A search engine is program that searches documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found.
18
votes
4answers
1k views
Why isn't my website in Google search results?
I've made a website one month ago and it still isn't indexed by Google.
I haven't change any setting in the robot.txt file. I've tried to search for site:websitename.com but I still can't see it, and ...
18
votes
3answers
2k views
Using rel=canonical with syndication
I work at a site which allows syndication of content (via API's and data dumps). We are finding that a number of sites which republish our content are appearing higher in Google search results, even ...
17
votes
4answers
555 views
Does it matter that our website can't be found without the www?
If you try and go to our website without typing the www. You get a page not found error. In my case it goes to a Yahoo 404 page where the website you typed is not even shown in the search results.
...
15
votes
4answers
7k views
Anchor tag inside H1 or H1 inside achor tag : Which is better?
I am trying to use h1 tags on my blog for the post title and came across one problem.
Title is hyperlinked.
so
Case 1:
<h1> <a href=""> xyz </a> </h1>
case 2:
<a ...
15
votes
4answers
1k views
StackOverflow and Google search
How is it that questions posted to the Stack Overflow show up as #1 in Google search results just minutes after being submitted? What SEO practices are being used to generate this sort of ...
13
votes
5answers
210 views
Other than Google, how do I decide which search engines to optimize for?
Google has extensive tools for webmasters, and good SEO seems to be directed at Google first and foremost. But what other search engines should I be worrying about?
I could look at my logs, but then, ...
13
votes
3answers
1k views
How do I get Google to show links to my site hierarchy in search results?
I have recently noticed that for some websites, Google is linking to different locations in the site hierarchy instead of just the destination page URL. For instance, searching for "Malibu Rum Drink ...
10
votes
7answers
2k views
Do dedicated IP addresses improve SEO?
I've googled that and I've found many opinions on this subject, and I'm not sure, if, dedicated IP addresses actually really improve SEO? Is it that different from shared IP address (of 50-100 other ...
10
votes
2answers
258 views
Is Google a reliable document search engine?
I have a site with PDFs and Word documents that I know have been indexed by Google because they appear in search results with filetype:pdf (or doc), and if I search for some very specific terms with ...
9
votes
2answers
328 views
How do I control how often search engines visit my site?
I've been using the following line in the <head> of my sites for years:
<meta name="revisit-after" content="3 days" />
I recently discovered that it's not one of the meta tags that ...
9
votes
2answers
492 views
How should I handle search engines auto-correcting the spelling of a site's name?
A client's site and company is called 'Tranin Communications' (Tranin is her last name).
It ranks well in searches for her name but rather poorly in searches for the name of her site/company.
I ...
9
votes
2answers
237 views
How is Googlebot finding URLs that are only visible to authenticated users?
Here is one of my customers, performing some action after having logged in to his account. The unique token is simply an encrypted user id + timestamp.
94.254.xxx.xxx - - [02/Jul/2011:22:25:46 ...
9
votes
1answer
255 views
Why aren't search engines indexing my content?
This is a general, community wiki catch-all question and answer pair intended to address any questions
concerning the reasons a site or specific site contents do not appear
in search engine ...
9
votes
4answers
990 views
Do search engines see comments in the source code as a backlink?
I would like to know if Google or any other search engine would regard a comment in the source-code containing a link:
<!-- domain.com -->
as a back-link.
If yes how much weight is put ...
9
votes
2answers
2k views
How to get Google to crawl AJAX pages without using #! URLs?
In Google's advice on "Making AJAX Applications Crawlable", they advise making AJAX URLs that aren't using hash-bang fragments (#!) crawlable by adding <meta name="fragment" content="!"> to the ...
8
votes
4answers
204 views
Which web directories can I reliably invest in to increase my traffic and search ranking?
I've been looking around for some web directories to list my company in that would 1) Feed more traffic to my website and 2) Increase my search rankings due to being a quality referral to my own ...
8
votes
3answers
375 views
Dev site indexed by Google
I was developing a new version of our site on a subdomain (dev.oursite.com) and the robots.txt with the disallow got replaced at some point, so the site got indexed by Google and other search engines. ...
8
votes
4answers
185 views
How can I work out the reasons for someone else's site's search engine ranking?
On one search term I have, there is one particular site with very low quality content, and yet their search engine ranking is always number one, with my site usually at position three.
How can I go ...
8
votes
3answers
286 views
What are the benefits of RDFa?
I've seen some blogs etc. about this new technology: RFDa, but is there any benefits in using it now. From what I understand, it's mainly used by search engines and other crawlers, but have Google, ...
8
votes
4answers
596 views
Preventing robots from crawling specific part of a page
As a webmaster in charge of a tiny site that has a forum, I regularly receive complains from users that both the internal search engine and that external searches (like when using Google) are totally ...
7
votes
10answers
742 views
SEO for single-page content-less Web App
as written in the title the website on which I try to do Search Engine Optimization has following two properties:
doesn't have any content in the SEO sense: it doesn't hold any information and only ...
7
votes
2answers
1k views
Ask.com Sitemap Crawler Down (for good)?
I have been using Ask.com as one of the search engines to ping my sitemap. When I went to ping my sitemap today to have my sitemap re-indexed, the website (http://submissions.ask.com/ping) says it no ...
7
votes
4answers
173 views
Which of these 3 URL-Rewritings are better seo friendly URLs?
Imagine my current flat-file non-cms website with an URL like http://website.com/en/tomato
This is of course very unsexy and could be anything really from tomato soup, tomato the music band, tomato ...
7
votes
2answers
358 views
Does Google submit HTML forms?
I have a web page, say http://domain/purchase and in this page, I have a web form. User, on submitting this form (which has validation, both client-side and server side and won't be validated until ...
7
votes
7answers
298 views
How do I get Images for my site to Return in Google Searches
I know when I search Google for specific things I get back images underneath some sites. How do I get that to work for my site? I have even seen some sites that will return 4 or 5 images for the the ...
7
votes
2answers
190 views
Where can I find a list of related search terms?
Does Google, Bing, or any of the other major search engines make a list or index of related search terms available?
7
votes
1answer
141 views
Letting search engines know that different links to identical pages stress different parts of the page
When you follow a permalink to a chat message in the Stack Exchange chat, you get a view of the transcript page for the day that contains the particular message. This message is highlighted in yellow, ...
7
votes
1answer
427 views
Is there a search engine that indexes source code of a web-page?
I need to search the web for sites that are in our industry that use the same Adwords management company, to ensure that the said company is not violating our contract, as they have been accused of ...
7
votes
0answers
343 views
Why is honest cloaking for Ajax considered bad practice? [closed]
Ajax-only websites are laden with many problems. Search engine invisibility is merely a small problem. They are also unbookmarkable and unlinkable and they break the functionality of back- and ...
6
votes
5answers
2k views
How do I find out what web sites link to mine?
Is there a way of using something like as a search engine to find out which web sites out there link to mine?
6
votes
7answers
1k views
Is there an index of the IP addresses used by indexing bots?
I have a page that gets minimal traffic, but I set up static notifications when it gets hit. Now, I want bots to get ignored, so what I'm doing now is adding bots I see to a "no notify" list.
Is ...
6
votes
4answers
1k views
What is the ideal self hosted search engine?
I have an internal (intranet) site that is comprised of several blogs and forums, hundreds of static pages, lots of PDF files and several other document types. Its been glued together loosely over the ...
6
votes
2answers
38 views
Search engine optimization for text with different colors
We're trying to do SEO on our company website. Our company logo is just text (in image form), but has two colors in it. Our company name appears a lot in our website text/copy. For example, the ...
6
votes
3answers
1k views
Should I return a http 401 status code on an html based login form?
Should I return a http 401 status code on an html based login form? The page is a dedicated login form, and does not have any other meaningful content, just site framework. The URL however, can be ...
6
votes
2answers
66 views
HTTP: How to be deleted from search engines at a certain point in time in the future?
Is there a way to tell search engines, that a page they crawl should be included in the search results now, but have to be deleted at a certain time in the future?
I have a website where hundreds of ...
6
votes
2answers
204 views
Narrowing down my large keyword list for new PPC campaign
If I have a list of 100 keywords that are candidates for a PPC campaign (my list is actually 1000+). What is the best approach to narrowing this down to the top 5-10 keywords I should start with?
...
6
votes
3answers
366 views
What effect if any does “Google Instant” search have on SEO and SEM?
It been a little over a month since "Google Instant" has been released to the public, what effect if any does "Google Instant" search have on SEO and SEM based?
RELATE LINK >> "Google Instant":
...
6
votes
4answers
102 views
How can I inform search engines that the usefulness of some content on my site has a limited shelf life?
Let's say that I run a forum dedicated to computer hardware. Naturally, people are going to ask questions like:
What is the best laptop for running [os]
Or
What is the best video card for ...
6
votes
2answers
175 views
SEO and external sites that serve responsive images (like Re-SRC)
Re-SRC is a tool that allows you to automatically serve responsive images for your website from their cloud servers. It delivers a new image file each time the browser window (viewport) is resized.
...
6
votes
4answers
224 views
Is it positive or negative for the average website to allow search engines to index user comments?
I've been trying to answer this question myself by researching and searching on google but I haven't been able to come with a final answer.
I have some hypothesis I would like share anyway:
The ...
5
votes
3answers
355 views
Stack overflow like SEO - How is it done? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
StackOverflow and Google search
this is a question purely for learning purpose.
I have noticed that this site has an incredible power of appearing in search engines.
...
5
votes
4answers
397 views
How to Remove URLs from Google Search Engine
I have used so many things like url removal request and deleted the pages etc., but still the errors are shown in my webmaster tools.
How can I remove the urls completely from Google?
5
votes
3answers
285 views
Validation Meta tags for search engines
Should validation meta tags for search engines be left on the site following validation? For example, should I leave my msvalidate meta tag after I've validated the site.
5
votes
2answers
336 views
Moving large website to new CMS - URL changes
I was wondering if you have any tipps on the following situation.
I'm going to move a large website to a new Content Management System, here are some details on the site:
online news magazine with ...
5
votes
3answers
429 views
Is minifying id and class names a bad SEO practice?
I am a big fan of minifying everything whenever possible. It is a sin for me to don't do this.
However, I recently read that one of the thousands tips to boost your website rank on search engines was ...
5
votes
2answers
456 views
How can I get search engines to crawl my site and see a localised view of my data?
(I hope I asked the question right..)
Fake site
Our site lists products for sale.
eg : http://www.myWebSite.com/products/some-drink-we-love-to-guzzle
Each product page has been translated into a ...
5
votes
3answers
189 views
If I have a breaking news and assume that i am the first person to know. How can I get top place in google search?
If I have a breaking news and assume that i am the first person to know. How can I get top place in google search?
Please assume that I do not have a domain yet.
Please give me some tips.
Thanks. ...
5
votes
1answer
145 views
Impact of dropping www from main URL on SEO
A client's website is currently at www.domain.com, with domain.com redirected there automatically. I've suggested that they reverse the redirection to drop the "www", so I can set up a subdomain that ...
5
votes
4answers
261 views
Will JavaScript (document.write) content be indexed by search engines?
I have an external JS file embedding some content inline in a web page.
Basically it just does a document.write("my content") via a script tag and loaded externally with the src attribute.
Any ...
5
votes
3answers
245 views
Best Way to “Launch” A Site That's Being Developed
I am currently developing a website that will be officially marketed for and "launched" months from now.
This site has minimal content at the moment but will soon start having more and more content ...
