Indexed pages and visitors dropping?

[jackson992]

What the hell is Google doing. I've lost 2000 pages in the last 2-3 days!!!

[Mel]

Hi Jack
do you mean that you have 2000 less pages in the Google index than before?

Google is showing 30,900 pages in their index for your site.

[jackson992]

yes Mel

It was over 50k before and this is driving me nuts. Please help!

[Mel]

HI Jack;
There are those who say that Google has dropped a billion or so pages from its index recently but I doubt that as a Google search for the returns about the same number of results today (5.32 billion results) as it has been for some time. I wonder how Google is able to report more pages in its serps than its supposed to have in its entire database (3,307,998,701 pages) unless those search results include those search results marked as supplemental results and come from an additional database.

For sure there have been more or less continual changes going on at Google for nearly two months now.

Not sure what to suggest for you, without more information.

Are you able to identify the pages which have been dropped? If we knew which which pages were dropped we might be able to see what similarities there are, which might give us a starting place.

[minstrel]

First, which site are we talking about? I'm assuming http://jacksretail.com, right?

Second, how are you determing which pages have been dropped? and what are those pages? I assume you do not have 50,000 separate pages on your website so I'm guessing you mean pages linking to your site, aka "backlinks"?

For backlinks, entering +"jacksretail.com" into Google just now I see "about 42,700" entries found. However, if someone else does that or I return in hald an hour and try again, I'll probably get a somewhat different result - or at least that has been my experience in the recent past.

Google has always emphasized that they only provide "a sample" of backlinks and rumor has it (emphasis on the word rumor there - I don't think anyone has really confirmed this) that Google is making those results even more variable than previously to discourage excessive checking by site owners and SEO operators.

Add into that the changes Google has been making in recent months that may have meant that some very low or questionable pages linking to you in the past have dropped out of sight in the database or been penalized and dropped altogether, and what this means is that in truth you may not have lost anything that was beneficial to your site at all.

Of course, I had to make two assumptions about the question you were asking so I may have been addressing either the wrong site or the wrong question about that site...

[jackson992]

Sorry guys I'm getting so upset it's hard to think

It is indeed Jack's Retail I'm talking about. I found this out by using the allinurl:jacksretail.com

Previously it was listing over 50k pages on my site. Yes this is a lot of pages, the main reason so many is beacuse for my datafeeds each product has it's own page. So if a datafeed has 2000 products that's 2000 separate pages

Minstrel:

My last check for backlinks at Googled showed 96 so this is a major major difference. What did you use to check? Just links:jacksretail.com?

Unfortunately I don't know what pages have been dropped? Is there a way to moniotr this and/or keywords that have dropped?

[minstrel]

It is indeed Jack's Retail I'm talking about. I found this out by using the allinurl:jacksretail.com

Previously it was listing over 50k pages on my site. Yes this is a lot of pages, the main reason so many is because for my datafeeds each product has it's own page. So if a datafeed has 2000 products that's 2000 separate pages

Minstrel: My last check for backlinks at Googled showed 96 so this is a major major difference. What did you use to check? Just links:jacksretail.com?
I used +"jacksretail.com" which tonight shows "about 39, 800"- links:jacksretail.com will only show you a very small sample of actual backlinks.

You should get a similar result using allinurl:jacksretail.com which tonight shows "about 38,800".

But remember: neither of these is necessarily a complete list - Google has never claimed it was. It does NOT mean that your other pages are not indexed - Google only provides a "sample" of those links, whatever that means (and what that means, as I said above, seems to change more from day to day lately than it used to). I'm not sure you should be jumping to the conclusion that Google is "dropping your pages".

The actual bottom line is in your server logs and accounting books- are your visitors dropping? where are your visitors coming from now and has that changed? are your sales dropping? if so, you'd certainly want to be looking into factors that might be responsible but a lot of those could have nothing to do with Google or any other search engine.

[jackson992]

Minstrel:

I'm at about 1000 less visitors a day. This has been that low for the past week so I just assumed something must have changed

[minstrel]

I'm at about 1000 less visitors a day. This has been that low for the past week so I just assumed something must have changed
Hmmmm.... yet you still seem to be pretty well indexed by Google. Have you seen a drop in any of the referrals from Google vs. Yahoo vs. MSN, etc.?

I assume you've ruled out the obvious - it's just after Christmas and people have already spent all their disposable income? I know that in January I'm typically only making esential purchases until I pay down credit cards, etc.

I'll tell you what, Jack. This thread actually started with a different question and a different poster - I'm going to split if off to it's own thread and maybe someone with more experience in your kind of business has some ideas.

[minstrel]

You have a PageRank of 4/10 (approximately).

Why does both the title of your page and the first title/heading you see at the top of http://jacksretail.com/ say "Valetines Day: Silver Oaks 1993-1998 Napa Cabernet Sauvignon Vertical" and how long has it said that?

First, Valentine's Day is spelled wrong, isn't it? Second, the page title is exactly the same as that heading and both are very specific and I suspect unlikely to be entered into a Google search box by most of your potential customers. Basically, you are wasting what is sometimes called "prime real estate" here.

What are the MOST LIKELY search terms (phrases) that someone would enter who was trying to find a site like yours? THIS is what you want to highlight in your title and on your home page - you have lots of good keyword-type content on that page but the first things that the spiders and visitors might see are a turn-away: first you have what looks like a spelling error in both (not very professional), there are also some spelling errors in your page content and the spacing is odd at least at 800x600 resolution (again not professional looking), and then you have a reference to a holiday people probably haven't started thinking about yet.

The fact that that page heading is also your title may be a problem - because I assume you don't have that title the same all year round - my preference would be to devise a good SEO title and leave it alone - then change other things on the page as the seasons change because that will keep the spiders coming back looking for new content.


<title>Valetines Day: Silver Oaks 1993-1998 Napa Cabernet Sauvignon Vertical</title>
<meta name="description" content="We offer the finest Valentines Day gifts featuring ">
<meta name="keywords" content="valentines,valentine day,">
I have already commented on the title tag - you need to redo that...

I can already see the comments popping up here about how Google ignores meta tags, so once again let's get that out of the way - I'm not convinced that's 100% true, although I do concede it doesn't carry much of the burden of SEO for Google - even at that, there are also visitors I assume who are reaching you from other directories or search engines so it's worth having them and it's worth doing them correctly. Your description tag is brief and incomplete - not going to help you much at all. Your keywords tag is useless to you as it stands - "valentines" and "valentine's day" must produce thousands of hits on Google - you need to expand these using 2 and 3-word phrases that are a lot more specific to what your business is about.

Whatever Google may or may not be doing, I think there is some work you can do on your home page here to at least increase the chances of people finding you... I'd start there.

[jackson992]

Thank you so much minstrel both for your suggestions and giving me my own thread. Let me try to understand some things here.

#1. On every page of my sites I usually have my <title> tags and my header the same phrase. It looks like this may be wrong?

#2. I had recently given up on metas because I didn't think Google used them at all> But I am seriously thinking about adding them all again now

#3. You mentioned page rank. Try as I might I cannot get this site above a PR 4. This sight has been up for over a year now. August of 2002 to be exact.

#4. I have a dilemma on what you said about being so specific. I thought if I used like just Valentines Day gifts for example there would be too much competition. What can people advise me on this for I deal a lot in very competitive terms often over 1,000,000

#5. You mentioned the spacing is odd. Could you tell me how so as I view things on a 1024 screen

Again, thank you so much for helping me. I hope to learn a lot and hopefully get back on track. This stuff is never easy for me and you guys make it much more easy to take

[minstrel]

#1. On every page of my sites I usually have my <title> tags and my header the same phrase. It looks like this may be wrong?
There's nothing wrong with making changes to your titles but (a) using it to match the first header on your page is kind of a waste since Google will read both - try to make them combined add keywords or search material that is more than either alone, and (b) I like to keep SOME things in the title constant so visitors know instantly as it's loading that they have the right place - I don't know if there are any spiders out there that care, mind you, and (c) the title you have now is SO specific it's not likely to be very useful at all as a search aid.


#2. I had recently given up on metas because I didn't think Google used them at all. But I am seriously thinking about adding them all again now.
You will read over and over again that Google doesn't care - I'm not going to say that's not true, but I'm not convinced it is 100% true either - AND remember you are also creating these pages for other search engines. If, say, 60% of searches are conducted using Google, that's a good reason to make sure your pages are Google friendly, but it also means that 40% of people are using other search engines (these percentages are not meant as accurate statements of the actual percentages using Google and other search engines).


#3. You mentioned page rank. Try as I might I cannot get this site above a PR 4. This sight has been up for over a year now. August of 2002 to be exact.
Don't worry too much about PR - for one thing, it is some sort of exponential or logarithmic scale, not linear. That means the higher you go, the harder it is to go any higher than that, and in some cases the nature and size and even regionality of your business may be a limiting factor.


#4. I have a dilemma on what you said about being so specific. I thought if I used like just Valentines Day gifts for example there would be too much competition. What can people advise me on this for I deal a lot in very competitive terms often over 1,000,000
Being specific is good - but only if it means being specific for terms people will actually be typing into the search boxes... it's a matter of balance.


#5. You mentioned the spacing is odd. Could you tell me how so as I view things on a 1024 screen
There are a few on-line services and some free downloads that will show you what your web page will look like at different screen resolutions - do a search on Google for "browser sizer" or download a freeware program called Browser Sizer 1.5 from http://www.applythis.com.

[jackson992]

Thanks David. I have started looking at my titles, headings and metas. Thanks for all the help and advice.

[jackson992]

ok I have started some of the things I think that were mentioned on my auto site. Could you guys take a look and tell me what you think?

http://automotiveparts-accessories.com

Note: Only the pages starting with A through auto t-shirts are done so far

I started with this site since this was one of my new sites. Eventually I'll get all my sites this way

[jackson992]

Beers for Everyone!!!

Just checked and Google is showing over 80k pages!

[Mel]

Great news Jack.

I have seen several reports of sites indexed by Google dropping out of rankings lately, and on two occassions I checked using allinurl: and found that on these sites which were previously indexed all the pages were now only showing a page title which normally indicates that the page has yet to be indexed, though google is aware of the link.

Could be that Google is redoing their index somehow and in the process dropping some pages.

I wounder how this fits in with the last update or if it does?

[jackson992]

Yes word is something big is happening with Google once again. Someone said something about a private forum here? Didn't know there was one lol

Anyways here is a puzzler for you:

http://www.jacksretail.com/mensmagazines.shtml

This page has been up for months. I would say prolly at least 6 months, yet according to my toolbar I see no PR. However, the page is indeed indexed as I checked for the url on Google. Can someone explain this

[minstrel]

Anyways here is a puzzler for you: http://www.jacksretail.com/mensmagazines.shtml

This page has been up for months. I would say prolly at least 6 months, yet according to my toolbar I see no PR. However, the page is indeed indexed as I checked for the url on Google. Can someone explain this?
For one thing, pretty much no one, apparently not even you, is linking to that page... that would explain the PR=0 (approximately).

Try this on Google: +"www.jacksretail.com/mensmagazines.shtml"

Do you link to this page from your home page? is it a text link, or a link readable by a text browser or spider?

Do you have a site map, and is this page on it, with a text link to the site map from your home page?

[Mel]

Hi Jackson992
You do have links from your magazines page to that page using relative links, but without the <base href="http://www.Jacksretail.com/"> tag in your header. You might try adding that tag and see if it helps with your TPR.

A better practice still is not to use relative links at all but to use fully qualified links and make sure that you are consistent in your use of the www. prefix. I prefer to always use the www.prefix.

[jackson992]

Mel:

Are you saying that I should use my domain in all of my links?

Such as: http://jacksretail.com/movieboxsets.shtml rather than http://movieboxsets.shtml?

I have pasted here a copy of one of my directory pages to get some further insight on this issue



<center>Movie Categories</center>
<hr>
<center>Merchants</center>
Discovery Store (/discoverycategories.php)


<center>Categories</center>
A & E Television Movies (/ae.shtml)


Action/Adventure (/action.shtml)


African American (/africanamericanmovies.shtml)


Animal Action (/animalaction.shtml)


Animation (/animation.shtml)


Anime (/anime.shtml)


Art House (/arthouse.shtml)


Box Sets (/movieboxsets.shtml)


Classics (/classics.shtml)


Comedy (/comedy.shtml)


Cult Movies (/cultmovies.shtml)


DVD's (/dvds.shtml)


Horror (/horrormovies.shtml)


Posters (/movieposters.shtml)


Sheet Music (/moviesheetmusic.shtml)


Home (/index.shtml)


I can't remember if it was on this board or not, but I recall discussing these two types of links before and the consensus was it didn't matter?

Minstrel: Mel hit it on the head. The link is indeed on my magazine page which is one link from the home page.. I wish there was a way to list every page on my site on a sitemap. Need a tool that converts all my files into a sitemap lol

[Mel]

Browsers seldom have problems with relative links, but I have seen occasions when spiders did.
It may be that adding the base href tag to your header will help or it may be that its just a google hiccup.

Regarding the site map, if you download the free Xenu Link Sleuth it has an option to create a site map from the results of spidering your site. Not a pretty sitemap but strucurally correct and it uses the content of your page title and the anchor text link to the page. In addition you get a check of broken links and a list of all pages found.

[jackson992]

Mel: Do you have a url for the link sleuth:)

[Mel]

http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

Enjoy!

[minstrel]

I may as well grab this opportunity to agree with Mel, since it doesn't seem to happen very often lately! :o)

Xenu Link Checker is an excellent utility - small, fast, very configurable, and surpirsingly still freeware. It tells you not just about broken links but about redirected links, which is helpful in finding sites that have moved.

I've been using it for 3 or 4 years now, I think - I've never been unhappy with it and never felt a need to "upgrade" to anything else.

[jackson992]

Sadly I tried to use it but it locked up on me on about page 100k out of about 270 k LOL

[minstrel]

Ooops... I forgot... you're the one with a million pages ;o)

Is there a way to do it one subdirectory at a time? e.g., have it check http://jacksretail.com/magazines/ as one job, then anothr directory or group of directories as a second job, etc.?

[jackson992]

unfornately Minstrel all my pages are in the public html directory LOL