Saturday, May 06, 2006
Indexing problems (google)
Having given google a new xml site map they have indexed all the links from the home page within hours, but sub-pages have not been spidered again. I suppose this is a partial result, but my traffic is more dependant on a few hits from lots of small searches than lots of hits from a few big ones. As a result, I am no better off.
It seems almost certain that my stupid internal miss-use of the rel=”no follow” attribute caused the problem, as a closer look at the Spanish language area of the site (where I never used this code) shows that every page has remained on the index.
What to do next is the challenge. I can go through the time consuming process of trying to communicate with google (who think I have told them to de-index 2/3rds of the site) or hope that the 6 month rule they use is applied loosely. The other option, which I am trying (small scale), is to replace the de-indexed pages with identical content pages, but with alternate urls. The de-index instruction should then not apply as the new pages should be seen independently. It is amazing that all these problems are a result of me trying to save the SE’s time indexing my site.
It seems almost certain that my stupid internal miss-use of the rel=”no follow” attribute caused the problem, as a closer look at the Spanish language area of the site (where I never used this code) shows that every page has remained on the index.
What to do next is the challenge. I can go through the time consuming process of trying to communicate with google (who think I have told them to de-index 2/3rds of the site) or hope that the 6 month rule they use is applied loosely. The other option, which I am trying (small scale), is to replace the de-indexed pages with identical content pages, but with alternate urls. The de-index instruction should then not apply as the new pages should be seen independently. It is amazing that all these problems are a result of me trying to save the SE’s time indexing my site.
