I have a personal website that I would like to list on google.com
(http://elijah.zupancic.name). No matter how many times I add it via
google's submit a site form, it never shows up under google's index.
Is this because it is a .name domain? How can I get google to index my
site?

Good Day elijahz-ga,


Since your web site has no questionable content we can eliminate that
you are being rejected on those basis. Here is what is happening that
is most likely preventing you from being listed:

- I am not sure if it is because of my browser (Netscape 7.0), or if
you are still not finished with the site, but only two links seem to
work for me: Guestbook & Contact. Lack of other content is probably
the reason why you have been rejected, or "put on hold". When you
click on Submit a Site on one of Google's categories, you get
redirected to dmoz.org. Google gets a lot of their listings through
dmoz.org. Dmoz's policy states "not submit sites under construction."

Source: Open Directory - Submit a Site (dmoz.org)
The following is a sample URL with just a random category. Its only
purpose is to let you view all the "rules", beyond the mentioned no
“sites under construction”.
URL: http://dmoz.org/cgi-bin/add.cgi?where=Arts/Architecture/Education

- Submitting a web site multiple times can sometimes be picked up as
spamming. It is recommended that you do not resubmit your site too
often. Once every 5-6 weeks at most. This is speaking from personal
experience and referring to multiple search engines in general.

Dmoz.org (please remember that this is the only way to "submit to
Google” - through dmoz.org) does not use robots for adding web sites
to their database. Each site submitted has to be reviewed by an
editor: someone who has to actually logon as an editor, visit the
links provided in their category, ensure that this is indeed the right
category for the link (else forward it to someone else who maintains
the proper category), make sure that the site has proper and
sufficient content to be listed. As you can imagine, this process can
take a while considering the number of sites submitted daily. If the
site is accepted, a further few days will pass before the index is
updated and your site is made available.

If you do have content for links other than Guestbook and Contact, and
the content is online, there might be a browser problem. As I already
mentioned, I can not view links other than these two (the browser just
reloads itself, no 404, no access denied, just nothing happens), and
it is possible that the editor is having the same problem. If you do
have content under all the links, please make sure your code is
compatible with at least Netscape and IE.

Hope somewhere in my text you will find a solution to your problem. If
not, please feel free to ask for a clarification once you have
verified that your web site is eligible for a listing, but it still
isn't happening.

Thank you for your question,

Regards,
slawek-ga

---

Request for Answer Clarification by elijahz-ga on 26 Nov 2002 11:31 PST

Actually, what you mentioned is a browser error that I am looking into
right now. I use hidden layers selected by javascript to make diffrent
links display.

Maybe I should have told you about the format of the page. it is
written in XHTML with all of the text layers' css property visibility
set to false. My question is then how much of HTML markup does google
process? Or does it skip it all and just index the text. Basically,
the clarification of my question I am requesting is: "what is the
source of the aforementioned problem?"

If you do a view source on the page you will see that there is plenty
of content there. Why would javascript errors effect the web robot?

Anyways, thank you for your time. Your anwsers was very informative.

---

Clarification of Answer by slawek-ga on 26 Nov 2002 14:41 PST

Good Day elijahz-ga,


The source sounds like the incompatibility of the web site with
certain browsers. Since all sites are visited by the editor of the
category to which you submitted, and there are problems with the web
site, there is a good chance the editor was not able to view all the
links. Infact most of them probably didn't work for the editor, just
like they didn't work for me. Since the policy states "not submit
sites under construction", the editor probably rejected your web site
based on it's inaccessibility to him or her.

Because there is no robot doing the verifying, you can use all kinds
of code on your web site, as long as the editor can view it. Editors
are people like you and me (infact anyone can apply to be an editor),
from all over the world. They don't use a company computer, but their
own computer. This means each editor will have a slightly different
setup, and as long as you web site functions within the normal
standards, you should have no trouble getting in.

Once you fix the problem with the link inaccessibility, and the links
are accessible through the average browser, getting listed in the dmoz
index should be just a matter of time after you resubmit the web site.
From there, Google will pick you up into their index.

Please let me know if you need further clarification.

Regards,
slawek-ga