Hi Tyson_Craemer ~
I want to point out that Google Answers Researchers are independent
contractors. We are not employees of Google, and we do not possess any
"insider" information about Google's closely-protected search engine
algorithms.
From a searcher's standpoint, it's a pretty simple process. Type in
what you're looking for, hit send and get the results. They don't much
care how the information gets there so long as it does, and it is
relevant. If the searcher gets a bunch of garbage that has nothing to
do with what he's looking for, he's obviously going to change search
engines.
From a web master's or site owner's point of view, we all want our
websites in that first page of information returned by the search
engine. Here's what Google says about its Search Engine Technology:
"Google runs on a unique combination of advanced hardware
and software. The speed you experience can be attributed
in part to the efficiency of our search algorithm and
partly to the thousands of low cost PC's we've networked
together to create a superfast search engine ..."
and continues with explaining, but only to the extent it wants to, how
its PageRank technology works:
"PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the
web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of
an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets
a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for
page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume
of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the
page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are
themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make
other pages "important."
"... important pages mean nothing to you if they don't
match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with
sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that
are both important and relevant to your search. Google
goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a
page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and
the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if
it's a good match for your query."
- From Google's Page Rank Explained
- ://www.google.com/technology/index.html
Some webmasters think they have figured out how to "stack the deck" in
their favor and may actually end up in a prominent place - at least
for a while. But Google enjoys a reputation for being "the best"
search engine, and their engineers continuously work to perfect a
visitor's search results.
=========================
Search Engine
Results Placement (SERP)
=========================
You asked, "[c]an anyone explain why we have dropped so low for the
search term
wholesale handbags?"
Google explains why results may change in on its "PageRank Information
Page"
"Why does my page's rank keep changing?
We update our index every four weeks. Each time we
update our database of web pages, our index invariably
shifts: We find new sites, we lose some sites, and sites
ranking may change. Your rank naturally will be affected by
changes in the ranking of other sites ... Google's order of
results is automatically determined by several factors,
including our PageRank algorithm..."
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/4.html#A2
and Google offers this as an explanation:
"You may want to check and see if the number of other sites
linking to your URL has changed. This is the single biggest
factor in determining what sites are indexed by Google, as
we find most pages when our robots crawl the web and jump
from page to page via hyperlinks."
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/4.html#A2
A search for the term "wholesale handbags" (without the quotation
marks) puts your site in 10th place out of approximately 110,000
results. A search for the term "wholesale handbags" (WITH the
quotation marks) lists your site in 9th place out of 4150 results.
You'll have to admit, either of the above is an enviable position -
being listed in the first page of results.
=====================
What Google Suggests
=====================
Despite the above excellent placement which wholesalemall.net enjoys,
there are some points should consider in light of your concern.
Google's Webmaster Information offers specific suggestions and
recommendations, such as:
"* Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links.
Every page should be reachable from at least one static
text link.
* Offer a site map to your users with links that point to
the important parts of your site. If the site map is
larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the
site map into separate pages.
* Create a useful, information-rich site and write pages
that clearly and accurately describe your content.
* Think about the words users would type to find your
pages, and make sure that your site actually includes
those words within it.
* Try to use text instead of images to display important
names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't
recognize text contained in images.
* Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive
and accurate.
* Check for broken links and correct HTML."
- From Google's Design and Content Guidelines
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
Google's Technical Guidelines recommends:
"* Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session
ID's or arguments that track their path through the site.
These techniques are useful for tracking individual user
behavior, but the access pattern of bots is entirely
different...
* Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This
file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be
crawled. Make sure it's current for your site so that
you don't accidentally block the Googlebot crawler. Visit
http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html for a FAQ
answering questions regarding robots and how to control
them when they visit your site."
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
and since you are concerned about the links to your site, in its
Quality Guidelines - Basic Principles, Google suggests:
"Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase
your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid
links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web
as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those
links."
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
===================
Links To Your Site
===================
I checked for links to your site using Google's Link: Tool and
alltheweb.com. I discovered the following:
Google's Link Tool
===========================
Lists 14 links.
Your own links page (with a PageRank 2/10)
Katherine's Bags - PR is greyed out (a sign it has been penalized),
and probably regarded as a linking scheme (surmised by
the number of links on the page with no relevant content).
New York Wholesale Handbags links page - PR is greyed out
Shoes From Brazil - same as above
The Mall at Wholesale Products - same as above
Wholesale Merchandise Store - same as above
and the others, most of which have a greyed out PageRank, and links
from there do not benefit your site, and may eventually harm your own
PageRank and placement.
Using All The Web
============================
I also checked your site for a listing on alltheweb.com and got the
following results:
Find all 70 external web pages that link to
"www.wholesalemall.net"
Find all 5 external web pages that contain the term
"www.wholesalemall.net"
Find all 55 web pages indexed under "www.wholesalemall.net"
Spot checking those links, I find more of the same - a LOT of pages
with nothing but links on them, and most of them are either NOT listed
in Google at all or have the greyed out toolbar.
They may not be hurting you now, although they have caused other sites
to be dropped completely from Google - but links like those aren't
helping you, either.
Links from other sites with *relevant content* will do so much more
for your site PageRank than being linked from others' links pages.
Remember that Google's aim is to deliver relevant material for search
terms, and links from links pages on other site, whether or not
they're related, do not enhance your site's "importance". It may have
worked in the past, but every time the Googlebot crawls the web, more
of those types of pages are dropped, and websites linked on them have
seen their own PageRank drop.
=====================
Why Doesn't Google
Index All Your Site?
=====================
Here's what Google says about indexing all the pages on your website:
"Although we index more than 3 billion web pages,
we cannot guarantee that we will crawl all the pages
on a particular site. However, we are always working
to increase the number of pages we crawl and hope to
include more pages in our index soon."
- ://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html#A2
Which leads to your last question - the comparison of your site and
gifts-pontier.com.
==========================
Back To The Basics - HTML
and Google's Guidelines
==========================
Gifts-pointier.com has 72 links. While most of them are links from
their internal pages, not one of them is from a 'links' page.
Let's consider the linking structure of www.wholesalemall.net
Your first link, "New York Wholesale Handbags", shows a link from your
site TO a link on your site, there seems to be a redirect to another
domain, newyorkwholesalehandbags.com. This may be interpreted as a
"doorway" page to New York Wholesale Handbags, but it is certainly
another site incorporated into your own
The same seems to be true for other links from your index page, such
as Pinky's Bags, Yuka Paris and others. While the links may appear to
your visitors to be a part of your site, search engine crawlers work
differently, and if they're picking up a redirect to an external
website, the chances are good they won't be listed under your own.
As I pointed out, all of Gifts-pointier.com's internal links are
actually on their own site. In addition, they have no "robots.txt" in
their page coding to direct search engine crawlers' movements about
the site - they allow the crawler to find the links and list them
unrestricted.
Your own pages, and those of external sites, all seem to have
directives similar to the following:
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow">
When a crawler reaches a redirected pages, it's on that site, and no
longer on www.wholesalemall.net. You may want to reconsider how you
are listing those sites. If you're linking TO them, then add rich
content about the link, and remember to let your visitors (and search
engine crawlers) know it's a link to another site.
I am sure your intent is not to fool search engines, but such
redirections and/or inclusions of external URLs into a site can be
misinterpreted as such. Since you are concerned about placement among
all those other indexed pages, you may want to actually include those
pages on your own site or make it clear that the link is to an
external site. The chances are also good those pages will be indexed
as a part of your own site.
=========
Summary
=========
While I cannot say - because I do not know (only Google knows) - why
your site has dropped from a higher placement to 10th place for the
term "wholesale handbags", I have given you suggestions and
recommendations from Google, which if followed, work pretty well for
the site owners.
The same is true for the links question - gifts-pointier.com's
internal links are all on that site with no redirection to external
sites.
A lot of useful information about Google's search engine can be found
in the discussion threads on Webmaster World,
http://www.webmasterworld.com/ as well as Danny Sullivan's Search
Engine Watch, http://www.searchenginewatch.com.
There is also a great article in Internet.com's report, "Search Engine
Throne Up for Grabs" which will help you understand recent changes and
the speculation on what will be happening in the near future.
- http://www.internetnews.com/IAR/article.php/3065921
It's a fact of life that just about the time you figure out how to get
good placement the search engines change their algorithms, so staying
abreast of changes and how it affects your site is good practice.
I am sure this is more information than you requested, but every bit
of code on your website is given weight, whether positive or negative,
and has a bearing on your placement - the one thing which won't change
is relevance, because if one search engine won't deliver sites with
real and ** RELEVANT ** information, there's always another search
engine waiting in the wings. You'll want to make sure your site is
among those delivered!
Regards,
Serenata |
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