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18.
Why my web sites aren't indexed by the search engines?
(We have been
using your product now for around 5 weeks now, submitting
about every week or so, however, we're not showing up anywhere
on any of the major search engines. What am I doing wrong?)
1). Your
web site URLs are embedded in JavaScript.
This is
the most common reason why your web sites are not indexed
by the search engines. If your web site URLs are embedded
in JavaScript, most of the search engines will not recognize
and index these pages. If you're serious about getting your
web sites to be indexed by the search engines and get a good
position on the MAJOR search engines such as AltaVista, Lycos,
Go Network, Excite, Yahoo and many others, please consider
changing your web site style, either by putting your links
in simple html format or making alternative links at the bottom
of your page just for the search engines.
2). There
are no or little content on your web pages
If your
web site was designed for "Nice looking" which means that
contains only the Image, Flash, Java, Image map etc, and there
is no actual text information (or just little text) on your
web pages, your web pages will be ignored by the search engines
because search engines will index the web sites, which contain
valuable information. Please put any real useful information
in text format to your web pages.
3). Your
Pages Are not Cross-Linked.
Not all
search engine spiders visit your website from your main index
page (index.html). If you have not linked each of your pages
with all your other pages, you stand the risk of having engines
indexing only one or two of your pages. Just add text links
at the bottom of your pages to all your other pages.
4). Your
web site is a Frame style
Most major
search engines do not support Frame style of the web sites.
If you wish your web sites to be indexed by the search engines
and get good results, please consider changing your web sites
to a non-frame style.
5). Using
the correct Html Tags
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE></TITLE>
<META
name="description" content="put a short description here">
<META
name="keywords" content="put your keywords here">
</HEAD>
<BODY
BGCOLOR=FFFFFF>
Put your
contents here ....
</BODY>
</HTML>
Some search
engines such as AltaVista and Google completely ignoring websites
that have invalid html tag sequences. Also, please make sure
you use the close tags correctly. For e.g. <font> requires
that you have </font>, <table> requires a </table>.
Your browser may display it correctly, but if you want the
page to be indexed, check your codes and put them in order.
6). Do
not use any Virtual Domain Redirection Service
If you
are using an Internet Redirection Service to make it easy
for people to remember your website address, please do not
use the Redirection web site address for your submission,
use your real web site URL to submit to the search engines.
7). Using
normal .html (or .htm) file format
If the
contents of your web pages are generated at real time by using
a script such as .cgi, .asp etc rather than a normal .html
(or .htm) file, you are taking the risk that your web sites
may be ignored by the search engines, because search engines
want to index the web pages where they knew what the information
is.
8). Meta
Refresh and Meta Robots Tags
Check
your codes for the following tags between the <head>
and </head>.
<meta
http-equiv="Refresh" content="0; URL=http://www.other-domain.com/directory/filename.html">
This tag
redirects your page to another web site. If you have this
tag in your code, the robots will usually completely ignore
your website altogether.
<meta
name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">
This tag
specifically directs robots to ignore that web page. If you
have it in your code, remove it immediately. You can use it
on pages you do not want search engines to index.
9). Are
You Using Free Website Hosting?
Many free
website hosts use various methods of enforcing their advertising
banners on your website. This sometimes causes wrong and/or
incomplete indexing of your website. If you have repeatedly
had trouble with getting your free website indexed, switch
to a pay web hosting provider.
Please
also check relate information on "How
long it will take for the search engines to index my web site?"
and "Tips
on how to improve your web site position".
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