Dear Professor --
Google Answers researchers don't know why your site doesn't return
high results, as we're not Google employees and don't know all of the
factors involved in the Googlebot's page evaluation. However, many of
us are familiar with web page construction and search engines.
In your case there are some very good guesses as to why your pages
don't show up higher in a search engine. The highest-ranking page in
the follow search is a PDF file:
"George Irvin" professor
The file being returned as #16 is the following file:
www.george.irvin.com/deflation-long02.pdf
Why would a PDF file return a better result to a search engine than a
home page? Largely because search engines look for text and links.
Google's own webmaster guidelines note: "Use a text browser such as
Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your
site much as Lynx would..."
Google
"Webmaster Guidelines," (2004)
://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
The Googlebot actually does a remarkable job reading that PDF page,
being able to pluck out a professional description from a footnote!
The webmaster guidelines are full of valuable information, including
the recommendation that you "make that your TITLE and ALT tags are
descriptive and accurate."
Your HTML page at www.george.irvin.com has virtually no information in
the HTML header and no title. You'll note that without a title, even
your own HTML browser is returning only the URL -- instead of what you
intended for a title:
"George Irvin * ----- Economics Home Page"
The extensive use of Javascript here is probably the cause of text and
links not appearing properly. I did a search in Google for several of
the authored articles and only the PDF mentioned above is showing up.
Usually this is because of Javascript errors making the text
impossible to read. You can fix the coding errors or another option
is coding the page in straight HTML. You can check your Javascript
here:
W3C Markup Validation Service
http://validator.w3.org/
Once changes are made, you'll want to resubmit your site to Google --
and consider submitting it to Netscape's Open Directory Project
(DMOZ). Note that it may take 6-8 weeks for the Google database to
get updated:
http://www.dmoz.org
Google Information for Webmasters
://www.google.com/webmasters/
Note too, that the page could score higher in a search if there are
reciprocal links between your page and others. The links lend
"authority" to a web page, much the way citations do in academic
documents. You may wish to encourage that with Paul Krugman, Joe
Stiglitz, the university, and others.
If any aspect of this answer is unclear, please let us know before
rating this answer.
Best regards,
Omnivorous-GA |
Request for Answer Clarification by
george2812-ga
on
06 Aug 2004 06:51 PDT
Thanks for an excellent answer. Because our university IT Dept is very
slow, I maintain my own page using FrontPage 2000---and know virtually
nothing about using HTML tags. I have added HTML title information and
reposted my page, but it does sound as though I need professional help
in getting my HP sorted and submitted. Any further thoughts you have
would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks.
George Irvin
|
Clarification of Answer by
omnivorous-ga
on
06 Aug 2004 09:00 PDT
Prof. Irvin --
The best suggestions have already been made: run the page through the
WC3 Markup Validation. As you'll see it's spotlighting errors which
confuse the Googlebot.
The changes that you've made in the meta tags will help but only if
the page doesn't get kicked out due to Javascript errors.
Microsoft Front Page unnecessarily bloats the pages by adding tags for
every item on a page. It's ironic, because within Microsoft
programmers pride themselves on writing tight, efficient code -- yet
the company has unleashed this product which produces bloated code
upon the world. I once cleaned up a page written by Front Page and it
was 20% of its original size when done.
You don't do this for pride or efficiency: the Javascript errors make
the page difficult to read by browsers and bots, as we've seen. And
the page can be difficult to maintain.
Here are some additional suggestions:
1. your layout is simple and effective. It's the type of page
researchers like to see, with information clearly organized. Learn a
little about HTML and do the page yourself -- or have someone you know
do it. It's easier to learn than STATTAB and you have a good clean
page that's easy to code, easy to modify. For the two columns that
you'll have, you'll simply want to use TABLE tags -- or consider
putting your links at the sides of the page, as is often done on
websites.
2. A Google search strategy using "introduction to HTML" turns up
some good online sources. Books that may be useful would be
O'Reilly's "HTML: The Definitive Guide":
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/html5/
or the famous John Wiley series:
"HTML4 for Dummmies"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0764519956/qid=1091806779/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/104-0805329-1735916?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
3. Date your pages. Increasingly web pages are being used in research citations.
4. You can increase the information content of the page by putting
more text -- perhaps a synopsis of some items -- on the home page.
5. Be careful about putting your e-mail address on the web page. The
standard name@domain.com gets picked up by spam bots so if you find it
necessary, use something like nameATdomain.com or do a Google search
for a Javascript obfuscator, like Tim Williams' Obfuscator Script
1.31.
But the single, most-critical thing is to get this page to be readable
by the search engine bots. Once it finds this page, it will find the
sub-pages and all of the valuable information there. We know that
it's not finding the linked pages now because the search for links
(use Google's advanced search) finds nothing.
By the way, I should mention that the use of PDFs for documents is not
penalizing the page. They ARE fully searchable by the Google search
engine.
You have great content on the page and as a researcher I'd like to see
the home page errors correctly so that all of the linked pages appear
too.
One final note, having just renewed my own web page registration.
Yours is good through May 25, 2005 -- you may want to put a tickler in
your calendar to renew next May. Losing one's domain name can be
traumatic!
Best regards,
Omnivorous-GA
|
Request for Answer Clarification by
george2812-ga
on
09 Aug 2004 01:41 PDT
Hi:
Am not quite sure of what the house rules are, but is there any way I
could send you my home page and have it cleaned up for a fee??
Many thanks,
George Irvin
|
Clarification of Answer by
omnivorous-ga
on
09 Aug 2004 06:42 PDT
George --
I can download the source code and make the changes. It's not a lot
of work -- perhaps 2 hours. I'd be glad to do it . . . and if you'd
like, you can post it as a separate question addressed to
Omnivorous-GA specifically.
In the HTML header, this is what I generally use (I've left some
examples so that it puts each of the tags in context). You'll want to
copy this, fill it out and place it in the followup question:
<TITLE>George Irvin * ----- Economics Home PageTITLE>
<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="My ISS (The Hague) Internet-based
MASD course on macroeconomics plus other courses (including that
taught at Sussex). There are links to a selection of my recent papers
as well as to other websites on which you'll find useful material.">
<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="money, finance, EEC monetary policy,
ISS Hague, Alarco-van Heemst, cost benefit, EcoFin">
<META NAME="distribution" CONTENT="global">
<META name="author" content="girvinATiss.edu">
<meta name="resource-type" content="document">
<meta http-equiv="distribution" content="global">
There will be a little back-and forth on this, particularly for
directory structures for your picture but it's a pretty
straightforward web design.
Best regards,
Omnivorous-GA
|
,
0 Comments
)