I just dont get it

[Datagg]

Last week i was pretty happy..... For in the google sitemap section there is a page that lets you see all indexed pages.

Well in there was new pages built my my new static program, and old ones from my old link system. There were 30 plus pages in there, now there is 10 and all the static links that it did show are now gone, and all the old ones are there.

Here is the link to what i see

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.girlfriendslingerie.com&hl=en

No matter what i do I just cant seem to get ahead of the game here.

Its just frustrating to say the least....

[Paz]

Hi!

It looks very strange to me too - they're only listing supplemental pages and the homepage is missing, and it should be at position number 1 for the search you posted.

Also, the supplemental pages are cached from July 2005.

I tested your server responses (301 and 404) and they're fine. I checked your robots.txt and spidered the page without too many problems, but I did see 150 html errors on the home page. That's not as serious as it sounds, but it would take you about 20 mins to fix those.

I would lose the "Revisit-After: 15 Days" meta tag. It's better if they come when they have the resources and not when you choose; especially for MSN.

Your indexed fine in Yahoo and MSN though, so I'm sure it's a rollback. Google is updating right now, and is increasingly broken anyway. I can't see anything wrong with your site and neither can yahoo or MSN.

Have you had any other feedback from the Sitemap service? No error messages or the like?

Cheers,
Paz.

[Datagg]

Thanks Paz....

I havent really noticed any difference from the site map, yet it hasnt been all that long the new one has been out. And of course I switched servers not to long ago, like a month or so ago if you recall. Perhaps these are reasons i dunno.

As for Google, yes I was amazed that they retained so many of the "old" pages and dropped all the new ones. Just last week they had like 40-60 of my new static pages indexed.

In case you dont know what that proggy is Paz for Merchant let me give you the link so you can visibly see what it is.

http://www.phosphormedia.com/ps/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=MOD-OPTIMIZE&Category_Code=MOD-RTL


It does work extremely well for what its supposed to do, and has turned my page load times up by dropping the dynamic parts......

The front index that you see on gfl is actually a static being made from the SFNT merchant side. This static had all its links converted to point into a folder called sexy-lingerie that holds ALL the category pages and product pages that were converted over by the module to a static base.

That is how the module works..And thru rewrites and such, if in fact someone slips out of the static side, they are guided back into them until of course checkout time where it goes secure.

We may have talked abou this before , but i just wanted to give you a breakdown of what this module does.

As far as the looks of the pages go...I have changed them a bit. i added a smaller less K involved left nav bar, in hopes that it may be indexed better

I added instead of the large right display of "Best sellers" and added it to the top of the left nav but shown in text.

I bought a site certificate by comodo

Changed some fonts etc

Im unsure if i like the new look or not...Perhaps im just so used to the other one, I dunno... What are your thoughts?

Oh i also bought a review module for each product that i am now working on to allow it to work from the static pages... A little rewrite work phosphor medias owner is doing to achieve this im waiting for.

All in all Paz im just shocked.... The search levels or the p;acements im in are not good in my book. Perhaps its the field im in, i dunno...yet i thought id be doing better than this in the engines.

Take care my friend

Dan

[Paz]

Hi,

the site looks great, and is definitely one of the more search engine friendly ones in it's genre. The fact that it's indexed so well in Yahoo (very different search results but pretty similar on indexing), suggests to me that there is no problem with the site but that it's Google who are having problems right now, as has been widely reported.

You've also made some major navigational changes, which can cause short term problems anyway, but unfortunately you've made them during a period when Google is struggling to index websites. Google has to recrawl and re-evaluate the whole site now and I'm wondering if that's causing the problems. I'd stick with the changes because I'm sure the process has already started. I would expect in the next couple of weeks that Google will drop a lot of your pages, and gradually build the site back up again. In the meantime I would add content, content, and more content, rather than tinker with what you have now. You can start that blog maybe!!


Cheers,
Paz.

[Datagg]

Thanks Paz..... Ive been trying to improve the overall sites appearence as with the content. We have been adding more words o the pages as with focusing on better descriptions etc for them engines , plus keywords.

Im glad you like the way the site looks, ive been adjusting so much as of late I was wondering if i was going in the right direction at all. Hopefully it is an improvement over what it was.

As for the navigation, yes indeed ive changed it alot... Not so much the links, rather than the length of the nav itself. Colro schemes changed alot also, as with the fonts also,, newtop banner etc.

So im please you said it looks great. Many many hours have gone into into it the last few days since ive had the week off from work.

My bro is working om that blog also, yet it is a bit of a learning curve for him. We do have it set up on my server also, as thatg was an app they had. And it is the wordpress blog also.

Again thank you for all your help Paz.... In time i hope based on what ive done and am doing into the future will prove to be worth it.

Peace...

[Paz]

Hi,

glad to offer a few thoughts. I've one more..... haha

I would stop with the big on-site changes now. It's cool to keep improving a site, but I would spend at least a couple of months link building and adding content and see where it takes you.

I'm wondering if you've made too many site changes. I know from experience when you make a major site change it disrupts your rankings for a couple of weeks, and I'm wondering if Google is totally confused about your site and that you've lost some trust.

I don't know exactly what you've done, and when, but I'm increasingly convinced you should give it a rest with the on site factors - with the navigational changes especially. It undermines confidence in the integrity of your site.

I'd be interested to see what happens if you try adding new pages and getting links for a while and nothing else....

Cheers,
Paz.

[Blazingpie]

yeah, right now is a bad idea to be doing major site redesigns :( word of advise is to start with the link building, esp to internal pages, so eventually Google gets the picture and starts crawling the pages, ppl have been reporting that Google's been requesting a lot of non-existent pages recently so I'd look at the log files to see if this is happening too.

Depending on your setup you could also put up redirects to the new pages so that visitors following now-dead internal links find the stuff :)

[Datagg]

yeah, right now is a bad idea to be doing major site redesigns :( word of advise is to start with the link building, esp to internal pages, so eventually Google gets the picture and starts crawling the pages, ppl have been reporting that Google's been requesting a lot of non-existent pages recently so I'd look at the log files to see if this is happening too.

Depending on your setup you could also put up redirects to the new pages so that visitors following now-dead internal links find the stuff :)

I did recently add a 404 error page...... i did this when i saw the HUGE amount of dead links and no new ones from google.

As for the major changes, yeah ill back off for now.I think it looks good enough to warrant my retrieval for a bit.

new advertising banners, and promotional things, that shouldnt play any role in this should it? i change pics all the time, like the front banner. I made 2 of them, the first one wasnt getting to many hits, so I replaced it with the second one (which is on there now) click to that banner and its respective page increased 3 times than the prior.... When i see this i assume 1 is like or brings attention more than the other, hence those changes. Demographing if you will. Anyways, those things dont cause problems do they... Your talking about major overhauls such as ive been doing right?

Well thanks guys for the info...it will be hard to take a break on that end, im kinda nuts with the design stuff, i always feel it can be better each day. Ive always had the problem with " if it aint broken dont fix it" analogy..lol


Oh, i own another domain name, which I havent utilized yet with products.... Can I use that domain as a portal perhaps, or some other way, to this one..or would that be considered a door way page and a big no no? It was going to be a huge adult store, yet im thinking aboutt just adding these products to Girlfriends Lingerie in sorta a seperate link(warning window type of setup) before going into the store...... I havent quite decided yet on what im going to do if anything at all...

Have a great one

PS - Will this tag work in the meta section.... <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX">

Im setting up a newsletter and a thank you page for joining that i dont want indexed.

[Paz]

<snip>
new advertising banners, and promotional things, that shouldnt play any role in this should it? <snip> Anyways, those things dont cause problems do they... Your talking about major overhauls such as ive been doing right?
Yes changinging images in banners and on existing pages won't matter I think, as long as you don't change the link on your site that the banner points to.

We're talking about navigational changes, including deleting or modifying links, changing filenames that they point to, anchor text changes and maybe even position of the link on the page.

By all means make new pages and keep adding content, but no more changing existing links/file names for a while, to give your site a bit of stability so that Google can catch up.

Look at it from Google's point of view. If they send their users to a 404 not found page, it's a complete disaster for everyone. If you've got pages disappearing regularly, I'm convinced you will lose trust, and therefore rankings in Google.

That's navigational/filename searches but what about content on sub-pages? I've seen that if you change the content on a product page, it causes a short-term ranking fall in Google. Search engines are always making sure that their results are up to date. To save resources, the search engine spiders look for amended pages with a 304 server query, but don't necessarily download the page at that time, they just get a message, say "Changed...+ 20:00 8th July 2006". Now Google has a problem.... is it still a page about strapless thingies, or is it a page about something else? I can imagine that to keep their search results relevant, they might well put that page on ice until they have spidered it properly, evaluated it, updated it's score etc.; a process that probably takes 2-1 weeks for a PR1-3 page.

I could write for another 20 mins on Google's patent application; "Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data", but I hope I've made myself clear; keep adding relevant pages, but stop tweaking for a while to see what happens!

Oh, i own another domain name, which I havent utilized yet with products.... Can I use that domain as a portal perhaps, or some other way, to this one..or would that be considered a door way page and a big no no? It was going to be a huge adult store, yet im thinking aboutt just adding these products to Girlfriends Lingerie in sorta a seperate link(warning window type of setup) before going into the store...... I havent quite decided yet on what im going to do if anything at all...
It could help, but be careful with any duplicate content, especially if it's on the same server (same class C IP). You'd have to get backlinks for it to work for you, but if you have limited resources I always think it's better to focus your efforts into one site. You could start it by adding content once a week, say, get a few backlinks over a year to get it out of the sandbox, then review the situation with GF.

PS - Will this tag work in the meta section.... <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX">
Im setting up a newsletter and a thank you page for joining that i dont want indexed.
Not reliably to be honest. The best way would be to put it behind a form; search engine spiders can't hit the "Sign Here" button.

Have a great one

I will thanks.... :razz:

[Datagg]

Ive got a few emails over the last few days telling me the new design is really good, yet that left nav is just too damn long.......

Well its been shortened alot, yet still it bothers peeps.

Paz, do you believe also its tooo long....

If so as others do, I have some options i was working on.

One of them is a collapseable menu, similiar to the one on the top nav, yet horizontal.

or do you feel any changes like that would really hurt things....

Im at a carch 22 point right now...... The engines and the overall look that inspires buying.

Tough combo indeed and is that driving force for all these damn changes i do

if you recal I had the right side nav bar also, yet ot made things appear clunky, at least to me, hence the reason i eliminated it...

The right decision, heck i dont know....



EDIT: Since the above post, ive shortened up the left nav by about 6" or so..... It looks cleaner now. I hope

You guys have any opinions?

[Paz]

<snip>

EDIT: Since the above post, ive shortened up the left nav by about 6" or so..... It looks cleaner now. I hope

You guys have any opinions?
Yeah.. you shouldn't have done it my friend..... LOL

Google has to respider your site AGAIN, and revaluate, re-assign PR and anchor text, give you a new score etc. I think with so many recent site changes, it's no wonder that Google has given up trying to track the changes and is showing pages from 2005.

You're right, it's always a struggle between what looks good to a human and what looks good to an SE, but once you've chosen a structure you should give it a chance to work ie for a month at least.

I'd stick with it for now, but keep an eye on your rankings for at least a few weeks to see how it works out. The site looks great and will convert for sure if you can give it a chance.

Cheers,
Paz.

[Datagg]

Yeah.. you shouldn't have done it my friend..... LOL

Google has to respider your site AGAIN, and revaluate, re-assign PR and anchor text, give you a new score etc. I think with so many recent site changes, it's no wonder that Google has given up trying to track the changes and is showing pages from 2005.

You're right, it's always a struggle between what looks good to a human and what looks good to an SE, but once you've chosen a structure you should give it a chance to work ie for a month at least.

I'd stick with it for now, but keep an eye on your rankings for at least a few weeks to see how it works out. The site looks great and will convert for sure if you can give it a chance.

Cheers,
Paz.


Thanks PAZ, im pretty happy with it now..... Only changes now are going to be more content.

Thanks for all of your help and others who have replied here. I appreciate it

[Paz]

Thanks PAZ, im pretty happy with it now..... Only changes now are going to be more content.

Thanks for all of your help and others who have replied here. I appreciate it
It's a pleasure! Good luck with it, and keep in touch, especially about your indexing and cache dates!

Cheers,
Paz.

[Datagg]

Paz I was going thru my IBP program and it suggested that I take the most important keywords from each page and make them <h1>. In this case they would be the title of each pages product......

I did this last night and also adjusted the size thru css to make them look better....

Was this a right move.... Its said it was good for some engines , yet not all, yet in the end woudlnt hurt either way.... I wanted to spruce up the titles a bit anyays, so I though it was a good time to implement it.

OK? or a no no?

Still the same with google.they must hate me or something

[Paz]

Hi Dan,

Yes it's a good idea to use one h1 tag per page, but avoid a situation whereby you have something like:
<title>Blue Widgets Online
<description>Blue Widgets Online
<h1>Blue Widgets Online

because you'll likely trip a Google optimisation filter!!

Cheers,
Paz.