall avg' into google.com will throw up different results depending on which part of the world you are located. Surfers in Australia get the correct page whereas surfers in the UK do not even though both are using google.com (eg not .co.uk or .com.au)
The problem lies not with the page 'lowercall avg', but with the way in which googles different data centers around the world have started to hold different pages.
The message for web designers is clear. If you upload a page to a well established website and that page is NOT indexed in Google, the problem may be that you are accessing one of Googles new 'Big daddy' data centres (see http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1916406,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594)
More and more evidence is emerging that the new data centre infra structure being adopted by google means that perfectly good web pages are vanashing for no apparent reason.
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