Flyfishingtails --
First, note that we researchers are independent of Google, Inc. --
most of us located further from Mountain View than even Sunriver! As
such we can't give you an answer that's 100% certain about all of the
factors involved in the Googlebot page evaluation. However, many of
us run several web pages; use search actively here and in our
full-time work; and are familiar with search engines issues.
Your major issue is TIME -- and not enough of it has passed. As your
web page notes, ""WELCOME to Flyfishing Tails Northwest, launched
Sept. 1, 2004, where fishing tales of flyfishermen throughout the
Northwest get you ready to go out there and catch one yourself."
The Google page with instructions on submitting URLs notes that, "once
your site is included in either of these directories, Google will
often index your site within six to eight weeks" -- which would mean
sometime in October.
Google
"How Do I Get My Site Listed on Google" (2004)
://www.google.com/webmasters/1.html
STEPS TO TAKE FOR LISTING
=========================
There are at least 3 things that you want to do to ensure a Google
listing (and don't forget that there are other search engines too.
Even Google's webmaster pages suggest a separate submission to
Yahoo.):
1. submit the URL to Google's addURL and the DMOZ directory
://www.google.com/addurl.html
http://www.dmoz.org/
2. It's well-known that Google's initial innovation in page-ranking
was to determine how popular a website was by the number of links to
it. As the webmaster guidelines indicate, make sure that others in
the fly fishing community know that you exist and request reciprocal
links. In Google's own words: "The best way to ensure Google finds
your site is for your page to be linked from lots of pages on other
sites. Google's robots jump from page to page on the Web via
hyperlinks, so the more sites that link to you, the more likely it is
that we'll find you quickly."
Google
"Webmaster Guidelines," (2004)
://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
This is especially important because a quick check of mine revealed
3,200,000 links for "fly fishing" alone.
3. You have an attractive and well-designed page. It doesn't appear
to violate any of the rules intended to keep irrelevant pages from
spamming or taking over the search robot. In addition to the
Webmaster Guidelines linked above, here are a few pages to read and
test your web coding against the guidelines:
"My Web Pages are Not Currently Listed" (2004)
://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html
"Google Facts and Fiction"
://www.google.com/webmasters/facts.html
"SEOs"
://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html
A FINAL NOTE
=============
Another step that I usually recommend is checking the page coding at
the W3C Markup Validation Service. Too often we see pages that were
created in Microsoft FrontPage which fail the quality checks at this
free site. The Javascript errors can make the text impossible for a
searchbot to read. You can check your page coding here, though some
of the non-conformance "errors" may be advisable but not NECESSARY
(like the use of ALT tags):
W3C Markup Validation Service
http://validator.w3.org/
Best regards,
Omnivorous-GA |
