Google - site indexing

[SSheldon]

Hi
A friend has said that the reason why we might not be being shown in Google search rankings is that our site may not be not 'indexed'. He advised typing:
site:www.mysite.com into Google and seeing how many pages were shown for our site
Unfortunately only one was shown, apparently meaning that Google ony has one page indexed for our site
Are there any obvious reasons for this that are known of with Actinic sites(hopefully minor changes that we can incorporate!)?
Many thanks

[Mike Hughes]

If all your links into the site go via the cgi-bin then make sure you have a link to the sitemap on the front page.

The other thing to check is your google pagerank. If the front page is only a one then the chances are the rest are zero which means that on the whole Google won't consider them important enough to index. The solution to this problem is to get more links.

Mike

PS. 'Indexed' just means included in the search engine index. Clearly if a particular page isn't indexed then it won't appear in the results.

[RuralWeb]

Are there any obvious reasons for this that are known of with Actinic sites

Actinic is VERY search engines friendly BUT if you have setup your hosting/domains incorrectly then this can cause this problem. A url would help us to provide a better answer otherwise its the blind leading the blind

[Mr Bump]

Hi

Your thread does not say how long the site has been published and searchable, google can take some time to list all pages - in my experience it lists the home page quite quickly then listings for other pages over a period of months.

[RuralWeb]

A url would help us

your not going to get much help without it!

[leehack]

what's a URL?

[wjcampbe]

Uniform Resource Locator [Also Known As - Web page address]

[leehack]

Sorry late at night, not watching my typing.

The "a" should have been "the".

I'm bad Bill, but not that bad!

[jont]

what's a URL?

I thought it was a redneck from America??

[wjcampbe]

I'm bad Bill, bot not that bad

And I honestly thought you were posing the question to prompt the OP...

[SSheldon]

If all your links into the site go via the cgi-bin then make sure you have a link to the sitemap on the front page.

The other thing to check is your google pagerank. If the front page is only a one then the chances are the rest are zero which means that on the whole Google won't consider them important enough to index. The solution to this problem is to get more links.

Mike

PS. 'Indexed' just means included in the search engine index. Clearly if a particular page isn't indexed then it won't appear in the results.

Hi

The website is www.pureskincare.co.uk it has only been up and running for a couple of months, so maybe that is the problem.

I've added a link to the site map on the first page as suggested anyway, and we noticed now there are several more pages being listed. However, I get the message: we have omitted some entries very similar to the 1 already displayed'.

If I click to display the omitted entries, it looks like the text displayed is from the box on the bottom left hand side of the screen, this seems to be the first bit of HTML code after the body tag.

I was thinking I could replace that with an image displaying the same message, but would google then pick up on the product data?

I had left the meta tags & descriptions empty, as i thought I had seen a post saying they were mostly reduntant now, but should I fill them in too?

Many thanks

[Duncan Rounding]

If add a meta description tag into your pages Google will more likely see that as the first usable text.

[RuralWeb]

The website is www.pureskincare.co.uk it has only been up and running for a couple of months, so maybe that is the problem

This is not what I am seeing - I see 905 pages indexed the vast majority are from an old site on the same domain. I assume that you have just swapped to Actinic from another solution. If so then you should do a search on the forum about the issues surrounding transfering shopping cart systems - there are lots!

[RuralWeb]

Looking at it a bit more I see that you have moved from "Zen Cart" - good move But you need to address the issue of all your search results giving a 404 error. Actinic will take several weeks/months to get fully indexed so you need to redirect (search to find out how) all you traffic to your new site.

[SSheldon]

Looking at it a bit more I see that you have moved from "Zen Cart" - good move But you need to address the issue of all your search results giving a 404 error. Actinic will take several weeks/months to get fully indexed so you need to redirect (search to find out how) all you traffic to your new site.

Hi
Sorry I missed that bit out! We moved to Actinic and had to change hosting company too.

Not sure why you see 905 pages though when I now only see one? (plus the 7 similiar ones).