Hi all,

I'm having a slight problem...

http://www.merito.co.uk was submitted manually to google 3 months ago, and again last month, and has a few inbound links, but for some reason isnt being indexed. Googlebot's hit it 39 times, but never goes past index.html for some reason....
The meta tags are set to index and follow, and there's no robots.txt file telling it not to index...

Any ideas why this site might not be getting indexed?

Thanks in advance :)

Ask them, they will actually reply to you about it.

Cheers, i'll drop them a line. Always thought they'd be too busy to deal with individual mails about sites not indexed.....

Some usual issues in this vein - see if they affect you:

1/ You are or are linking to a link farm - penalty
2/ You've bought a black-listed domain - penalty

Are you sure Google is not actually indexing the site? To check, download the Google Toolar: http://toolbar.google.com and install it - full featuers - then go visit your website. In the toolbar check "page info" and click on the drop-down box - "cahced snapshot of page". If your page is there then google has actually indexed it. If not then you contact Google.

Btw - google is doing a funny extended dance at the moment - a lot isn't showing - they're messing with new indexing features, apparently.

Brian,
Thanks for the reply but -

I have the google toolbar, and I definately have no PR, and there is no cached snapshot of the page.

Regarding the current dance, I'v checked on all 8 data centres, and none have any listing for the site, besides which I had no listing befre the dance started (the 5th of this month) even though the site's been active for just over 3, and was submitted at the same time. There were two previous dances before this one and neither indexed the site. :(

Originally posted by merito
http://www.merito.co.uk was submitted manually to google 3 months ago, and again last month, and has a few inbound links, but for some reason isnt being indexed. Googlebot's hit it 39 times, but never goes past index.html for some reason.... Does it really have inbound links? Doesn't look like it: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=%22%2Bwww.merito.co.uk%22

That's searching just for the string "www.merito.co.uk" not for links, so it should find pages even with too low a PR to show using the link: command. But it finds nothing.

A search for "Merito Web Services (http://www.google.com/search?q=%22merito+web+services%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&filter=0)" returns only the voting page from webhostdir, where you're listed but where there's no link.

So it looks like that could be your problem: no inbound links from other Google-indexed pages. I don't see any at FAST, either (where they have probably the best facility for identifying links).

Jay..

I think the problem with it not currently showing any inbounds is because of the dance, until it started google was showing 7 i believe, and a few other engines list a few. This dance seems to include a major algo update, and some sites are losing hundreds or thousands of inbound links (http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/12585.htm for info and examples)
Google not knowing the site is there doesnt seem to be the problem anyway, because googlebot has come to the page 39 times in 3 months. From that i'd guess that there's something with the page that is causing google to not include it in the index - the problem is I cant see what. :(
Very frustrating.

Just wait for a few more days as google update is going on. New index is likely to be in place sometime early nextweek. If you are still not there check the PR of all the sites that you are linking to. If you are linking out to any PR0 site which is banned then remove that link and email webmaster@google.com with subject "reinclusion request" as it has been mentioned in the following URL:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/9965.htm?highlight=reinclusion+request

As you are aware of webmasterworld so might have read the above thread before.

Your site should be in the index in next one month or so.

Thanks for that, i'll give it till next week and fingers crossed, but frankly i'm a bit dubious, the past two normal dances didnt index my site....
We'll see I guess :)

Cheers :)

Originally posted by merito
I think the problem with it not currently showing any inbounds is because of the dance, until it started google was showing 7 i believe, and a few other engines list a few. OK, I took the comment "isnt being indexed" in your initial post to mean that it had never been listed.

Which IP range are the googlebot hits you're seeing from? That is, is it the freshbot (64.*) or the deep crawler?

In any case, it's certainly true that the ongoing update is not finished and not consistently distributed across all of the data centers, and when it is in place the new database isn't complete. It's not worth worrying too much about it until things settle down; until then you can't draw any firm conclusions.

Jay, the site has never been listed. the links TO the site were listed before the dance began, but the site itself has never been listed in the google index. I dont have the IP available at the moment unfortunately, my server stats just show that i'v had 39 hits from the user_agent Googlebot\2.1.

Merito, I've resubmitted your URL, so watch your logs for the crawler. Especially watch out for the IP 216.

I've checked your site and wondered whether it's possible that Google actually doesn't like the code you are using? I don;t know too much about it, but I suspect that because there's no text on the page and because there's no obvious link in the HTML code, then all Google can see is your images.

I know there's a link somewhere for checking for what spiders see, but my first advice would be to consider removing the splash page and making your "details" page the default index, and see whether that means you are listed next time around. Trouble is - you'd have to wait for the next dance to settle down, and it may take up to 8 weeks for your indexed pages to show.

I'll see if I can find some further info - if not, I recommend you take this to Sitepoint - namely here (http://www.sitepointforums.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=177) - which is a board dedicated to optimising sites for Google.

spiders will generally see what you see in the LYNX browser, you can check via a shell or at http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html
from the looks not much content on the index page which is the first point of stop for a robot, and of course getting links from sites already in google help alot.

Hi guys,

regarding the actual code, its all W3 HTML 4.01 Strict compliant, so there shouldnt be any problems actually reading it....

Regarding the lack of real content, thats what i'm beginning to imagine the problem is, however having looked in Lynx, as well as checking the site with several other viewers that are suppoed to show what the robots see, it does show the two links its' supposed to, so there should at least be SOME content it sees. besides, I always thought if google found a splash page, it would just index the next page in the site it finds and just ignores the splash page...?
I made some minor code changes to the meta tags last night, as well as emailing google, if I dont hear anything back or changing these tags doesnt help, i'll have a go at giving google some more content on the page and wait for the next dance...

Cheers guys :)

Originally posted by merito
Cheers, i'll drop them a line. Always thought they'd be too busy to deal with individual mails about sites not indexed.....

I guess if everyone emailed, they wouldn't reply but a client of mine emailed them recently and got quite a helpful response as to his ranking information.

Very strange indeed..

I checked the code on your front page and couldn't find anything that would stop it being indexed, although I would recommend getting rid of the splash.

Basically you'll lose point of PR by having a splash, because it has to distribute it down another layer - not worth it! Plus there is a large percentage of web users who will never go past a splash page.

I checked your backlinks on several search engines using this tool:
http://www1.widexl.com/cgi-bin/remotely/pop/popular.pl?url1=www.merito.co.uk&url2=&url3=&email=&html=1&burl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.widexl.com%2Fremote%2Flink-popularity%2Findex.html

and found that you only showed up on MSN once and when I checked the page I couldn't actually find the link! Would you mind letting us know where these backlinks are that you have? Perhaps they are on unindexable pages or cgi redirects or something like that.

EDIT I just noticed that the link doesn't work properly.. copying and pasting the address will work though.

Possible good news, googlebot's just hit the site again, from 212.204.254.46. to my knowledge thats the deepcrawl rather than the freshbot isnt it? all the hits i'v had over the past 3 months were coming from the freshbot i believe, so this could be positive...
I'm thinking the code change I made last night could have had an effect, until then the page was formatted to strict XML rather than strict HTML, the only real difference was the inclusion of some 'space'/ tags in places, however the deepcrawl finally hitting after making the chance seems to suggest it made a difference.....

The strictness of your code shouldn't really matter to much at all.

Hi Alex
I will try to help with some pointers I noticed.

1) Could I suggest using plain text and not images for your logo
"Merito Web Services" (P.S I do know you have alt tags) You could even use some of your "description tag" on index page to boost keyword use.
2) I also dont see alot keyword density, you need to use your keywords though out your pages.
3) Get your keywords up higher near the top on your content pages.
4) more content related pages is going to help you with ranking.

Have you tried to submit your details.html page as well
You got to make the Google Baby Bot come to you, so I suggest do regular submissions as they do not promise you will be spidered. eg 1 a week.
What other Search Engines are you listed with.
Regards
Travis

Wait for periodically update of Google. You will be indexed.

Hi james, thanks for the comments.
Regarding other engines, there's the problem thats leading me to think its a problem with the code on the page. I'm not listed with any. Depending on which engine you use, I get a variety of different amount of inbound links (google shows 1 as of an hour ago or so, msn has a different one..) Habing used Copernic Pro to search through a load of engines i'v uncovered 17 inbound links from different engines, but none of them have my url itself indexed.
Submitting the details.html is something I thought of seeing as it has much better relation to the keywords, but i'll leave it for a bit, I submitted the url last week, and Brian kindly re-submitted it yesterday, I dont want google to blacklist me for spamming them so i'll leave it at least a couple of weeks before submitting anything.
Regarding the lack of keyword density on the index page, I'm now coming up with some additions to the page to try to include some of the keywords and descriptions in the content, but the challenge is trying to keep it streamlined like the whole site is at present, I do like that look.

Alex

I don't think you have any need to get rid of your logo. I haven't seen any indications that ALT text is valued lower than on-page text and a html text logo is not very professional! Of course, what wouldn't hurt is repeating the name of your company in a h1 tag on the page.

My main things that I would change are:
1. Lose the splash!
2. Get some real links.. as I said in my previous post, I couldn't find any good links to your site in any of the search engines. If you are serious about getting business through this website, consider investing in a Yahoo directory listing or start begging at DMOZ to be let in. Alternatively, scour the web for any place (not guestbooks or forums) where you can get a good link. If you have anyone you've done site design for, perhaps they could link to you at the bottom of their page(s). Once you have good incoming links there is NO need to keep resubmitting.
3. Build some good content pages, as TJamesB suggests.
4. Make sure the anchor text of your links is a keyword. So for example, get rid of the 'click here' link and replace it with 'web services' or any relevant phrase that you expect to draw visitors with.
5. Add a few h1 tags and choose your page titles carefully (they should match the anchor text of the links to that page)

I hope that helps. You should be able to find a lot more tips at Webmasterworld.

I don't think you have any need to get rid of your logo. I haven't seen any indications that ALT text is valued lower than on-page text

Do a search on Google for key-words, and you get the index of on-page text, not alt text. ;)

It's the page text that's missing, and I couldn't see any links in the code - I figured it's because it was embedded in the CSS - but I'm sure there have been issues with CSS and browsers/robots.

Dump the splash page and just go for a straight key-word rich main page, like your details page. After all, you logo is there as well, and quite visible.

Do you have a proper robot.txt file?
Many websites owners overlook this important file!
Key word=proper.........

Phone, I dont have one atall, as I put in my first post, as I have no need to block any pages from google.

robots.txt also can be used to tell crawlers what they can follow as well as what they can't

Yes, but even without a "robots.txt" file they should be following automatically, especially if it's in the robots meta-tag.

My understanding of the "robots.txt" is that it's simply for determining which areas of your site should not be crawled. Which here appears inapplicable.

Do a search on Google for key-words, and you get the index of on-page text, not alt text.

I beg to differ!

An example if I may:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=aerosweep

Just look at the description of the no.1 result provided by google, then compare that to the source of that page.. There is NO on-page text at all. All text referred to in the google description is based on the alt text.

Then do another search:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=greensweep

Result no.10 is that very SAME page and the only place on the page that 'greensweep' is mentioned is in the alt tag. It's not even mentioned in the title!

Notice also how google has bolded the word, indicating that that is the reason it is giving you that result.

Sorry to be contrary, but I had to defend my point ;)

Don't worry about using images, just make sure you provide sensible, concise and meaningful ALT text to back it up!

Thanks daamsie, I'll be changing the ALT text of the two links to be the same as the title of the page theyre linking to, that should boost the keywords used in content quite a bit.

Daamsie

No problem - I was being a little provocative. ;) If alt text works, then fine - usually I assume it doesn;t, but still use it. ;)

HOWEVER: ;)

An example if I may:

http://www.google.com/search?source...ent&q=aerosweep

Just look at the description of the no.1 result provided by google, then compare that to the source of that page.. There is NO on-page text at all.

Note that the domain is called "aerosweep" and the page title has the keyword "aerosweep". Google certainly has enough to rank it in terms of keywords.

don't see much in text, though - but more than merito. Simply be interesting to see how he goes.

BTw - merito - are you sure you're not listed? Only that I just ran a search and there are 11200 mentions in Google of the term - including other graphics firms. Maybe you are drowned out, yes?

Originally posted by merito
Hi guys,

regarding the actual code, its all W3 HTML 4.01 Strict compliant, I made some minor code changes to the meta tags last night...

Meta tags don't help as far as google is concerned because they are ignored by most search engines including google. I have quite a few sites doing very well in google that are without meta keywords and meta description tags. People spammed the hell out of meta tags in 1997-99 to search engines got smarter.

As all other posters on this thread said, put some text on the index page. Adding 200-250 words of text with your keywords used 8-10 times will help a lot.

I, Brian,

Indeed that page does have that keyphrase as the title and domain also. ( although many would claim that the domain has NO effect at all on rankings, apart from the fact that it generates more link anchor text with that word in it ). That's why that page is ranked no.1. My point in mentioning that one is that it demonstrates that the ALT text is being indexed.

However, the SECOND example I provided ( which ranks no.10 ) doesn't have those things going for it! The word isn't in the title, domain or any on-page text - just the ALT text, and yet it has a first page ranking ( albeit not a terribly competitive phrase ;))

woah lots of replies...
Brian, i'm not drowned out, the simplest way to check is to search for merito.co.uk rather than just merito. merito is bringing in a lot of results because it means "nice" in italian, so you'll probably notice a lot of the results google finds are italian pages...

I'm working on some text now for the page, and i'll get the ALT tags changed so they're inline with the content, from there on I suppose its just wait and see really....?

Keep on persisting.. it will get there eventually! And spend LOTS of time searching for quality links!