Thanks to all of you (especially DeltaDave) my puppy site is off the ground and my client is thrilled. It’s been over a week, however and it’s still not showing up in the search engines.
I’ve submitted a sitemap to google and requested they index the site through google webmaster tools. I’ve submitted both the -www version and the non-www version.
One thing I just realized is, I used the SiteMapper action and even though I was able to get the green checkmark when submitting it, google webmaster tools is saying there isn’t a site map.
One other point to mention, originally I was hosting this site on my server (http://www.invertministries.com) and google IS indexing that site. Granted it is an older domain, but that is the only other difference other than our ISP hosting.
This is frustrating for me, but more importantly my client. Any ideas???
I’m digger a little deeper into this. If you go to http://havaneseofcolorado.com/sitemap.xml or http://www.havaneseofcolorado.com/sitemap.xml you will see a sitemap. Looking on the server the sitemap.xml file is inside the /httpdocs folder and is indeed called “sitemap.xml .” I don’t see any duplicates, in that folder at least. Can I move it somewhere or upload it somewhere that the google bots can “see” it?
Doty,
It seems that Google has index the home, faq, and puppies page, per the google search site:havaneseofcolorado.com.
I’m not sure why the other pages are not indexed. You may need to wait another week. I tell my clients that is may easily take up to two weeks for google to index their websites.
That is helpful, Caleb. Thank you. Any idea why google webwebmaster tools is saying I don’t have a sitemap?
I’ve never had this much trouble being found! I’ve never even bothered with a sitemap before and google still found my sites, usually in the top three results.
I can’t say I’m sure how to help you with the sitemap. Sorry!
However, you aught to not have both the www. and non-www. websites, as google views these as duplicates. Using .htaccess you can choose one or the other.
I don’t have two websites. I’ve uploaded everything to http://havaneseofcolorado.com and that’s it. But when I went to google webmaster tools, it said to submit both. I assumed it was because sometimes people type the www prefix and sometimes they don’t. Am I incorrect about that?
Doty,
Let me rephrase that;
If you have a website (example.com), and don’t specify wether you want it to appear with or without the www. prefix, then it will appear as both. Google will then find both www.example.com and example.com, which it will consider as duplicates, never a good thing in SEO.
However, if you specify which way to want it to appear in the htaccess file, then you won’t have this issue. Let’s say you don’t want the www. prefix. You then add this snippet of code into the websites htaccess file:
When a visitor then goes to **www.**example.com, it will instantly redirect them to example.com. It does the same with GoogleBots, meaning that there will be no duplication.
Your method of manually adding the sitemap at google worked great. Now google is seeing the sitemap. Caleb, thank you for your comments about .htaccess. I haven’t accomplished this (been distracted with sick kids) but I hope to get to it in the next few days.