Do Sitemaps restrict how often Google caches my pages?

[The_Erb]

Hi

Great forum! … excuse a virgin jumping in:

I launched a new site in December 2006. So far I am consistently in the top three in MSN UK for my main search terms and MSN crawls and caches me regularly. However, I am nowhere in Google. Although Google visits regularly (about 800 visits in February), my Home Page hasn’t been cached since January 21st.

Although MSN and Yahoo are starting to pick up my incoming links, Google doesn’t recognise any of them in Webmaster Tools.

MSN & Yahoo show loads of pages indexed and cached … Google shows very few.

I think I am running a controlled SEO campaign (building incoming links, writing relevant content, syndicating content, editing & optimising individual pages over time etc) – site visits are increasing and search engine visits are increasing, but I am being shunned by Google.

Everybody says that part of SEO is patience (I am not the impatient type – I like cricket). Is it just that Google is slow to adopt a site? Is a site’s age all that important? The home page hasn’t been cached since I signed up for Webmaster Tools and my site developers started submitting a daily sitemap … any connection? I'd appreciate any feedback. Thanks.

[incrediblehelp]

Google could simply feel the backlinks Yahoo and MSN count are not relevant enough for them to count.

[rms7design]

Google from experience and radings pick up much later any links plus you say your website was launched dec 2006.... what about the sandbox effect???

anyway.. good luck

[The_Erb]

Thanks for that ... I'll try and improve my links and yes, I hadn't thought about the sandbox. I was always told that it was a figment of the collective SEO world's imagination, but hey, maybe it's for real after all ... How long does it take to get out of the cat's litter tray?

[Webnauts]

Try to add some fresh content on your site and also get quality backlinks for inner pages too.

Stop submitting everyday a site map when no changes happen.

Add a last modified in your .htaccess file or scripts in your pages. How to: http://www.webmasterworld.com/apache/3173093.htm

That will get things straighted out sooner as you might expect.

If you follow my tips, please keep us informed how it worked.

Thanks and best luck,

John

[Purple13]

Hi Erb.

"How long does it take to get out of the cat's litter tray?"

I designed a new website for a client last year, optimised as I went along etc, the site itself has plenty of good quality text about the services on offer.

I submitted it to Google (and a Google Site Map) at the end of October 2006.

I kept an eye on when it was appearing - even searching on the url iteself didn't produce any search result until the end of January 2007.

Now a couple of pages are starting to appear in a similar search but for any of the key phrases - not yet.

Incidently, Yahoo and in particular MSN listed it much earlier - it seems they at least follow old fashiones rules like copy and metatags.

The actual url is: www.edt.uk.com so there were issues over a 'sub-domain' as the url but I don't think these affected the sandbox timeout.

Good luck - be patient? Yes I'm afraid so but keep working on that copy and tags and good quality inbound links. Have you tried a Google Site Map?

Jonathan.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Purple13

The actual url is: www.edt.uk.com so there were issues over a 'sub-domain' as the url but I don't think these affected the sandbox timeout.

Doesn't seem to me that it is optimized for search engines, especially for Google.

[Purple13]

Doesn't seem to me that it is optimized for search engines, especially for Google

Hi Webnauts - any advice always welcome!

(thought i'd covered the main points - alt image text, keywords, h1 h2 text, site map, lots of topic specific copy, uk address tag, even a style sheet) - inbound links i keep reminding the customer about.

Cheers
Jonathan

[Webnauts]

For example your pages semantical structure is messed up. You do not use the <h1>, <h2>, etc tags properly.

Also your title tag is too long.

At last you are also using irrelevant and useless Meta Tags.

But as you seem to be a designer and SEO, you sure know what I am about. :)

Good luck. ;)

[The_Erb]

Hi Webnauts, thank you for the advice. I'll definitely try the "last modified" and let you know. And thanks Purple13 for the input ... nice to know I'm not alone in suffering from Google's fickle finger.

Another thought ... could the fact that DMOZ / Open Directory haven't approved the site yet affect Google's attitude?

[therapists]

Purple13 - all your page titles and meta descriptions are the same. The search engines, especially Google may see all your pages as the same, and put them in the Supplemental Results.

[Purple13]

Hi Therapists - Thanks

I'm just exploring a way to generate different page titles for each individual php page - hopefully that will aid our cause.

Was always aware that using .inc.php files meant tags stayed the same - relied on actual page content being different and site maps to point to each individual page seperately.

Cheers for the feedback anyway.

Jonathan

[Refiner]

My experiences with the google search have been varied.

One of my websites has been active since May last year and in December was consistently landing on the first search page in Google. Now it seems to have been completely dropped off the google radar again, though about half of the other sites with the same search net a link back to this site.

The exact same search I did in the US was also done simultaneously in the UK... I was ranked 7 in his search, and didn't even hit the top several pages in mine.

The ranks in MSN and Yahoo searches have been fairly consistent and within the top 20.

I have had people complain that the site is on a subdomain but that didn't seem to affect the google ranking before.

[The_Erb]

Thanks for all the feedback.

Just to let you know, within 24 hours of complaining on this forum that my site hadn't been cached by Google for over a month ... you guessed it ... the site got cached.

Spooky ...

[Webnauts]

You might would like to have a look at this article I was just reading too: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/expert-ad...ut-dont-submit

[The_Erb]

Thanks Webnauts ... an interesting blog. It seems that, like a lot of things in SEO, there's no straight answer. As you advise, I'm going to stick with Sitemaps, but only submit when there are changes. Cheers.