 | View Full Version : Meta tag (google) question chromeman 06-07-2004, 09:12 AM Hi there. I put my site in for submission on google a few weeks ago and I'm finally on! Ranked 3rd if you type it in searchin UK only and on the 3rd page on the entire web. Only problem is, it shows the title but no description for the site. Any ideas why? Thanks!:) dawhb 06-07-2004, 09:38 AM It shows only description cause your meta tags are not configured properly. visit http://www.geekvillage.com/webmaster_tools.htm. There are Meta Tag Generator on this page. Regards D. chromeman 06-07-2004, 09:50 AM What do you mean they are not generated properly? Is some of the coding wrong? Thanks for the reply :)! the_pm 06-07-2004, 09:52 AM IIRC, Google completely ignores metatag information. Google and others) are most likely choking on your frames, and if I may say, I'm having a hard time figuring out why the frameset is there myself. You can't bookmark pages and refreshing the page takes you back to the beginning. Your noframes content is what allowed you to be indexed at all. But aren't you glad this text DIDN'T end up being displayed with your SE listing? :) chromeman 06-07-2004, 09:56 AM Sorry I didn't understand all that. There's no frames on the index page, just on the main site. The reason they are there are for easy navigation. True, you can't bookmark pages but I see no reason why you'd want to. What noframes content? What text wasn't displayed in the search engine? the_pm 06-07-2004, 10:28 AM Here's the frameset I'm seeing on your index page: <html><head> <meta name="description" content="Website of the band, Visionstate"> <meta name="keywords" content="Visionstate, Vision, State, Adam Dickens, Ricky Skinner, Rob Alderman, Rob Willoughby"> <title>Visionstate</title> </head> <frameset cols="100%,*" border="0"> <frame src="http://chromeonline.webmaxhosting.com" name="main"> <noframes> <head> <title>Visionstate</title></head> <body> <div align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>The web page you are looking for can be found at: <br> <a href="http://chromeonline.webmaxhosting.com"><font color="#DFDFFF">http://chromeonline.webmaxhosting.com</font></a></b></font></div> </body> </noframes> </frameset> </html> The noframes is errantly implemented too, FWIW. It shouldn't contain a second instance of the <head> area. It should simply contain the body. I'm not sure how navigation is made any easier for the visitor. The "advantages" for the developer seem obvious, since you only need to render the navigation once. But SSIs do a much better job of this. Someone might want to bookmark your downloads page to check back periodically on stuff you're producing. That's the first thing that comes to mind. True, this is a minor annoyance, but why implement any unnecessary annoyances at all, especially at the expense of proper SE indexing and issues that arise with orphaned pages? Just some thoughts to chew on :) JayC 06-07-2004, 11:40 AM Originally posted by chromeman Hi there. I put my site in for submission on google a few weeks ago and I'm finally on! Ranked 3rd if you type it in searchin UK only and on the 3rd page on the entire web. Only problem is, it shows the title but no description for the site. Any ideas why? Actually, your description above of the situation is inaccurate; they're not showing the title, just the domain name. It's because Google has indexed the site but hasn't yet crawled it. You're finding it by searching for 'visionstate' just based on the domain name but none of the content is yet indexed. Nothing to do but wait. chromeman 06-07-2004, 12:21 PM Originally posted by the_pm Here's the frameset I'm seeing on your index page: <html><head> <meta name="description" content="Website of the band, Visionstate"> <meta name="keywords" content="Visionstate, Vision, State, Adam Dickens, Ricky Skinner, Rob Alderman, Rob Willoughby"> <title>Visionstate</title> </head> <frameset cols="100%,*" border="0"> <frame src="http://chromeonline.webmaxhosting.com" name="main"> <noframes> <head> <title>Visionstate</title></head> <body> <div align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>The web page you are looking for can be found at: <br> <a href="http://chromeonline.webmaxhosting.com"><font color="#DFDFFF">http://chromeonline.webmaxhosting.com</font></a></b></font></div> </body> </noframes> </frameset> </html> The noframes is errantly implemented too, FWIW. It shouldn't contain a second instance of the <head> area. It should simply contain the body. I'm not sure how navigation is made any easier for the visitor. The "advantages" for the developer seem obvious, since you only need to render the navigation once. But SSIs do a much better job of this. Someone might want to bookmark your downloads page to check back periodically on stuff you're producing. That's the first thing that comes to mind. True, this is a minor annoyance, but why implement any unnecessary annoyances at all, especially at the expense of proper SE indexing and issues that arise with orphaned pages? Just some thoughts to chew on :) Thanks for the advice I'll see what I can do! Actually, your description above of the situation is inaccurate; they're not showing the title, just the domain name. It's because Google has indexed the site but hasn't yet crawled it. You're finding it by searching for 'visionstate' just based on the domain name but none of the content is yet indexed. Nothing to do but wait. Thankyou for the reply! :) JayC 06-07-2004, 12:27 PM By the way, the_pm is right about the noframes content -- it should only include <body> content, not the header. And that's probably what will end up being indexed: the single line "The web page you are looking for can be found at: chromeonline.webmaxhosting.com". If you're using <noframes> you want to put some real content in there -- basically think of it as another site for people (or spiders) that can't use frames. chromeman 06-07-2004, 05:18 PM Hi again guys. I just copied this code straight from dreamweaver without it being edited: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Expires" CONTENT="Thurs, 16 Mar 2006 15:40:31 GMT"> <TITLE>Visionstate | Website of the band</TITLE> <LINK REV="made" href="mailto:webmaster@visionstate.co.uk"> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="Visionstate, vision state, Adam Dickens, Ricky Skinner, Rob Alderman, Rob Willoughby, Just For A Day, If It Takes You, In The Eyes, band, Newport Pagnell, Milton Keynes, Bedford, Northampton, Luton, Peterborough, Soundhaus, Met Lounge, The Well, Ousedale School"> <META NAME="description" CONTENT="This is the website of the band, Visionstate. Visionstate are Ricky Skinner (vocals/guitar), Rob Alderman (guitar), Adam Dickens (bass) & Rob Willoughby (drums)."> <META NAME="author" CONTENT="Webmaster"> <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="ALL"> <!-- Metadata generated by http://vancouver-webpages.com/META/mk-metas.html --> </head> <body bgcolor="#000040" text="#FFFFFF" link="#FFFFFF" vlink="#CCCCCC" alink="#CCCCCC"> <!-- Start of StatCounter Code --> <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript"> var sc_project=258211; </script> <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://www.statcounter.com/counter/counter.js"></script><noscript><a href="http://www.statcounter.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://c1.statcounter.com/counter.php?sc_project=258211&java=0" alt="traffic analysis" border="0"></a> </noscript> <!-- End of StatCounter Code --> <div align="center"> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <table width="75%" border="0" align="center"> <tr> <td><p align="center"><img src="Images/Links_logo/visionstate-darkblue.jpg" width="627" height="63"></p> <p align="center"><font size="2" face="Tahoma">Welcome to the website of the band, Visionstate.</font></p> <p align="center"><font size="2" face="Tahoma"><a href="index2.htm">Click here to enter</a></font></p> <p align="center"><font size="2" face="Tahoma">Designed for 1024x768 resolution.</font></p> </td> </tr> </table> <p><font size="2" face="Tahoma"></font></p> </div> </body> </html> Which part is wrong? chromeman 06-07-2004, 05:26 PM Oh wait, I think the 2nd <head><title></head></title> bit has come from statcounter? If you look at my paste that I took from Dreamweaver, then look at the one the_pm got, they're very different. Why is this??? the_pm 06-07-2004, 05:40 PM I think you viewed the source directly inside of the frame, which is easy to do since the cols are set at 100%,*. Try using the view source option in the browser menu, and you should see framesets. Here's what I came up with for errors in the code: [FONT=courier new] ??? <body bgcolor="#000040" text="#FFFFFF" link="#FFFFFF" vlink="#CCCCCC" alink="#CCCCCC"> - eliminate in favor of stylesheets. While technically it isn't "wrong" it's a perfect example of WYSIWYG inefficiency. Cut the dragon off at the head and move this info where it belongs before you start generating multiple pages of content. You have a bunch of these: <p> </p>, Dreamweaver's best attempt at spacing components around a page. Not wrong, but certainly a head-scratcher. <font> - HTML 101, the font tag no longer exists in current specs (deprecated in HTML 4.01), and for very good reasons. Without going into long lectures, everything you're using this tag for should be done in stylesheets. <p><font size="2" face="Tahoma"></font></p> - wtf? Missing alt attribute - Gotta have 'em. These are the perils of using graphical editors to design for the Web. Dreamweaver is probably the best of the bunch, which is akin to saying stubbing your toe is better than fracturing your skull. It's still not good, but at least there's less recovery time... chromeman 06-07-2004, 05:43 PM When you say style sheets is that css? Cos if it is, I haven't a clue how to do it. The courier new thing was part of this forum, was meant to change all that txt to courier new. It still doesn't really explain why a load of my code has gone missing when published on the web and why an extra 'head' and 'title' tag has been put in though! Thanks for the reply again! the_pm 06-07-2004, 05:55 PM Yes, style sheets is CSS. It's really pretty simple to learn - one of those concepts that may not make sense for a bit, then the lightbulb just sorta turns on, and suddenly you can do practically anything you used to do with old HTML attributes more efficiently and make site-wide changes effortlessly. Of course, then you get into the wide wonderful world of browser hacks, but at least the basics are worth getting to know ASAP, since these have pretty much been adopted universally. The explanation for differences in code are that somehow, when you constructed your pages in Dreamweaver, you told it to place everything in a frameset. When you edit your pages in DW, you don't see the frameset, but once your pages are online, it's there. That's the best description I can give without actually being in front of your computer and showing you. :unhappy: Edit: You're welcome BTW! (I didn't want to put a whole new entry just for that) chromeman 06-07-2004, 05:59 PM You are one knowledgable guy! lol! Thanks for all the help. I'm going offline now but I'm going to try and get rid of this damned frameset if possible! I may be back for more help :eek:! Thanks again :D! JayC 06-07-2004, 06:13 PM You know, now that I've taken another look at the site that frameset implementation would keep it from ever being fully indexed by Google. The noframes content, which is what googlebot would read, would just send the crawler to chromeonline.webmaxhosting.com... which is exactly the same page. You've set up an infinite loop for spiders that use noframes. chromeman 06-08-2004, 06:31 AM I did?! God, this gets worse everytime I read this post! Going to create a whole new index page in notepad and see if that solves it! chromeman 06-08-2004, 07:14 AM Well I wrote a new index page in notepad, uploaded and still the same problem! This is really doing my head in! I just dont understand where this part of the code: <frameset cols="100%,*" border="0"> <frame src="http://chromeonline.webmaxhosting.com" name="main"> <noframes> <head> <title>Visionstate</title></head> <body> <div align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>The web page you are looking for can be found at: <br> <a href="http://chromeonline.webmaxhosting.com"><font color="#DFDFFF">http://chromeonline.webmaxhosting.com</font></a></b></font></div> </body> is coming from and where this part of the original code: <META HTTP-EQUIV="Expires" CONTENT="Thurs, 16 Mar 2006 15:40:31 GMT"> <TITLE>Visionstate | Website of the band</TITLE> <LINK REV="made" href="mailto:webmaster@visionstate.co.uk"> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="Visionstate, vision state, Adam Dickens, Ricky Skinner, Rob Alderman, Rob Willoughby, band, Milton Keynes, Bedford, Northampton, Soundhaus, Met Lounge, The Well, Ousedale School"> <META NAME="description" CONTENT="This is the website of the band, Visionstate. Visionstate are Ricky Skinner (vocals/guitar), Rob Alderman (guitar), Adam Dickens (bass) & Rob Willoughby (drums)."> <META NAME="author" CONTENT="Webmaster"> <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="ALL" <!-- Start of StatCounter Code --> <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript"> var sc_project=258211; var sc_partition=0; var sc_invisible=1; </script> <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://www.statcounter.com/counter/counter.js"></script><noscript><a href="http://www.statcounter.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://c1.statcounter.com/counter.php?sc_project=258211&java=0" alt="free web counter" border="0"></a> </noscript> <!-- End of StatCounter Code --> </head> <body bgcolor="#000040" text="#FFFFFF" link="#FFFFFF" vlink="#CCCCCC" alink="#CCCCCC"> <div align="center"> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <table width="75%" border="0" align="center"> <tr> <td><p align="center"><img src="Images/Links_logo/visionstate-darkblue.jpg" width="627" height="63"></p> <p align="center"><font size="2" face="Tahoma">Welcome to the website of the band, Visionstate.</font></p> <p align="center"><font size="2" face="Tahoma"><a href="index2.htm">Click here to enter</a></font></p> <p align="center"><font size="2" face="Tahoma">Designed for 1024x768 resolution.</font></p> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </body> </html> is going to! I created it in notepad, no frames what soever. Hand typed all the way. Help, please!! chromeman 06-08-2004, 07:25 AM Ok from trial and error, I've worked out that the URL masking is doing this to my website. I want the domain to mask my hosting domain (because it is too long) but when you do this, it asks for keywords, a title etc. So then the domain automatically inserts the title <noframes> etc in. Any way around this? the_pm 06-08-2004, 07:40 AM URL masking? Well that would make sense. Out of curiousity, being that you're on arguably the best Web hosting resource available on the Net, have you considered asking around to see if you can find a decent startup hosting plan for $3-5/mo., or the UK equivalent? After all, you get what you pay for with free hosts, and right now, it seems you've "bought" yourself a headache for free. chromeman 06-08-2004, 07:53 AM I am actually with a paid host, moon-hosting (formerly webmaxhosting). Do you know if there is a way around the URL masking problem? |