Problem with Actinic.css File and Search Engines

[hobuk]

Hi,

Not sure if anyone else uses this Poodle Predictor I find it useful but now am unsure if it works properly.

I seem to have a problem with the fist link on my site in any page, although from a users point of view all works ok, when you check the page through poodle it is sending the first link that should be "home" (or whatever link is first) to the actinic.css, I have been nosey and checked other actinic sites and they are the same, so should i worry or just leave it? The problem i see if it is left is that the SE will not be able to get back into the site and could time out and move on to another.

Also another problem is that again according to poodle my links page does not allow the SE to follow the hyperling and yet again from a users side they work fine.

Any help or advise would be great
Kind Regards
Lee
www.hobuk.co.uk

[Duncan Rounding]

What Poodle is seeing is correct. The css file is the first link (reference) in your html. The SE will not just get led away and not come back. Any site with a defined css file has a link to that style file in the Head. The robots are intelligent enough to understand what file types to follow.
The second link that is shown in Poodle, is your sitemap which you have linked on your logo, which is also correct and so on.
Poodle seems to be OK - just how useful for seeing what robots see will always be debatable and is an evolving 'science'.
Just keep optomising, like you are doing, and keep adding content and information to your site on a regular basis and your Google indexing should come back.

[Mike Hughes]

And just to set your mind at ease. Search engines don't actually follow links and get stuck in blind alleys/bad links. What they do is look at the content and links on a page and then make a note of any other pages so they can come back and visit them another time.

This way, if they find a bad pagename they just give up on that one and move on to the next one on their list of pages waiting to be indexed.

Mike

[hobuk]

As always thanks for your help!

Any ideas on my links page? I use fragments laid out as image and title and set the image as clickable with the following text http://www.makitauk.com " target="_blank however when you view my page source code it says this:

http://www.makitauk.com " target="_blank TARGET="_self"

where is the self bit from?

Thanks Again
Lee

[Duncan Rounding]

You may have quotes in the wrong place. You need this:
"http://www.makitauk.com " target="_blank"
maybe you missed the closing quote after _blank?