Strange Search Engine results

[David@MPL]

Hello all,

I apologise for starting yet another thread about seach engines but we're completely stumped by what's happening to us. I've searched the forum and have found lots of good advice regarding SEO but our problem doesn't appear to have been covered, so here goes . . .

Search mandrake site:mandrake-press.co.uk on Google returns 28 results.
Search mandrake site:mandrake-press.co.uk on MSN returns 341 results.
Search mandrake site:mandrake-press.co.uk on Yahoo returns 592 results.

Any idea's why Google have so few of our pages listed? A little while back they had 300 odd pages indexed and then they suddenly vanished. I did some research and that suggested that an update to there system can have the same effect and that the number of indexed pages would return to normal after their next update . . . well it hasn't and it's been quite a while.

On a more specific level, we're result number 1 for the keywords Anna Riva Oils on MSN but don't rank at all on Yahoo or Google.

We've got Meta Keywords for about a third of the sections on our site but I don't know whether to bother adding more of these when the Anna Riva Oils search returns a page with no keywords. On the other hand we don't really want to remove the keywords we have as that might damage the listings we have on MSN and Yahoo.

We've registered with DMOZ but after a couple of months we've still not been listed . . . and I got the catagory right as I went for the same one as a competitor is in.

Again, sorry for dragging this old horse of a topic out for another flogging but we really can't figure this out. Any comments/suggestions welcome.

www.mandrake-press.co.uk

Thanks in advance,

[Mike Hughes]

No-one knows for sure with google but I'll stick with the advice I've given in the past; get more pagerank and improve your internal links.

Your product pages are too many clicks away from the home page and so your pagerank on those pages are zero. That's the most likely reason why they aren't being indexed.

Things I would do in your position:

1. Get more links.
2. Link to the sitemap page from every page on your site. This will boost it's PR and those of the pages it links to.
3. Put your shop main page on the home page of the site. The articles / affilates etc pages can be linked to from there.

Doing this will remove one level of navigation (for users and search engines) and boost the PR of your product pages. This should be enough to get your product pages back into the index.

Mike

[jont]

DMOZ is notorious for getting listed into. It is on a volunteer basis so depending on the enthusiasm of the volunteer and how busy the category is it can take over a year in some situations. There have been rumours about some volunteers not listing competitors sites!

Meta Keywords don't hold as much sway as they used to - if used correctly and not over-spammed they can't hurt you and some of the minor, specialist engines do use them so you may as well make the effort as and when to add them in to the other sections

[David@MPL]

Thanks for the quick replies guys, very helpful

Duncan it's interesting that you have noticed the same thing and I must say we were talking this morning about using alternative SE's to Google.

Mike, thanks for the advice. Regarding the site map, we've got a link to our sitemap in the page header. This is an image link with "site map" as the ALT text, do we need an actual text link as well?

Jont, what it considered spamming? this section for dream related products has these keyword: dream,interpretation,dreams,book,buy,books. Would that be considered spamming?

[jont]

Google introduced "stemming" a while back so it may see book and books as the same thing so be wary of using plurals.

With books etc it may be useful to include the names of well known authors if they are experts in their fields as people are likely to serach on their names also. Dont forget you can use multiple keywords such as "dream interpretation books"

Best advice regarding spamming is if it feels wrong it possibly is wrong - always code for human readers first an foremost and think on what they will serach for

[RuralWeb]

Have you recently submitted a google site map? there are currently many cases of site pages vanishing from the index shortly after submitting a site map. I would support all the advice given in the previous posts.

[David@MPL]

Thanks Jont, I'll woink out the plurals on my next update.

Malcolm, no we haven't submitted site map to google. I've not done an XML one yet as we've got all the articles as well and Jan XML sitemap creator will only map our acatalog pages.

One thought we had was that maybe Google are trying to drive traders to Froogle (which we're not on), any thoughts on this anyone?

[RuralWeb]

One thought we had was that maybe Google are trying to drive traders to Froogle (which we're not on), any thoughts on this anyone?

Funny you should mention this - I have noticed recently that google has been including froogle results at the top of some searches. They are not there all the time and come and go for the same search term, one site I am doing some SEO for is getting all its traffic from froogle because its products on froogle are being fed to the organic search results. This is not happening on any other site I have even though they are listed on froogle.

Has anyone else noticed it??

[Mike Hughes]

Strange, what happened to Duncan's reply?

I see that you have the sitemap link on your section pages, but not on the product pages. They should be OK as image links, but I always use text links at the bottom of the page as I don't really expect visitors to use them.

I doubt if it's anything to do with adwords, frugal, etc. All the sites I've seen with this kind of problem have low PR on the 'lost' pages and not much in the way of distinct content on them. From your site I'd definitely say it's a problem with low PR.

Mike

[wjcampbe]

Since Froogle is no more and now replaced in the UK by Google Base, there is definitely no drive to Froogle.

See today's Froogle/GoogleBase thread.

[jont]

Has anyone else noticed it??

No - but would like to know how (if any) to get to the top of the list where there is more than 1 supplier for a specific product ie: "Product description from XYZ"

I am top for several products but have no obvious reason why

[David@MPL]

Mike: Opps, I'd not noticed that the sitemap button wasn't included on the product pages, I've just seen a row of red buttons and assumed "sitemap" was one of them, I'll get a text link added to the footer. Thanks

[Duncan Rounding]

Strange, what happened to Duncan's reply?...
Mike

My fault I deleted the wrong post by mistake.

I basically said that my results had also dropped off recently and that in preference I usually try to use msn for my searching.