I have developed the following website -- www.bikersandhikers.com --
for a friend who is an avid user of Google.  Apparently when the
Google crawlers came through, the placeholder page provided by the
hosting company was still the index.htm page for this domain name. 

Since then, the new website files have been uploaded to the hosting server.
Is this the reason why when I type in "Bikers & Hikers" or "Houston
bicycle shops" in the Google search box (separate searches), a link to
www.bikersandhikers.com does not appear in the search results list? 
If so, when will the crawlers come through again so that this website
can be listed in the search results for "Bikers & Hikers" and for
"Houston bicycle shops"?

Hi there,

CometSystems have a Google search which, when you click on "archived
copy", gives you the date of when Google last indexed a particular web
page. In the case of bikersandhikers.com it was November 10.
http://search.cometsystems.com/search.php?qry=bikersandhikers.com&gg_ca=6MI4yJHVd2AC:www.bikersandhikers.com%2F

There is no way of knowing when the Google crawler (known as
GoogleBot) will next visit a website, although for most sites it will
visit once a month. Regardless of when it visits, the consequence of
its visit - updating how the site appears in Google search results -
will only happen when the entire Google index is updated. This happens
roughly once a month, and last occured on Nov 30.

A history of Google updates is at WebMasterWorld:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/2657.htm

The next update will most likely occur between Xmas and New Year. It
takes a few days to settle in - Google has hundreds of servers to
update, and some ISP caches take a while to change as well - this
hiccup of sorts is affectionately known as the Google Dance. So don't
be surprised if the site comes up when you search for "Bikers &
Hikers", and then doesn't an hour later.

After the Google Dance is over, the site should be listed, and I would
expect it to be the top result for  "Bikers & Hikers":
://www.google.com/search?q=%22Bikers+%26+Hikers%22

The above search currently lists a number of sites which have the
address and phone number for Bikers & Hikers. Emailing them and
letting them know the new website's URL will enable them to link to
the site, and increase its ranking at Google.

I had a good look at the site, and there is nothing wrong with it in
terms of search engines, although this has me puzzled:

The page is within <form></form> tags, and the only purpose seems to
be the inclusion of tags like this to contain keywords:

<input type="hidden" name="Houston bike shops">

I've not seen this before, and I doubt any search engine has a problem
with it, although far better places for keywords are the Title, image
ALT tags and headline tags like <H1>.

Otherwise the site suits its purpose very well.


Search Strategy
---------------
Personal experience


I hope this answers your question. If any portion of my answer is
unclear, please ask for clarification.

Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga

This is an excellent answer -- the very best information I have ever
been told about the Google search engine process.  Thank you very
much.