12 replies to this topic

[michaelc888]

Hi all,

I am having problems getting google or any other search engine to index
my site.

I really would appreciate some help as It is just frustrating having a great
idea and not having the chance to get people to the web content!

OK here goes. The site uses IIS 5.0 and (asp) Active Server Pages.

Its being submited to google and MSN since April 22nd 2004

The header file seems fine with a return code of 200.

Sim Spider Tool parsed the main page and give me a decent list of links that it would follow.

The site doesn't use https and the urls that I need indexed end in .asp which dont use querystring.

I do have asp pages which have querystrings but they are not visible to the spider and I do not need them indexed. I just want the asp pages which dont use querystring indexed.

So I'm totally baffled, when i use google and enter site:www.mysite.biz (this is not my real site name!)

I get just the website page name but nothing else i.e.

Tip: Try Google Answers for help from expert researchers

www.mysite.biz/
Similar pages

Is there something that I'm doing drastically wrong? I could convert some of the asp files in static htm files. But from reading the forum asp pages are fine so long as you dont use query string or dropdown form submission etc

Any help would be great.

Thanks
Michael

[OldWelshGuy]

Hiya Michael, welcome

How many other sites are linking TO your site? if the answer is none, then that is probably why. Spiders are reluctant to sp[ider a site without good reason, more so a dynamic site. No incoming links = very little prospect of spidereing

OWG

[Randy]

Welcome Michael !

The first thing to look at is if the site is requiring either Cookies or Session IDs to be set. Both of those will stop a search engine spider dead in their tracks.

It may not be a technical reason at all, as the site is rather new. Are there links from other sites pointing to your site? If not, you'll need to get some of those in order to spark enough interest from the bot to spider the site. <Edit - I see that OWG already beat me to the punch! >

If you don't want to post your site address publicly PM it on over and I'll take a quick look to see if I can spot any technical reasons the spider would stay away.

[michaelc888]

OWG & Randy,

I have to admit no incomming links for this site but how about pages that
that get indexed but are personal webpages like those that are given as free
webspace on yahoo,geocities etc they get indexed? Is that because the main domain is yahoo etc

The asp pages use asp session variables.

asp session variables are server side cookies would that stop the googlebot spider?

I dont use client bowser cookies and i'm not using ID in the url for the asp pages...

If I make html version of the dynamic pages and run them in parallel will that
count against me ?

Thanks
Mike

[OldWelshGuy]

Michael just get some links, this includes directory links etc. put your site in your signature and in your profile, it will allow people to look at your site and better know how to respond.

[Randy]

The dual html and asp versions would be a bad idea most times. One or the other will get listed, but not both, since the content is duplicate. That's a last resort in my book, and even then I'd counsel to exclude the dynamic pages from the bots.

ASP session variables can be an issue, but only if they're being required in order to browse the site. Same thing with cookies for the record.

Neither of those is the cause in this instance. OWG hit the nail right on the head after taking a quick look at your site. You simply need to garner some links pointing to the site in order to spark some interest. The more relevant the better.

I haven't tested personal pages to see if they're counted at all lately, but they won't give you any huge advantage these days. Check out the [url=http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showforum=21]Submitting to Directories[/url] and Link Building portions of the forum above. Those will both give you some good ideas on how and where to get a link building program up and running.

[OldWelshGuy]

I just checked, and there is not one single occurrence of your domain name "www.yoursite.com" (not actual name) anywhere on the web. Your front page has not been chached, so Google knows about you and is sitting there waiting for a link to be found before it spiders you.

OWG

[Nathan Malone]

OWG and Randy pretty much covered everything but there is one thing that I thought I would mention. ASP is simply the programming language that generates html (or some other html-like language). The only reason the search engines know that your site is in asp is because of the url. A surprising amount of people get mixed up about this and so I thought I would clarify it.

[michaelc888]

Hi all,

Ok, I will work to add inbound links.

See how that goes. How will I know if I've been visited by
google? Looking inside the WebLogs file for googlebot text?

Is there an IP Address that I should keep an eye out for?

Thanks
Michael

[Nathan Malone]

In my experience, Google usually uses 64.xxxxxxxxx ip addresses but the other numbers change all the time.

[Randy]

I'd just keep an eye out for "Googlebot" in your logs and pay attention to which pages it has visited.

[Jill]

Welcome Michael!

Looks like you've gotten some good advice already, so I'll just keep quiet (this time)!

Jill

[Nathan Malone]

One more thing, it sometimes takes a little while between the time that Google spiders your site and the time that they actually index your site so don't be concerned if this happens.