Why Is My Website Not Listed On Search Engines?

[Milk]

Hi,

I recently completed my business website and am really puzzled why it just doesn't show up on any search engines. OK I know it's not easy getting listed these days, but what puzzles me is this - For example my domain name is www.bakerybangkok.com and I have even gone as far as to register related domain names e.g. www.cakebangkok.com and www.breadbangkok.com and set domain pointers to the main URL www.bakerybangkok.com. Now here's what I don't get. When I actually search for "Bakery Bangkok", my website does NOT show up. Now I might understand if there were many other similar URLs with the same keywords but thing is, wthe search result gives me irrelevant pages that has either "bangkok" or "bakery" but not both! If my URL is the only one that is actually called "bakerybangkok.com" why is it then that when I search for those words, it doesn't show up on the search list???

I manually submitted my site to google 3 weeks ago, is there any chance that they have yet to spider my site? 3 weeks seem a really long time for a site that doesn't have much competition keywords wise.

Would appreciate any advice from an seo expert. Help!

M

[Tywais]

The first obvious thing I see is that none of the domain names seem to be registered yet. They all receive "domain name does not exist". Usually takes 1-2 weeks for a new domain name to propagate so you might want to check with your domain registrar.

Also, once it is recognized be sure to use good keywords in your META tags.

<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="Bakery,etc..">

Edited May 15, 2006 by tywais

[SMS]

Wellcome to the world of SEO, its a really big field, there can be no expert.

Advice from one newbie to another.

technically it can take months for google to notice a website.

your sites arent opening from my browser at the moment, DNS error. when googlebot is visiting your site and this happens, it would make him very angry, the bot would not like to visit your site again for some time.

google does a number of tests after it notices a new site like check its uptime(im guessing).

Another thing is you need to get is incoming links. you need to have some good sites link back to your site. this gives you + points (google calls it PR or page rank), the higher PR you have, the higher will be your chances of coming up on google.

start a steep learning curve here : http://www.webmasterworld.com/category93.htm

[stumonster]

are you sure you have registered this domain ?

Server Used: [ whois.crsnic.net ]

www.bakerybangkok.com -- Domain not found.

[John_Betong]

Hi Milk,

I checked all three sites with http://betterwhois.com and they are all available?

You mentioned that you had registered the sites, can you expand on exactly how and with who you registered the sites.

Cheers,

John_Betong

[bkkmadness]

Another thing is you need to get is incoming links. you need to have some good sites link back to your site. this gives you + points (google calls it PR or page rank), the higher PR you have, the higher will be your chances of coming up on google.

I'm certainly no SEO expert but I think thats an algorythim that will be changed soon, page rank will certainly become less important with time, as will incoming links. Its just too easy to cheat with.

Ok, to the OP: The site name www.bangkokbakery.com is as everyone else has said, not registered yet. Please give some info as to who you registered it with.

BTW, anybody tried using google sitemaps yet, my friends had really good sucess with it getting his pages indexed in google and I'm going to give it a try soon. Just wondered what everybody else though about it?

[SMS]

BTW, anybody tried using google sitemaps yet, my friends had really good sucess with it getting his pages indexed in google and I'm going to give it a try soon. Just wondered what everybody else though about it?

I use google sitemaps on several domains, i dont know if the sitemap makes a diference on my google listings, but it sure gives me a lot more information about what google thinks of my sites.

The following quote is from some webmaster news letter that didnt make it to my spam box.

Sitemap is a very simple XML document that lists all the pages in your website, but the Google Sitemaps program is actually much more important than that. In fact, the Sitemaps program provides a little peek inside Google's mind - and it can tell you a lot about what Google thinks of your website!

Why Should You Use Google Sitemaps?

Until Google Sitemaps was released in the summer of 2005, optimizing a site for Google was a guessing game at best. A website's page might be deleted from the index, and the Webmaster had no idea why. Alternatively, a site's content could be scanned, but because of the peculiarities of the algorithm, the only pages that would rank well might be the "About Us" page, or the company's press releases.

As webmasters we were at the whim of Googlebot, the seemingly arbitrary algorithmic kingmaker that could make or break a website overnight through shifts in search engine positioning. There was no way to communicate with Google about a website - either to understand what was wrong with it, or to tell Google when something had been updated.

That all changed about a year ago when Google released Sitemaps, but the program really became useful in February of 2006 when Google updated it with a couple new tools.

So, what exactly is the Google Sitemaps program, and how can you use it to improve the position of your website? Well, there are essentially two reasons to use Google Sitemaps:

1. Sitemaps provide you with a way to tell Google valuable information about your website.

2. You can use Sitemaps to learn what Google thinks about your website.

What You Can Tell Google About Your Site

Believe it or not, Google is concerned about making sure webmasters have a way of communicating information that is important about their sites. Although Googlebot does a pretty decent job of finding and cataloging web pages, it has very little ability to rate the relative importance of one page versus another. After all, many important pages on the Internet are not properly "optimized", and many of the people who couldn't care less about spending their time on linking campaigns create some of the best content.

Therefore, Google gives you the ability to tell them on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0 how important a given page is relative to all the others. Using this system, you might tell Google that your home page is a 1.0, each of your product sections is a 0.8, and each of your individual product pages is a 0.5. Pages like your company's address and contact information might only rate a 0.2.

You can also tell Google how often your pages are updated and the date that each page was last modified. For example your home page might be updated every day, while a particular product page might only be updated on an annual basis.

What Google Can Tell You About Your Site

Having the ability to tell Google all this information is important, but you don't even need to create a sitemap file in order to enjoy some of the perks of having a Google Sitemaps account.

That's because even without a Sitemap file, you can still learn about any errors that Googlebot has found on your website. As you probably know, your site doesn't have to be "broken" for a robot to have trouble crawling it's pages. Google Sitemaps will tell you about pages it was unable to crawl and links it was unable to follow. Therefore, you can see where these problems are and fix them before your pages get deleted from the index.

You can also get information on the types of searches people are using to find your website. Of course, most website analytics tools will give this information to you anyway, but if the tool you use doesn't have this feature, then it's always nice to get it for frëe from Google.

But the best part of the Sitemaps program is the Page analysis section that was added in February of 2006. This page gives you two lists of words. The first list contains the words that Googlebot associates with your website based on content on your site. The second list contains words that Googlebot has found linking to your site!

Unfortunately, Google limits the number of words in each list to 20. As a consequence, the inbound links column is partly wasted by words such as "http", "www", and "com" - terms that apply equally to all websites (hey Google, how about suppressing those terms from the report?). That said, this list does provide you with a way to judge the effectiveness of your offsite optimization efforts.

When you compare these two lists, you can get an understanding of what Google thinks your website is about. If the words on your Site Content column are not really what you want Googlebot to think about your site, then you know you need to tweak your website's copy to make it more focused on your core competency.

If, on the other hand your inbound links don't contain any keywords that you want to rank well for, then perhaps you should focus your efforts in that direction.

Above all else, you really want these two lists to agree. You want your inbound linked words to match up to the site content words. This means that Google has a clear understanding of the focus of your website.

Additional Benefits of the Sitemaps Program

Google has even started notifying Sitemaps-participating Webmasters if they are breaking any of Google's Webmaster Guidelines. This can be very valuable information if your site suddenly becomes de-listed on Google and you don't know why.

Only Sitemaps participants can get this information, and it is only provided at Google's discretion. In fact, Google will NOT notify you if you are creating worthless websites that offer no original content, or if you are creating thousands of doorway pages that are redirecting to other web sites. Google doesn't want to give the sp@ammers any clues as to how to improve their techniques.

How Do You Get Started with Google Site Maps?

The first thing you must do is obtain a Google Account. If you already have a Gmail, Adsense, or Adwords account, then you are all set. If not, you can register an account by visiting the Google Accounts page.

Building your sitemap file is pretty easy to do if you are familiar with XML, and if you aren't you can always use a third-party tool such as the ones that are listed on Google's website. Google also has a "Sitemap Generator" that you can download and install on your server, but unless you are fairly adept at managing Python scripts, you should probably stick to the third-party tools.

At any rate, once you have your Google Account and your Sitemap file built, the rest is very easy. All you have to do is:

1. Log into your account

2. Type your website's URL into the "Add Site" box and clíck on "OK"

3. Clíck on the Manage Sites link for the website you are adding, and add your sitemap file to your account.

Google Sitemaps - An Excellent SEO Tool

Google Sitemaps help Googlebot quickly find new content on your website. They allow you to tell Google what's important, what's new, and what changes often. The tools provided to webmasters through the program can play a vital role in helping you understand how the search engines (especially Google) view your website.

Using this information you can dramatically improve the position of your website and quickly clear up any issues Google finds. You can also use the tools provided by Google to gauge the effectiveness of your off-site optimization efforts so you can better focus your time and energy on activities that bring you the most success.

[KhunMarco]

White hat site - google site map = fast indexing

Black hat site - google site map = banned in a blink of an eye

ymmv

nuff said

[clokwise]

Sitemaps haven't really seemed to benefit the sites I admin, with the exception of those which generate content from a constantly updated database - I recently wrote a script to generate the sitemap.xml on the fly and our inside pages suddenly appeared on google overnight! Still too soon to say if this helps our pagerank though. Sitemaps do, as another person mentioned, give you a lot of insight about how people find your site via Google. It's pretty cool.

But I'd say Google Analytics plus Adwords & Adsense combo have been VERY good for our page rank.

BTW, Milk, bakerybangkok.com is NOT registered. Nor are the others you listed. Get your ass over to directnic.com or godaddy.com and register it yourself, ASAP, before some slimeball does it for you and then offers to resell it to you. Don't worry about technical issues for now. Just REGISTER em!! If you need any advice PM me and I'll give you a call.

Edited May 15, 2006 by clokwise

[Milk]

First of all, a big "Thanks!" for all your replies. Very interesting indeed and I'nm sorry if my initial post misled all of you to unregistered domains. www.bakerybangkok.com was just an example I used and not the actual domain concerned.

As the website is about a company that has yet to be launched, I have been asked not to reveal the actual URL for now. Sorry! I just really want to know why when I actually type in the name of my company, my URL which shares the same name, does not show up on google at all! Another example - say my company is a renovation and remodelling company and my company name is "renovation bangkok." SO I type in "renovation bangkok" on google, but it doesn't show up. Instead, I get a list of other URLs that don't really have much to do with renovation in bangkok. Know what I mean?

THanks again guys for the invaluable info. you've already given me.

M

[britmaveric]

Submit the site to MSN, Yahoo and few other search engines. Will eventually increase your visibility. Try to establish link exchanges with other established sites too.

[SMS]

Bangkok would be a very valued keyword i think.

A major factor is whats on your site.

If you mislead google into thinking your site is a bad one they might not list it at all.

Also i noticed domains registered last year and have certain keywords in the domain name, google keeps it on hold.

you can PM me your URL if you want a SEO novice to have a look.

[melus]

Try this. It's pretty easy to use and it seemed to work for my new website. When I typed the name of my sight without the .com it came up first.

[~G~]

SO I type in "renovation bangkok" on google, but it doesn't show up. Instead, I get a list of other URLs that don't really have much to do with renovation in bangkok. Know what I mean?

So what you say is that you expect your site to be in the top ten results in Google just like that?

If you want to know if Google indexed your site or not just search for your domain name, e.g. "bakerybangkok.com", or to see all your pages from the site which are indexed in Google, search for "site:bakerybangkok.com".

[SMS]

Milk : also you need to check your webserver stats regularly.

i use an application called awstats - http://awstats.sourceforge.net/ to monitor my webserver logs to see how often google is coming... which pages are refering me... when users come to my sites thru search engine, which keywords had they searched for...etc...

you can try google analytics.

[breconion]

Try this link

[Milk]

Hey guys,

Don't get me wrong. I'm not expecting instant top ranking. I may not know much but I know I'd be a fool to think it was THAT easy to be ranked at the top in a couple of weeks or even months. My problem is that when I search for the actual name of my company, which also shares the name of my URL, it doesn't show up. That becomes a worry when 1) there really isn't another company sharing the same name 2) Mine's probably one of the very few companies in Bangkok doing what we do and 3) "Bangkok" itself should be a valued keyword when typed with the other keywords associated with my business since there aren't many other similar service providers in my field in Bangkok! Or at least, they aren't on the web as far as I know.

Also, I can't seem to add my sitemap on google. I have an account and have verified it etc. But when I get to the add sitemap part after entering my sitemap URL etc, the button to "add web sitemap" remains grey. I can't press it to go onto the next step. Can anyone figure why this might be so?

M

Edited May 18, 2006 by Milk

[John_Betong]

Hey guys,

Don't get me wrong. I'm not expecting instant top ranking. I may not know much but I know I'd be a fool to think it was THAT easy to be ranked at the top in a couple of weeks or even months. My problem is...

...

...

...

Hi to all the Mods for this forum,

Is it possible and if Milk will oblige, for Milk to let us know the URL?

If this is possible then the Gurus on this forum can enlighten us with their advice and expertise.

This could be useful for others in a similar situation?

Cheers,

John_Betong

[~G~]

Milk,

1. Did you search for your exact domain name?

2. Did you search for pages from your site using "site:domainname.com"?

3. In your domain statistics, do you see Googlebot visiting at all?

4. Did you try copying a full paragraph from your site and search for it with quotation marks (or to use the EXACT feature in Google's advanced search)?

Until you answer those questions we cannot know if your site is indexed or not.

[bkkmadness]

First of all Milk you need to follow G's steps, or at least try the "site:domainname.com" in the search engines. You're not just checking it in google are you?

Try MSN and Yahoo as well, I find they not only index sites faster but if you are trying to come up for a keyworded URL they give better results, whereas Google is a bit more careful with its results and will not give up top slots so easily.

It would be very useful if we had your actual domain name so we could all check it out. I'm sure the moderators here will not mind but of course if you wish to keep it private do so.

[SMS]

Just came accross a very usefull tool yesterday for analysing links from yahoo. : http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

You can evaluate as per yahoo which linkes are pointing to you, the higher rated referers would be listed higher.

[jackr]

Just because you have a unique, keyworded domain name doesn't necessarily mean you will rank highly as a result of those keywords you are throwing into G. G and co give some weight to relevant domain names but it's not the be all and end all. The search engines look more at the content so if you have those keywords in the right density in your Original content, you stand more chance of getting anywhere ranking wise. Of course, one-way inbound links and PR also helps, but it takes lots of time. Focus on quality, keyword-targetted, yet user-friendly content and you will get there.

[Thaipwriter]

Search Engine Optimisation is an extremely complex and time consuming exercise.

Two of my favourite resources are:

1. Web CEO at http://www.webceo.com/ this is an absolutley magnificent peice of free software. I checked loads of these packages and this one kicks a55

2. http://www.bruceclay.com/ This company are giving away far too much valuable free information and secrets about SEO. Essential reading.

What bothers me most about your post is that you say you have "finished" your site. It is not published and the URL you quoted is still for sale. It seems as though you need to get this issue nailed down immediatley before a speculating cybersquatter crashes your project.

[Crushdepth]

My problem is that when I search for the actual name of my company, which also shares the name of my URL, it doesn't show up.

Google finds new sites primarily by i) following links from other sites and ii) via its 'submit a site' service. If you haven't told anyone about your site yet, then there probably aren't any inbound links that will direct Google's crawlers to it.

All you need to do is submit your site to google or stick the URL on some forum website somewhere and google will find it and index it.

If your company has a very specific service, you will probably find it gets a very high rank in google.

[Milk]

1. Did you search for your exact domain name?

2. Did you search for pages from your site using "site:domainname.com"?

3. In your domain statistics, do you see Googlebot visiting at all?

4. Did you try copying a full paragraph from your site and search for it with quotation marks (or to use the EXACT feature in Google's advanced search)?

Until you answer those questions we cannot know if your site is indexed or not.

I guess my pages have not been fully indexed by most search engines because the only time it appears on google and msn search is when I type "site:domainname.com" Apart from that - nada.

I do see googlebot visiting in the stats, yes.

Nothing showed up when I did copied a full paragraph from your site and search for it with quotation marks.

I have been reading up on all the sites/links suggested by all you guys and have done everything from submitting my site to many search engines and directories, creating sitemap (still can't submit to google tho' cos for some reason the "submit" button is greyed out!), robots text files etc. Hope something works!

[Milk]

Search Engine Optimisation is an extremely complex and time consuming exercise.

Two of my favourite resources are:

1. Web CEO at http://www.webceo.com/ this is an absolutley magnificent peice of free software. I checked loads of these packages and this one kicks a55

2. http://www.bruceclay.com/ This company are giving away far too much valuable free information and secrets about SEO. Essential reading.

What bothers me most about your post is that you say you have "finished" your site. It is not published and the URL you quoted is still for sale. It seems as though you need to get this issue nailed down immediatley before a speculating cybersquatter crashes your project.

Hey, those 2 sites are great. Thanks! and again, I'm sorry i mislead you to the wrong UrlS! Those were just examples because I cannot reveal the actual domain concern as the business has yet to launch. I have registered the domains concerned and all pages are completed and published. That was what I meant. THanks anyway for the advice.

M

[~G~]

I guess my pages have not been fully indexed by most search engines because the only time it appears on google and msn search is when I type "site:domainname.com" Apart from that - nada.

When you use "site:...'" you should see all the pages that were indexed. For example, typing "site:thaivisa.com" will show "Results 1 - 10 of about 150,000 from thaivisa.com for . (0.18 seconds) ", meaning there are 150,000 pages from Thaivisa.com indexed.

How many pages you got indexed?

If not all are indexed, make sure all are linked with text links from the home page or from a page linked from the home page. Image links are more difficult for Google to handle.

[Milk]

Oh, if that is the case then all my pages have been indexed cos they all show up when I type "site:domainname.com" - I only have 10 pages anyway. I guess I just have to wait for other search engines and directories to add me before anyone can find me based on my company's name or related keywords. There are only 3 other companies in Bangkok doing what I do or are at least on the web, so if I dun get a listing in 2 months, I know my site is truly &lt;deleted&gt;! haha.

BTW Thaipwriter, that webceo software is awesome!

[bkkmadness]

At the end of the day after all the optimization is done on the website, its getting links, fresh content etc. there is only more thing you need, and that's patience. Good luck with the site.

Thanks for the info on google sitemaps by the way guys, I'll try to sort it out for a site on the weekend and see how it goes.

My friend uses that Bruceclay site quite a bit, but never seen that webceo site, I'll give it a look through later but generally I've been pretty skeptical about these sites before. Anyone else used it?

Edited May 19, 2006 by bkkmadness

[Thaipwriter]

I'm sorry i mislead you to the wrong UrlS! Those were just examples because I cannot reveal the actual domain concern as the business has yet to launch.

M

Dont apologise for smart thinking!

Also, dont forget the FIRST rule of SEO, your top keywords should be in the URL.

In your case,"Bangkok" and "Bakery" are going to be very near to the top of the list of best keywords. If the URL's that you have regisitered dont have good keywords in them it might be a good idea to register www.bangkokbakery.com for 2 reasons:

1: to point at your site and then submit this url to search engines.

2. To stop any competition having it