Can't get indexed on Google

[homenotion]

First of all, happy new year to everyone and all the best for a prosperous and healthy new year.

I have a web site that's been on the web for about 8 months and I can't seem to get it indexed. I've read as much as I can and learned quite a bit but nothing seems to be working. I'm sure I've missed something but I think I'm too wound up in it to see the obvious. If anyone can offer their experitse I'd sure appreciate it.

Thanks,
Elizabeth
http://www.homenotion.com

[minstrel]

You are indexed by Google - do a search for www.homenotion.com and you will find it.

However, your PageRank is low (<1) and if I enter +"www.homenotion.com", Google shows about 46 backlinks to your site, which is a little low.

What keywords or keyphrases are you using with Google?

[ronniethedodger]

Her PR is ZERO. This is not a good sign. I fear that her site has been penalized by Google.

There are no backlinks reported at Google. I did check at AllTheWeb and there are numerous links from GuestBooks, and you are apparantly gathering links through Link Partners (do not get me going on these people).

Alta Vista is showing some guestbook entries, and this one in particular www.spambook.com/links/marketingservices3.html But that link is an invalid one. They have moved these pages to http://www.spambook.com/partners.htm. Looking thru some of the link pages here, it looks like a giant spamming directory to me.

Hotbot/Inktomi reports more guestbooks. And this one also http://www.trafficg.com/my-promotion...ber=homenotion . I don't know about this one, it looks like a link pool scheme of some type. Lots of links for lots of traffic type place.

Some people say that you cannot be penalized by the one's who link to you. But this may be the exception here I think.

I tried looking through your site to see if you reciprocated any of these links, but could not find any so far. I have not gone thru your entire site.

One thing is curious at Google. It shows some of your pages as being indexed. But, those pages do not exist. Did you change your site recently????

AllTheWeb, MSN, and HotBot show only your homepage in their index. AltaVista is showing 10 pages indexed. AltaVista shows us that your site is crawlable at least.

I think we need to know a little more History on how your site was developed over the last 8 months. When pages were added, who you have done submissions to, etc. Then we will have a little more to go on, and hopefully figure out what is going on.

[homenotion]

Thanks Ronniethedodger and minstrel for all your feedback.I appreciate your information and I'm thinking you are right - I'm being penalized, so your feedback is like gold to me.

There are a few things I'm not familiar with so please bear with my questions. Do I understand you to say that I might be penalized by some of those linking to me? or perhaps I have done it incorrectly or dealt with the wrong sites. Perhaps 'link partners' is not a good thing. Please explain, I'll take any suggestions you have. BTW - My reciprical links page is www.homenotion.com/resources.html

As for indexed pages I can only find that my main page is indexed (www.homenotion.com) What other pages did you find indexed that are not there. I'll have to check that out more.

I have done only free submissions to the most popular websites and submissions to less popular engines about once a month. I have added pages over the past 6 months and changed pages but it has been gradually. I have only added pages over the past 3 months.

Thanks again for your efforts.

Elizabeth

[ronniethedodger]

Did you submit to Google at www.google.com/addurl.html at all? If so, how long ago? If not, do it now...all you have to do is list your base domain name.

I did a search for some of the people linking to you, and I see a lot of casino sites, guestbooks, and quite frankly a lot of garbage sites. I recognize some of these from the LinksManager system. I really do not want to get into that here at this time....let's just say it is not worth it in the long run and let it stand at that.

There is no sure-fire quick way to get links. They are done one at a time, day in and day out, month after month. There are lots of topics discussing this here at WPW. But go for quality over quantity and you will never go wrong. Always shoot for the people that are in the same field as you are...and stay away from sites like casinos, adult sites, etc. Often the casinos will be tied in with some adult sites too...and your link being in there would not be good from a linkback standpoint. This is what basicly happens when you are listed at LinkPartners without excluding those types of sites in your account control panel there.

I did another ALLINURL search for your domain at Google...and now I do not see anything indexed but your resources page. Earlier I remember seeing several pages listed, but now they are gone. It is really strange.

If you have been penalized by Google, then it will be tough to get back into it's good graces without knowing why they penalized you. It could be the linking, or something else entirely...maybe something in your pages. Who designed the pages for you?

[homenotion]

Thanks Ron for all your great information. I submitted to google as you suggested, however I have done that a few times before.

ALso, I will definitely work on my links as you suggest.

I designed the pages myself with a product called coolpage (www.coolpage.com) It's basically a drag and drop product that allows me to create the pages quickly and easily. I know enough html to be dangerous so I wanted something simple to use.

I don't think coolpage should be a problem, I'm suspecting the links need some work as you suggest. Perhaps my meta tags also need more looking into.
Unless you see some other glaring problems I guess that's what I'll concentrate on first.

You've been a big help!

Thanks, Elizabeth

[ronniethedodger]

You've been a big help!

Thanks, Elizabeth

No problem Elizabeth. And welcome to WPW by the way.

[minstrel]

Elizabeth:

Welcome to WebProWorld and my apologies for having absolutely no social skills whatsoever! Thanks for the reminder, Ronnie.. :-)

Maybe the situation isn't as bad as it seems. I'm not certain you have been penalized - it may just be that the backlinks you do have aren't helping you at all because of the nature of those links.

I haven't actually looked at your site yet because I haven't had time - and actually the way tonight is going I may not tonight either... it certainly would be worth looking both at your tags and at your page content.

Can you clarify:

1. when did this site first go on-line?
2. what are these other pages Ronnie mentions? Did you delete any pages? Did you RENAME any pages? if so, how long ago?
3. for the pages NOT listed, how long have they been on-line and again have any of those been renamed since they were created?
4. do you have a sitemap which lists all your pages with a TEXT link to the sitemap from your home page?

If the answer to either part of #4 is "no", start there.

Her PR is ZERO. This is not a good sign. I fear that her site has been penalized by Google. There are no backlinks reported at Google.

Ronnie, see my post above - I found 46 backlinks for her site at Google. Plus her home page IS indexed in Google. I'm not sure why you think she's been penalized - not saying you're wrong there, just not sure that isn't premature.

It may well be that she just isn't getting any credit for those backlinks because of the sources - that would explain why her PR=0 (actually <1) without her actually having been penalized by Google.

What say you, as cbp likes to say?

[ronniethedodger]

Ronnie, see my post above - I found 46 backlinks for her site at Google. Plus her home page IS indexed in Google. I'm not sure why you think she's been penalized - not saying you're wrong there, just not sure that isn't premature.

It may well be that she just isn't getting any credit for those backlinks because of the sources - that would explain why her PR=0 (actually <1) without her actually having been penalized by Google.

I swear!!! I do not see any links at Google for her site.

I also do not see any indexed pages now. I did see them once when this started, but now they are gone.

Here....I am going to go in and do and ALLINURL and LINK right now....please hold.

LINK=0 ALLINURL=1 ----> http://www.homenotion.com/resources.html

There is a cached page for her Home Page, but there is not one for the Resources page. If the resources page comes up in the ALLINURL, it should be cached also....wouldnt't it?

And the search for +"www.homenotion.com" shows 50 results. Only one of her pages shows up on that....the resources page. (there is a lot of links from Snoring searches)

Also, I have gone through (i think) every page at her site, and just the home page and the resources page are showing PR0. All the rest are N/A.

This is all too strange. Remember the other time we came across this happening with someone else here? This is a more extreme case though.

While the links may be a problem. I think there is something else wrong here besides that.

She has stated that her site has been up for 8 months and that she has submitted her URL to Google on more than one occasion. Google has had more than ample time to index her site I would think.

[minstrel]

Ronnie:

Have you seen this thread?

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=8166

If a site has links pointing to it from sites that are in the Google index, they should be in the index. If they are not in the index, most likely they have been banned.

However, almost all cases of allegedly "banned" websites that I have come across are not really banned (eg they ranked poorly; they had no links to the site; site was down during last googlebit visit, etc.)

The simplest way that I know to see if Google has banned a site is as follows:

Search on Google for your domain name exactly as written, minus the .com, .net, .org or whatever.

e.g., to see if webproworld.com has been banned, you would search for "webproworld"

In the results you will see either:

- links to webproworld.com if the site is actively indexed (this is also useful for seeing if Google has already indexed the domain), or,

- if the site is banned you will see no results or only results for other sites that contain the word webproworld, (likely because they have links to webproworld.com}

It works in most cases where the domain name is unique enough that it wouldn't appear as a commonly used term on too many other sites.

So following Jade's advice, I search for homenotion and I get 150 hits... but none for the site itself.

One page that kept cropping up was http://www.homenotion.com/snore.html so I clicked on one of those backlinks and was taken to
this directory. I clicked on the http://www.homenotion.com/snore.html link there and was taken not to that page but to http://www.snoringstopper.com/. Actually all three links at the top of that directory page take you to the same page.

I then tried the same thing with this directory - again, I click on the link for http://homenotion.com and again I am taken to http://www.snoringstopper.com.

So there's something else happening with this domain name...