A website costing many thousands of dollars was launched over a year
ago: www.blakelyla.com. It doesn't show up on any search on Goggle,
yet a This Old House Online project which included  this architect
(Jeff Blakely) was available on Goggle during the projects airing. 
How do you get listed or linked to Goggle? Is there a fee? Where is it
listed ?

 This is very troubling since no one can find the website
(www.blakelyla.com), without being emailed or given the web address
verbally or in correspondence.  Somehow corporations or individuals
must be able to contact Goggle for a listing contemporaneous with Art
or Theartre openings (example) or activities having a limited life or
date of applicability....how do they do it?

algerobie...

There are many questions archived in Google Answers which address
this same concern. You can search from Google Answers' homepage:
https://answers.google.com/answers/main

Terms such as "Google listing"
https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=search&q=%22Google+listing%22&qtype=all&btnG=Google+Search

or, listing Google
https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=search&q=listing+Google&qtype=all&btnG=Google+Search

or "Google ranking"
https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=search&q=%22Google+ranking%22&qtype=all&btnG=Google+Search

or "page ranking"
https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=search&q=%22page+ranking%22&qtype=all

...will produce numerous links to questions with answers that
are highly relevant to your query, such as the following:

"How to get my page in a Search engine result and that too at the
top?"
https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=75462

"Listing with Google"
https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=55306

"Site Not Showing Up on Google...Site Ranking?
https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=102261

"Listing on Google"
https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=66429

...and so on. This last answer cites the LinkPopularity.com
website, which determines the number of links referring to your
website from other websites. This is a key factor in whether a
search engine will pick you up. The LinkPopularity site is here:
http://www.linkpopularity.com/

...and entering your site address produces this result page:
http://www.linkpopularity.com/linkpop.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blakelyla.com&ref=&a=1&name.x=47&name.y=22

It indicates that you have no links from other sites, and a 
quick look at your site (which is VERY well done by the way),
shows that you have equally few links referring to other sites.

The answer to the following question will also help you
to understand whether Google has "crawled' your site:
"How do you know when a site has beed crawled and indexed by Google?"
https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=59074

On the lighter side, you may want to read about Google's
explanation of its page-ranking technology, called PigeonRank™:
http://catalogs.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html

After you've stopped laughing, you can get back to business
by having a look at Google's pages of FAQs for webmasters:
://www.google.com/webmasters/

And you can submit your site to Google here:
://www.google.com/addurl.html

Please do not rate this answer until you are satisfied that the 
answer cannot be improved upon by means of a dialog with
the researcher through the "Request for Clarification" process.

sublime1-ga

Thank you ....I learned alot about the process of being listed by a
search engine and I appreciate those that added to the first
answer...many thanks to all of you ( Journalist-ga, and
aceresearcher-ga) ,for your attention and time spend in crafting your
lengthy answers for a layman to comprehend.

Greetings!  I had queried my fellow researchers regarding your
question as I could not ascertain the answer and AceResearcher-ga
suggested that this might be your problem.  Below is her take on the
matter and I hope this helps you in addition to the answer you
received:


It's my understanding that the Google Search Engine now ignores <meta>
tags, and evaluates a site purely by the text on the main page, and on
any subpages linked to by the main page.

The front page of his website is just a Flash presentation. No actual
content. Google probably does not like this. Also, the site uses
Frames. Google usually does not like this, either.

Try running the customer's site through the Search Engine Spider
Simulator tools at: http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/sim_spider.cgi

The simulator says no links were spidered. 
This may provide some enlightenment about his problems. 

If you do a "view source" and search for "href" (tag that points to
additional web pages) on the Flash page, you find only one link:
(http://www.blakelyla.com/)index1.htm . The main page after the Flash
page is simply a blank page with a pretty quote (no content). If you
do a "view source" and search for "href" here, all you find is
(http://www.blakelyla.com/)about.htm and http://www.fusedog.com .

So, it looks like Google is only looking at pages: 
http://www.blakelyla.com/blaintro.htm 
http://www.blakelyla.com/index1.htm 
http://www.blakelyla.com/about.htm 

There is very little total text on these pages, and no additional
links.

One thing that will help them would be to copy the links from
http://www.blakelyla.com/navtop.htm into the bottom of their
index1.htm page (and at the bottom of each of their other pages as
well), in between a <noframes> tag and a </noframes> tag. <noframes>
encloses text that you want the user to see if they cannot see the
whole, assembled frames page because their browser does not support
frames. A browser that supports frames will not show what's inside
<noframes> tags, but Google will spider anything inside <noframes>
tags. For example:

<noframes> 
<a href="index1.htm">Home</a> 
<a href="projects.htm">Projects</a> 
<a href="awards.htm">Awards</a> 
<a href="about.htm">About Us</a> 
<a href="contact.htm">Contact</a> 
<a href="mack.htm">H. Bert and Ruth Mack Meditation Garden</a> 
<a href="kinsey.htm">Residence Mr. & Mrs. Charles Kinsey</a> 
<a href="hoak.htm">Residence of Mr. & Mrs. David Hoak</a> 
</noframes> 

inserted just above </html> at the bottom of the page. 

Not making your site viewable to people whose browsers can't handle
frames is an extremely big NO-NO in terms of excellent web design. In
addition, there is a large body of experts who say that that stupid
entry page, Flash or static, should be ditched (even if it DOES have a
link to the main page, it's still bad form and design). I totally
agree. It's a big waste of my time and bandwidth. If I want to see
somebody's site, I don't want them wasting my time with this sort of
crap. And for people who are using a dial-up connection (probably a
majority of their users), a Flash presentation can take FOREVER to
load and run. JUST SAY "NO" TO FLASH ENTRY PORTALS.

hi, algerobie!

You have a really beautiful website! Unfortunately, however, a website
designer who creates a site that is this unfriendly to Search Engines
has done only half the job. Furthermore, I would have to question
whether they know the business nearly as well as they say they do.

If you truly spent thousands of dollars to have this website created
for you, and you missed out on untold number of visitors in the last
year because it's being ignored by search engines, I would encourage
you to go back to the website design company and negotiate quite
forcefully for a refund of at least half the fee. (If your company has
a legal counsel, you might want to have them handle it.) If the
website design company refuses to make amends, you may want to
consider further action.

Flash movies can be incredibly impressive, and when this functionality
appeared, a lot of people got really excited about it -- and rightly
so. Unfortunately, Flash can take a really long time to load, so
putting the "skip intro" link on that page doesn't do much good if it
doesn't appear until after the page loads. Meanwhile, a potential
customer may be sitting there, tapping their fingers and getting
frustrated. Many customers, especially those with only the slower
dial-up access, would prefer to get right to the "meat" of the site.
Balancing a slick, impressive presentation for your site with the need
to make it friendly and convenient for your customers is a tricky
task.

I hope you will be able to have the needed changes made to your
website quickly, and that your site is soon overrun with visitors
flocking to it from search engines. Best wishes and good luck!

aceresearcher

Hello again, algerobie!

I just posted a comment on another question that I thought might also
be helpful to you, so I am posting it here as well.


You are correct that simply submitting your site to search engines may
not be enough to actually get it listed. There are a number of key
elements that must be incorporated into your website to make it
search-engine-friendly and likely to get indexed. Furthermore, there
are other elements than you definitely don't want on your website,
because they can get you banned from search engines entirely.

I would like to caution you that, just because a company that provides
website design and/or marketing services SAYS that they know what
they're doing, it may not necessarily be true. In fact, we recently
had a question posted here by the proprietor of a company promoting
itself on its website as an expert in SEO (Search Engine
Optimization). Their question was something along the lines of "How do
I get my site listed on Google?" Pretty scary, huh?

One good way to check the credentials of a company which you are
considering hiring to design and/or promote your site is to ask them
for a list of at least a dozen clients. Then, take that list and visit
every site on it. Check each site to see if there is any sort of
"designed by Website Designs, Inc." or "a partner of XYZ Marketing
Company", etc. If you can't find on that site any mention of the
person/company you are considering hiring, then note the phone number
and e-mail address of the company. Also look on the main page for a
couple of keywords other than the company's name that would probably
not be common to all other similar sites, such as "since 1967" "first
and foremost" "for 50 years".

While you're on the site, if the company says they designed it, poke
around for a bit. See how it looks. Do the pages load fairly quickly?
Is the site organized logically? Can you get to any page on the site
in 3 clicks or less? Are the graphics pleasing, but not too noisy?
Does the site seem to communicate its company's business clearly and
concisely? Do all the links work?

Then, take your list of phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Call each
of these companies and ask them who is doing their web design and/or
marketing for them. It is not at all unheard of for
less-than-reputable companies claim that they had a hand in certain
successful sites, when in fact the owners of those sites have never
even heard of the person/company in question. Don't just take their
word that this is their work. Verify it.

If it turns out that they really ARE responsible for the sites they
provided, go out on several search engines and look up each site using
common key words that you would expect to bring up that site. For
instance, for a mortgage company in Nashville, TN, try various
combinations of keywords like "mortgage" "mortgages" "loan" "loans"
"home" "homes" "financing" "Nashville" "TN" "Tennessee", and the
unusual keywords that you noted while you were visiting the site.

If you can't get the site to come up in search engines, try adding the
company's name with several of the other keywords. If you still can't
get the site to come up this way, the website design/marketing company
might not be nearly as good as they say they are.

Finally, when you do hire someone, get it in writing in the contract
that if your site isn't coming up on search engines within 2 months of
its launch, you get a full or partial refund of the fees you paid. If
they aren't willing to agree to this, I would say that it's a real red
flag about the reputability of the company.

I hope this information helps you make your website very successful!

Regards,

aceresearcher