major page not indexed, online for 2 years

This is an on-going problem I've had with google for many years. I
can't get major pages of my site to show up in the index. Here is one
example -- a product that has been online in our catalog for 2 years
this month, but the product page is still not in the Google index. And
this is one of our best-selling lines.

Search for specific pages: Gunther's Gourmet Peach Salsa
site:vabest.com

Use this link to run this search:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=GGLJ%2CGGLJ%3A2006-35%2CGGLJ%3Aen&q=Gunther%27s+Gourmet+Peach+Salsa+s ite%3Avabest.com

The page I want to find is: http://www.vabest.com/catalog/10230010.html

See? It's not there! If you widen the search scope a little, you can
get some of the directory-style pages on the site that mention the
product, but still cannot find the actual product page. It's not in the
index.

I believe I have followed the guidelines for Google-friendly sites. I
have a Google sitemaps (base) listing uploaded automatically every
24-hours. The product is fed to Froogle (active listing). It is
advertised on Adwords with the same page url. What am I doing wrong?
What else can I do to get Google to index this page and hundreds of
others like it?

Any help would be appreciated!

Tom's Best wrote:

This is an on-going problem I've had with google for many years. I
can't get major pages of my site to show up in the index. Here is one
example -- a product that has been online in our catalog for 2 years
this month, but the product page is still not in the Google index. And
this is one of our best-selling lines.

Search for specific pages: Gunther's Gourmet Peach Salsa

.........the W3c validator reports 155 html errors on that page

"Tom's Best" <tkirby (AT) vabest (DOT) com> wrote

This is an on-going problem I've had with google for many years. I
can't get major pages of my site to show up in the index. Here is one
example -- a product that has been online in our catalog for 2 years
this month, but the product page is still not in the Google index. And
this is one of our best-selling lines.

Search for specific pages: Gunther's Gourmet Peach Salsa
site:vabest.com

Use this link to run this search:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=GGLJ%2CGGLJ%3A2006-35%2CGGLJ%3Aen&q=Gunther%27s+Gourmet+Peach+Salsa+s ite%3Avabest.com

The page I want to find is: http://www.vabest.com/catalog/10230010.html

See? It's not there! If you widen the search scope a little, you can
get some of the directory-style pages on the site that mention the
product, but still cannot find the actual product page. It's not in the
index.

I believe I have followed the guidelines for Google-friendly sites. I
have a Google sitemaps (base) listing uploaded automatically every
24-hours. The product is fed to Froogle (active listing). It is
advertised on Adwords with the same page url. What am I doing wrong?
What else can I do to get Google to index this page and hundreds of
others like it?

Any help would be appreciated!

Gain more links especially to the inner pages. Also make your titles and
file names more different so it won't be consider similar pages.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=GGLG%2CGGLG%3A2005-40%2CGGLG%3Aen&q=site%3Avabest.com
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:vabest.com&hl=en&lr=&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2 005-40,GGLG:en&filter=0
Meaning stop putting VA's Best for the first 2 words in the title. Plus your
file names are really that great either /catalog/10380001.html. I know you
can't change them now as that would involve to much, but you can with your
titles.

Stacey
--
Crafts - Directory - Your Online Crafting Source
http://www.ecraftsonline.net/
A New Focus In Web Marketing - Search Engine Optimization
http://jezsta.com

"sandy" <Sandy.Pittendrigh (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote

Tom's Best wrote:
This is an on-going problem I've had with google for many years. I
can't get major pages of my site to show up in the index. Here is one
example -- a product that has been online in our catalog for 2 years
this month, but the product page is still not in the Google index. And
this is one of our best-selling lines.

Search for specific pages: Gunther's Gourmet Peach Salsa


........the W3c validator reports 155 html errors on that page

I don't think that is the problem. One has to look a little more into the
site to reveal the easy but bigger problems.

Stacey
--
Crafts - Directory - Your Online Crafting Source
http://www.ecraftsonline.net/
A New Focus In Web Marketing - Search Engine Optimization
http://jezsta.com

Tom's Best wrote:

This is an on-going problem I've had with google for many years. I
can't get major pages of my site to show up in the index. Here is one
example -- a product that has been online in our catalog for 2 years
this month, but the product page is still not in the Google index. And
this is one of our best-selling lines.

Search for specific pages: Gunther's Gourmet Peach Salsa
site:vabest.com

Use this link to run this search:
...

The page I want to find is: http://www.vabest.com/catalog/10230010.html

See? It's not there! If you widen the search scope a little, you can
get some of the directory-style pages on the site that mention the
product, but still cannot find the actual product page. It's not in the
index.

I believe I have followed the guidelines for Google-friendly sites. I
have a Google sitemaps (base) listing uploaded automatically every
24-hours. The product is fed to Froogle (active listing). It is
advertised on Adwords with the same page url. What am I doing wrong?
What else can I do to get Google to index this page and hundreds of
others like it?

Any help would be appreciated!

Your site is having problems with your meta description tag. Make the meta
description different on every page. That is probably why almost all of
your pages are in the supplemental results. Fix that, wait a week, and
your site will probably come out of the supplemental results.

I would reverse the order of the title also from:

company - product_line - product

to:

product - product_line - company

(And make sure the titles are unique on every page also.)

Thanks to all for the advice. This same page that Google can't seem to
find has the #1 spot on yahoo, ask, and alltheweb, etc... I guess I'm
tired of redesigning the site every time Google has a problem indexing
a page. I see it more as a fault in Google than my sites. But... The
title changes are easy enough - I can do that in a few minutes. I
don't know what to do about the meta tags - didn't think the search
engines paid any attention to them anyway. As for the file names, that
will have to stay because it's a major rewrite to change that. The html
errors are mostly bogus details - not really worth the time (I think)
but who knows?

Tom's Best wrote:

Thanks to all for the advice. This same page that Google can't seem to
find has the #1 spot on yahoo, ask, and alltheweb, etc... I guess I'mSee
Matt Cutts from Google talk about it here:
tired of redesigning the site every time Google has a problem indexing
a page. I see it more as a fault in Google than my sites. But... The
title changes are easy enough - I can do that in a few minutes. I
don't know what to do about the meta tags - didn't think the search
engines paid any attention to them anyway. As for the file names, that
will have to stay because it's a major rewrite to change that. The html
errors are mostly bogus details - not really worth the time (I think)
but who knows?

Meta description is important. If it is the same on every page, Google
won't like it. Even Matt Cutts (from Google) has confirmed it somewhere,
but I can't find the url. I think it was a comment he left on
threadwatch.org.

If your meta description is the same on all pages, Google can throw the
entire site into the supplemental results. I've fixed a couple of sites
like this. The entire sites were in the supplemental results because the
meta description was the same. Fix the meta description (and make sure the
<title> is different on each page) and the site should quickly be indexed
properly. I've seen Google rankings go from nothing to very good with just
a few meta description and <title> adjustments...

The idea that "meta tags don't mean anything" is bogus. They mean
something -- but just not what they meant years ago. Meta tags are not a
place to stuff 500 keywords, but they do tell the search engines some
useful information.

The tip about the order of the title isn't going to get your site out of the
supplemental results. That was just a suggestion on the side.

I wouldn't change the file names because that will give the search engines
404 errors...

"Tom's Best" wrote ...

Thanks to all for the advice. This same page that Google can't seem to
find has the #1 spot on yahoo, ask, and alltheweb, etc... I guess I'm
tired of redesigning the site every time Google has a problem indexing
a page. I see it more as a fault in Google than my sites. But... The
title changes are easy enough - I can do that in a few minutes. I
don't know what to do about the meta tags - didn't think the search
engines paid any attention to them anyway. As for the file names, that
will have to stay because it's a major rewrite to change that. The html
errors are mostly bogus details - not really worth the time (I think)
but who knows?

Failing to use correct and unique meta tags cannot - by any stretch - be
Google's fault. That's 100% in your control, and both title and descr are
important for a useful listing. Keyword tags may be omitted, but if used
should be correct (And probably worth using - you never know what the future
will bring, and some specialized SEs do use them

HTML errors may or may not count - but if they slow google's spider, then
they do. Xenu is your friend.

Changing a file name is EXACTLY the same - to Google - as deleting a file
and building a new one. Think first.

Good Luck - from one who is still plodding through hundreds of pages adding
unique meta descr - and getting the benefit.
--

Andrew
Editor
http://www.seo2seo.com/

Failing to use correct and unique meta tags cannot - by any stretch - be
Google's fault. That's 100% in your control, and both title and descr are
important for a useful listing. Keyword tags may be omitted, but if used
should be correct (And probably worth using - you never know what the future
will bring, and some specialized SEs do use them

The point I was making is that other search engines have no problem
with my "incorrect" meta tags. If Google is really so screwed up as to
fail to properly index a page because some mysterious invisible text is
not "correct," then they are producing inferior search results because
most sites pay no attention to tags at all.

The product description is already on the page! Why have a meta
description tag at all?

On the other hand, being a database-driven site, I can take a clue from
Amazon.com and do it this way:

<meta name="description" content="Amazon.com: {product_name}:
{category_name}" />
<meta name="keywords" content="{product_name},{vendor_name} Products"
/>

So...... I'm going to change the page titles, and add the tags above. I
hope it makes things better.

Tom's Best wrote:

The product description is already on the page! Why have a meta
description tag at all?

On the other hand, being a database-driven site, I can take a clue from
Amazon.com and do it this way:

meta name="description" content="Amazon.com: {product_name}:
{category_name}" /
meta name="keywords" content="{product_name},{vendor_name} Products"
/

So...... I'm going to change the page titles, and add the tags above. I
hope it makes things better.

I'd be interested to hear how it turns out.