Missing Title, Description in Google

[themidnightwill]

Heya,


I have an interesting situation going on with a site I work on. For some reason, Google's index of the page contains no title or description. (Thus it cannot be found via keywords). However, when I search site:mysite.com, many pages from it are returned - all missing the title and description. Any idea of what is up for that? I have yet to find the cause.

Thanks!

-Will

[marketershandbook.com]

Hi,
I'm kinda confused about what you're asking.

Are you asking why ALL of your pages are not displaying titles or descriptions when you type in site:mysite.com

If that is your question then I can only assume that you didn't put a title or description for ANY of the pages.

[ECommerceConversions]

Well, it's normal if you do site:mysite.com and you get one result without title or description, but many sub pages is unusual. It sounds like google couldn't get any text for some reason? Are you using flash or something? Your URL would really help

[cbp]

You are what Google calls "partially indexed" - this means that Google knows about the URL but has not yet crawled the site (eg a new one) or had trouble crawling the site last time they visited (eg site was down; something blocked the crawler) - if you have good links to your site it should come right the next time the crawler visits.

CBP

[microtel]

Will:

I am experiencing a similar problem and posted a thread here about a month ago:

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=21597

Since this post, the problem has only gotten worse and I have dropped from a PR8 to a PR1. I am now tearing down the site and rebuilding it on another server.

FYI: I have actually spoken with Google and many other SEO experts regarding this and no one has an answer. I have seen this problem with domains throughout Google - however, it is usually isolated to stem pages. The only reason you and I noticed it was because it hit our index pages and the sites dropped off Google (however, I still rank high in Yahoo).

I still believe that this a bug in Google and this isn't the last we will hear about this problem.

Also, most people don't understand the problem - they think we either did something wrong and were penalized or that we changed/forgot something on the sites. If we were penalized - Google would simply graybar us and if we changed/forgot something we could easily repair this in time for the next update.

[themidnightwill]

Will:

I am experiencing a similar problem and posted a thread here about a month ago:

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=21597

Since this post, the problem has only gotten worse and I have dropped from a PR8 to a PR1. I am now tearing down the site and rebuilding it on another server.

FYI: I have actually spoken with Google and many other SEO experts regarding this and no one has an answer. I have seen this problem with domains throughout Google - however, it is usually isolated to stem pages. The only reason you and I noticed it was because it hit our index pages and the sites dropped off Google (however, I still rank high in Yahoo).

I still believe that this a bug in Google and this isn't the last we will hear about this problem.

Also, most people don't understand the problem - they think we either did something wrong and were penalized or that we changed/forgot something on the sites. If we were penalized - Google would simply graybar us and if we changed/forgot something we could easily repair this in time for the next update.

Right, the site essentially dropped off Google. As in your case, I also still rank well in Yahoo. Every page on my domain suffers from the issue - not just steam pages (which I have noticed as a normal part of Google in the past).

The site does have a valid title tag, as well as meta keywords and description. The only issue I can think of as a possibility of creating problems is the index page was somewhat large. (About 100k of HTML, does not include images). I am skeptical that is the reason - that's just the only thing I can find different from other sites of mine that are listed perfectly in Google. Also, that was the issue, it'd only have an effect on the front page. Or at least you'd think.

Thanks for posting a link to your past discussion - I am about to read it now.

Thanks,

-Will

[Dave Hawley]

Is this the "site" (for want of a better word): http://www.tacticalag.com/

[microtel]

The site does have a valid title tag, as well as meta keywords and description. The only issue I can think of as a possibility of creating problems is the index page was somewhat large. (About 100k of HTML, does not include images). I am skeptical that is the reason - that's just the only thing I can find different from other sites of mine that are listed perfectly in Google. Also, that was the issue, it'd only have an effect on the front page. Or at least you'd think.

My site also has a valid title tag, etc. What's even spookier is that I've since created an exact mirror of this site and it ranks just fine. However, the original is still affected.

I would doubt that your HTML is the problem. The issue is simply that Googlebot can't find the title tag for this page. Without a title tag on the index page - the page deosn't exist in the eyes of Google and there goes the site rankings.

So you can stop pulling your hair out, I've tried the following with no success:

- Redesign of index.html
- Rewrite/Removal/Addition of robots.txt
- Change of IP address

Now the problem gets worse for me. Just Monday Google began to show the following result for my page www.freecellphoneSguy.com:

Index of /
Index of /. Name Last modified Size Description Parent Directory 11-Feb-2004
09:07 - cgi-bin/ 03-Oct-2003 10:31 - Apache/1.3.29 Server ...

However, when you hover over "Index of /" you'll see that Google is linking to www.freecellphoneguyS.com - a COMPLETELY different site that uses a meta-refresh to go to the main site (www.freecellphoneSguy.com)! I never intended freecellphoneguyS.com to be indexed, hence the meta-refresh. But Google has it and thinks it the other domain.

As I said before, my strategy is to tear this whole thing down, move it to another box and kill the domain with the redirect. We'll see if this has any effect.

BTW: it wouldn't hurt if you let me know your domain so I could have my people take a look and compare issues. If you don't want to post it here, send me an email to kat62898@yahoo.com.

Thanks-

[themidnightwill]

Is this the "site" (for want of a better word): http://www.tacticalag.com/

No. That site is far from done. But please check it out in the future ;-)



-Will

[Dave Hawley]

Do we get to know what the site is you are asking aboot then?