Google won't index my site

[Pandybearse]

Hi,

I built a quick, free, website for a friend as a bit of a favour, it's not my profession as you can probably tell :), and after it's been up for nearly a year, Google still hasn't indexed it. I've tried re-submitting it, but to no avail.

If anyone has any ideas I'd be most grateful, as the lovely people running the restaurant want to their phone number etc to be found.

UKBF wont let me post the link for some reason so I'll put it in 3 bits

www .thecrown stbriavels.co.uk

Thanks in advance
Paul

[camweb]

Hi Paul

A lot of the important copy such as the headings are images which Google can't read, try using text instead of images.

Change some of your page titles to include more keywords, for example "the surrounding area" could be "St Briavels, Gloucesteshire and the surrounding areas".

Add a sitemap to google by signing up to their webmaster tools, you can find this by clicking 'business solutions' towards the bottom of Google.

Add more copy to the site, there isn't a great deal there.

Either update the seasonal events page or remove it, it doesn't look good when it says 'coming soon'.

Give your actual page names more relevent titles, instead of food.html call it pub_food_crown_st_briavels.html

All these things should help.

Adam

[camweb]

Also, upload the pub to Google maps here
www . google . com/local/add/analyticsSplashPage?message=qbwelcome&hl=en-GB&gl=GB

You will need to remove spaces.

[Pandybearse]

Thanks ever so much for your advice Adam, I'll try to get those things done when I've got a munite, this is the problm when it's a favour.
How often does Google crawl sites? Any ideas...
Paul

[camweb]

Roughly every 30 days, but sites often appear a lot quicker than that.

Is the pub listed on lots of online directories? Links to their website from other sites will help a great deal?

[SFD]

http://www.thecrownstbriavels.co.uk/

For anyone who wants a look

[Cartoon Logos]

Often

As a demo I wrote an Ad for a local business and within two hrs it was on front page of Google with the key phrase I was after for that business (business type+ local area).

Pop over to my seo tips and read how to do re this local businsses
http://creativeblogger.org/how-to-write-for-the-internet-seo-tips/
page down towards bottom.

[fisicx]

Have you actually told google about the site? There are no inbound links so google won't even know to visit.

Get a couple of inbounds from a local directory or CAMRA os something and you could be indexed in a couiple of days. Built a site a few months back that was ranking well for it's niche keyword in under 48 hours.

[Pandybearse]

Great, I'll sign up to a few of these, thanks for the advice

[Clinton]

It appears you don't have a robots.txt either. Add one!

All you need is a basic text file with this in it:
User-agent: *
Disallow:

Name it robots.txt and upload it to the root directory. SEs look for that before indexing sites

[Pandybearse]

I uploaded that last week, it's in the public folder with the rest of the site, is that wrong?

[Clinton]

There is no file at http://www.thecrownstbriavels.co.uk/robots.txt

It needs to be in the same folder as your homepage.

[Big Pete]

A spider's eye view of the page
The Crown St Briavels Home About our pub Food The Surrounding Area Seasonal Events Contact Us The Crown Inn now serves the finest food cooked to perfection We stock range of well kept Real Ales and superb selection of affordable fine wines An affordable luxury meal at The Crown Inn Please call 01594 530739 to reserve table for lunch or dinner The Crown Inn St Briavels
Our Search Engine Spider Simulator strips out the HTML tags from the page you specify and shows you how the page would look to search engine spiders.

:eek: no links no meta tags and nothing ,, never seen one as bad as this..

jeez

[GreenLaser]

mmmm http://whois.domaintools.com/thecrownstbriavels.co.uk , theres alomst 2000 other sites on the server your websites on , in THEORY , out in the rumour mill , if one of those 2000 is google banned or sandboxed it could affect your site badly ...personally i cant see any other reason why you are not showing up in this niche

Its very niche market , a search for st briavials pub should be bringing you up numbero uno but your no where to be seen

GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS MIGHT INDICATE , sign up and beg for mercy on there after you have moved server

Paul

Oh Ps , you alos have too many meta keywords

[batteryready]

Yes, you guys are quite right, but 2-3 Keywords is the most friendly to Google index. and I noticed that recently, My site is also get proble of index, From more than 2000 pages to 500 pages, How strange, Can anybody who knows what's wrong with it. Are you guys also get the same problem as mine?

watch this.........

[bizfox]

Try getting it linked from other sites as well.

[That Guy]

Seems to be in google now: http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&source=hp&q=www.thecrownstbriavels.co.uk&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=www+.thecrown+stbriavels.co.uk&fp=472eb943fb1a00a2

[cinddy]

Submit your site to famous directory like Dmoz and lii then definitely your site would be indexed sooner or later...

[fisicx]

:eek: no links no meta tags and nothing ,, never seen one as bad as this..

jeez
Mata tags? In or out it makes no difference to your ranking.

Agree the indexable content needs to be improved but the concern was that the site wasn't even in the index rather than it wasn't ranking well.

But now that it is, we can help to improve the ranking of the site with some constructive criticism.

[GTrotter666]

I agree with some of the earlier posts. Get a few decent links pointing at the site - it will soon (a few weeks) be indexed once google has found these.

Gary

favours for children (http://www.wedding-favours-online.co.uk/childrens-wedding-favours-c-130.html)

[Pandybearse]

The plot thickens.....
if you search for the sites url it indexes the site, however when I log in to my Webmaster tools account, it is coming up as not indexed. Also a search for 'the crown st briavels' produces no results.
Thoughts......................

[fisicx]

Not all things happen at once.

Google knows you exist so will program in a visit to index the site when it is good and ready. Because the site hasn't been indexed you don't rank for anything yet.

The webmastertools is correct, the site hasn't been indexed. Knowing about a domain is not the same as being indexed.

[GreenLaser]

Guys been waiting a year ? sounds like sandboxing to me

[Pandybearse]

Guys been waiting a year ? sounds like sandboxing to me

Hi

Could you please explain briefly what this means and how I can change it, as I don't know what sandboxing is
Paul

[mattsaw]

Hi

Could you please explain briefly what this means and how I can change it, as I don't know what sandboxing is
Paul

Don't worry, sandboxing doesn't impact the indexation of a site, but it's ability to rank for competitive keywords.

[GreenLaser]

"Don't worry, sandboxing doesn't impact the indexation of a site, but it's ability to rank for competitive keywords."

Paddy , difference of opinion here , but matts the proffessional ..you will have do to your own investigations ! to come to a decision.

My understanding of sandboxing is when google wont let your site out into the wild for a myriad of reasons , such as blackhat techniques or server blacklisted and many other reasons !

Let me know when you come to your conclusions id be interested to hear , dont have time at moment to investigate

Paul

[That Guy]

Make sure you submit your sitemap in Webmaster Tools, you can generate it here: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

Add the site to FreeIndex.co.uk this is a great way for extra publicity and will help the sites ranking maybe.

[mattsaw]

My understanding of sandboxing is when google wont let your site out into the wild for a myriad of reasons , such as blackhat techniques or server blacklisted and many other reasons !

Hey Paul, that's pretty much correct, except Google will still tend to cache and index the sites pages, and you'll rank without any problems for things like your site name, URL, obscure snippets of text etc etc.

Anything competitive, usually commercial phrases then you're right, you'll struggle to rank for them, but its a ranking rather than an indexing issue, which why I'm skeptical that its the reason behind this.

I'm 99% sure the cause in this case was the complete lack of links. Interestingly enough a few hours after someone had posted a link on this forum it was indexed ;)

http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&source=hp&q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.thecrownstbriavels.co.uk %2F&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.thecrownstbriavels.co.u k%2F&fp=a4f0098186c698b6

Just goes to show that people should rely on links rather than 'submission'

[GreenLaser]

Paddy
Sounds like you should concentrate on links then , it looks niche so ranking high should be a matter of putting your feet in customers shoes and try and imagine what thy would type in and then try and ensure links reflect this
Waching your site increasing in ranking is always fun and a great buzz , i wish you well in your endevours !

PAUL

[GreenLaser]

Sorry , for replying to myself but thought was interesting article , worth a quick read

How to spot a google penalty

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/10-ways-to-diagnose-a-google-penalty/10566/