Hi Scott,
I don't think you have anything to worry about, for two reasons:
- To the best of my knowledge, Google will initially list any site.
Down the track, some sites which break the Google rules get banned.
Because many sites which break the rules get away with it, it seems
that Google doesn't check every site, and it only checks every now and
then. I follow online discussions on this topic daily, and I have not
heard of a site being listed and then banned so quickly.
- The disappearance of your listing in search results is most likely
due to being noticed by Google's Freshbot. You normally have to wait
until longer than you have to show up in Google. A typical pattern is:
1. You submit your URL.
2. Google updates the main index at roughly the end of the month. Your
site does not appear.
3. Google updates the main index at roughly the end of the next month.
Your site appears.
I would expect a site submitted in early January to first appear at
the end of Feb.
This is what probably happened, and will happen:
1. You submit your URL.
2. Late January your site is found by the FreshBot. It appears in
search results for a day or two, then disappears. If the Freshbot
doesn't visit your site a day or two later, your listing reverts to
how it is in the main index. Because it is not yet in the main index,
your site no longer appears.
3. Google updates the main index at roughly the end of January. Your
site does not appear.
4. Google updates the main index at roughly the end of Feb. Your site
appears.
Freshbot
--------
When you submit your URL to Google, some time in the next month or so
the Googlebot will pay your site a visit and index most or all of it.
Google also has Freshbot - it looks for websites which typically have
constantly changing content, and re-indexes them every day or two. If
you see any Google search results with a date beside them, that is
when Freshbot last visited them. Sometimes Freshbot will
unintentionally find other sites...
It appears that xramp.com was found by the FreshBot. One of the most
common queries I receive here (and elsewhere) is why does my site
disappear, then reappear, then
disappear? The following comes from GoogleGuy, a Google search
engineer who often answers queries posted at WebMasterWorld:
GoogleGuy: Everflux and Fresh Crawls
------------------------------------
If your site is new, or hasn't shown up in google for long, it may
because our "fresh crawl" (which runs each day) was finding your site
instead of our main crawl (which runs about once a month). Our "fresh
crawl" is a newer feature, and we're still experimenting with which
pages to crawl, how deeply to crawl, etc. We even reserve the right to
(gasp!) not do a fresh crawl on some days because we're doing tests or
reviewing new code. Someone wrote in recently and said "my site got in
google three weeks ago, and you've dropped me four times!" Nope, it's
just that we don't always crawl the same pages in our fresh crawl, and
we don't always crawl to the same depth. As we do a full crawl of the
web, we find most of the sites from our fresh crawl and put them in
our regular index. My advice on our fresh crawl is to view it as a
nice "bonus" on top of google's deep index. Users can always search
our full index, but sometimes we can serve up even fresher pages as an
extra nicety.
The rest of the discussion is at:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/6339.htm
Basically, if your site is picked up by freshbot one day, but not the
next, the site's listing reverts to its normal listing. If your site
didn't previously have a regular listing, it disappears. Here are some
more opinions at WebMasterWorld:
Google also has what we call the fresh-bot, also nicknamed "minty". It
crawls much more frequently, but not as deeply. It is used to update
pages in the index which change often. After a freshbot crawl you site
may appear for a few days with an updated listing, called a "fresh
listing". However, if the freshbot does not return within a few more
days, your "fresh listing" will disappear, and your listing will
revert to whatever it was during the previous deep-crawl, meaning the
one at least one month ago. If you have never had a "previous" deep
crawl, then your site may disappear. If the fresh bot returns to your
site, your fresh listing may re-appear. Therefore, during the first 30
to 59 days of a site's life, it may drop in and out of Google's
results page.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/6743.htm
When we do a new fresh crawl, it currently replaces the last fresh
crawl. And again, we do experiments from time to time, so different
crawls may visit different pages. (GoogleGuy)
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/6339.htm
My site is new and isn't in the Main Index yet, but was in for a day,
due to fresh bot crawl 3 days ago. freshbot came back this morning
(whew), grabbed some pages, but I'm nowhere to be found... The point
is that pages found by freshbot have an unsure life in Google's index.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/5196-3-15.htm
How to be re-included
---------------------
I'm quite sure your site will appear properly with the next Google
index update (typically at the end of the month). If it turns out I am
wrong, this is the official Google advice:
Your page was manually removed from our index, because it did not
conform with the quality standards necessary to assign accurate
PageRank. We will not comment on the individual reasons a page was
removed and we do not offer an exhaustive list of practices that can
cause removal. However, certain actions such as cloaking, writing text
that can be seen by search engines but not by users, or setting up
pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling search engines may result
in permanent removal from our index. If you think your site may fall
into this category, you might try 'cleaning up' the page and sending a
re-inclusion request to help@google.com. We do not make any guarantees
about if or when we will re-include your site.
://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html#B3
Affiliate Scheme
----------------
Affiliate schemes are not shady - they are a legitimate way to boost
business. Search engines have nothing against them, and by running one
you will not be penalised.
However - any link URL with a "?" or "cgi-bin" in it runs a high risk
of not being followed by search engine spiders. Google does follow
some, but at their discretion. You can be quite sure that they don't
want affiliate links to affect search results. Google say:
"We are able to index dynamically generated pages. However, because
our web crawler can easily overwhelm and crash sites serving dynamic
content, we limit the amount of dynamic pages we index. "
://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html#A1
In my opinion, the best way to increase link popularity is to use an
affiliate scheme which keeps track of things by using cookies or
referring URL. That way every link to your site will look the same.
Search engine spiders ignore cookies.
You are right, if you have 500 sites linking to yours, all with the
text "XRamp is the best site on the planet", it will look suspicious.
It's a good idea to say to affiliates - here's the link, use whatever
text you want. That way you get an appearance of genuine linking. If
you want to offer them a default, make it "XRamp" - it's normal to
link to a site using its name.
Here's some WebMasterWorld discussions on the affiliate / link
popularity topic:
Themes and Popularity - Please Help
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum5/527.htm
Gaining link popularity from incoming affiliate links?
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/4216.htm
Affiliate software and link popularity
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum12/274.htm
NOTE: WebMasterWorld requires a quick and easy, free registration. It
is by far the best place for your type of question, which doesn't have
definitive answers, but consensus of opinion and experience can help
greatly.
Search Strategy: searching WebMasterWorld for "freshbot"
Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga |
,
0 Comments
)