Q and A: Is there an MSN version of Google Webmaster Tools?

Dear Kalena...

Just wondering if there is an MSN Live Search equivalent of Google Webmaster Tools?

Jay

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Jay

Somebody emailed me news about this today so I thought your question was very timely. The team at MSN Live Search announced recently in their blog that they are working on an initiative called Webmaster Portal, due to be publicly launched later this year. It will operate in a similar fashion to Google's Webmaster Tools and Yahoo's Site Explorer.

The Webmaster Portal is being hyped as a central place to find all tools and information relating to Live Search SEO, including:

• Troubleshooting tools to ensure MSNBot is effectively crawling and indexing your site
• Sitemap creation, submission and ping tools
• Statistics about your website
• Consolidation of content submission resources
• New content and community resources

This is good news for webmasters, especially since MSN removed the ability to check backward links via the "link:" operator earlier this year.

MSN Live Search is currently offering Webmaster Portal in BETA to interested persons.


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Q and A: How do I get search engines to recognize my main domain from the alias domains?

Dear Kalena...

I took out several domains that all pointed to one primary domain. A year on I have changed the content of my site completely and so the 'pointing domains' are totally irrelevant. Now however Yahoo have dropped my primary domain in the search results and only include one of the irrelevant domains. Could you advise how I would go about having the alias domains dropped and my primary domain reinstated with Yahoo?

Ade

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Ade

A client of mine is facing the identical situation right now, but on Google. How big an issue this is really depends on your definition of "pointing" domains. If you merely have the alias domains on the same IP address as your main site, that may not suffice. Does your primary domain have a Google cache? If it doesn't, then Google and or Yahoo may be assuming one of your alias domains is your primary site and ignoring all other domains.

You should park all the aliases to the main domain in your hosting panel so that when the aliases are typed in to the browser URL field, they redirect straight to the primary domain or show the content being cached from the primary domain. When you look at the Google cache for your alias domains, they should each show the message "This is Google's cache for [primary domain]". If they don't, you haven't got the DNS set up properly to point to your primary domain.

The alternative is to use manual 301 redirects from the aliases to the main domain. Your .htaccess file will then instruct search bots of the preferred domain and the others should no longer be indexed. It might take a week or two for the search engines to make the connection and index the primary domain, but it will happen.

You can help things along by creating a sitemap for your primary domain and uploading it to Google's Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer. I recommend using the free XML Sitemaps Generator to create your sitemaps.

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Q and A: How long will it take search engines to update my new keywords?

Dear Kalena...

My question is to do with keywords and how often search engines update them. If I change my keyword or key phrase for a page how long would it take Google to update its index for the keyword or phrase so that it now shows up in a search for that new keyword?

Regards
Clive

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Clive

Search engines don't update on the basis of keywords. They re-index the code on your pages and how often they do this depends on their own update schedule. If you've verified your site with Google's Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer, you can view your stats to get an idea of how often your site pages are indexed.

Whether or not your site begins to rank for new target keywords depends on how well you've optimized your pages for those keywords and how relevant the search engines now determine it to be. If you've optimized well and your pages are indexed regularly, you should see the results within a week or two. But in terms of Google, you may need to wait for a major database shuffle before you see your revised pages showing up for new keyword searches.

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Q and A: Why doesn't Google show all our backward links?

Dear Kalena...

I came across your site as I was searching for "why doesn't google show my links?". Yahoo and MSN show over 200 links to our www.Rubber-Bracelets.com site, but Google shows 2! What's up with that? We have the keywords in our domain name and I can't find us in the first five pages for "rubber bracelets". What gives? Of course, people aren't searching for rubber bracelets like they once were, but it appears in Google Suggest that there are still a good number of searches. Can you help?

Thanks!
Tony

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Tony

First up, what makes you think that having keywords in your domain automatically makes your site more relevant for searches involving those keywords? What if I purchased a domain like www.safe-kids-toys.com and loaded it up with porn? Do you think Google's algorithm will automatically assume my content is about "safe kids toys" just because my domain suggests it is? Uh uh. It doesn't work like that. I answered a similar question about keyword domains just yesterday.

Secondly, Google never displays the true number of backlinks your site has, only a sampling of the ones they consider to be important. You can get a better indication of who is linking to you from Yahoo Site Explorer.

Lastly, if your site is under 9 months old or has recently undergone a major re-design, it could be suffering from Google's aging delay for new sites. If that's the case, it won't rank in Google for your target keywords until it is released from limbo. It's Google's little screening process to help them weed out the dodgy sites from the authentic ones.

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Q and A: If dynamically generated pages don't technically exist, how do they get indexed?

Dear Kalena...

I am puzzled about dynamically generated pages. Since they don't actually 'exist', how do they get indexed? (I know you can mod_rewrite their urls, but they still don't 'exist' anywhere, right?)

AP

Kalena's Answer:

Dear AP

Well technically, no they don't exist until the page is "called". But from what I understand, a search robot, when indexing a site, can create them on the fly, just like a browser can. That's how they get indexed and links between them are followed.

Most search spiders/robots won't index more than a few pages of a dynamic site because of the unknown number of pages they represent. That's why services such as Google Sitemaps and Yahoo Site Explorer have developed - so you can "tell" a search engine how many URLs your site has - dynamic or otherwise. You should create an XML sitemap and submit it to both services.

Mod_rewrite is good, but prob not necessary now that engines have better technical ability to process dynamically generated content.

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Yahoo's Answer to Google Sitemaps

Yahoo! has launched their own version of Google Sitemaps, called Yahoo! Site Explorer.

Site Explorer lets you access the information Yahoo! stores about a site's online presence. You can see which sites and subpages are indexed by Yahoo! Search, track sites that link into webpage, and view the most popular pages from any site. Major uses of Site Explorer are to:

* Find which subpages within a URL are indexed by Yahoo!
* Find pages that link to that site or any page (incoming links)
* Submit and track XML feeds for your own sites

Just like with Google Sitemaps, you have access to more detailed information about your site or its content when you authenticate or validate your site and feeds by uploading a verification file.

You can use Yahoo! Site Explorer's search function to explore a site just like you were conducting a normal web search. Instead of entering a "query term" you will enter a site's URL and Site Explorer will use the URL you submit to return particular information related to the structure of that URL in the Yahoo! Search database and on the Web.

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