4 Months, Several Revisions, and no listing on Google. Not even using Site:

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > 4 Months, Several Revisions, and no listing on Google. Not even using Site:

sharkytm: Oct 9, 2003; Ba

By

Sharkytm doot doo do doot do doo; Fallen Rib

Howdy folks,
I started a website for my small company (https://www.epocean.com) over 4 months ago, and originally had it a customized WordPress install, but I've switched over to a more simple framework. It's incredibly simple, just one page, but it doesn't show up on Google. Not even using "site:www.epocean.com". I've submitted it to Google using Webmaster Tools, done the test crawl (it doesn't find any errors), and have Google Analytics running on it just fine.

I'm at a loss. Is there something that I'm missing? The site shows up under Bing :lol:

, not that that's all that helpful. Google basically says "Wait for us to crawl you", which is fine and dandy, but this is going on 6 months and no listing.

I'm linked to/from my product line (https://www.oceanimagingsystems.com - Don't judge that site, it's undergoing a redesign at some point soon), and those links show up when you search my company's name.

# ? Dec 7, 2014 00:03

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# ? Apr 2, 2023 08:15

adorai: Nov 2, 2002; 10/27/04 Never forget; Grimey Drawer

I might be blind, but I see no links to epocean.com on the other site. If no one else is linking to your site, google doesn't know it exists. They have a bunch of things you can do to diagnose page errors for googlebot, as well ask them to (re)index a page at https://www.google.com/webmasters/

# ? Dec 7, 2014 00:21

sharkytm: Oct 9, 2003; Ba

By

Sharkytm doot doo do doot do doo; Fallen Rib

adorai posted:

I might be blind, but I see no links to epocean.com on the other site. If no one else is linking to your site, google doesn't know it exists. They have a bunch of things you can do to diagnose page errors for googlebot, as well ask them to (re)index a page at https://www.google.com/webmasters/

It's in the footer. Nothing huge, but it's there. I've asked them to re-index as well, close to 3 months ago. It's odd that it's on Bing and Yahoo.

# ? Dec 7, 2014 02:01

Lord Windy: Mar 26, 2010

The comedy option is you peed in the cereal of someone who works there.

# ? Dec 7, 2014 03:35

Space Skeleton: Sep 28, 2004

Try adding a robots.txt?

# ? Dec 7, 2014 04:10

pram: Jun 10, 2001

you tell the google search bot to manually index your website like 5 times a month from google webmaster tools

its this option

you press fetch and then it shows this button

worth a shot

edit: oh well if you already tried it then i dont know :pram:

pram fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Dec 7, 2014

# ? Dec 7, 2014 05:20

pram: Jun 10, 2001

i find the indexing behavior inscrutable, some of my websites will have tons of pages indexed and then it just magically explodes. no idea what the methodology is really.

# ? Dec 7, 2014 05:25

sharkytm: Oct 9, 2003; Ba

By

Sharkytm doot doo do doot do doo; Fallen Rib

Wee Tinkle Wand posted:

Try adding a robots.txt?

No robots.txt means that the spider just crawls every link, which is just the only page there.

Lord Windy posted:

The comedy option is you peed in the cereal of someone who works there.

pram posted:

you tell the google search bot to manually index your website like 5 times a month from google webmaster tools

its this option

you press fetch and then it shows this button

worth a shot

edit: oh well if you already tried it then i dont know

Thanks for the suggestions. I didn't piss off Google, Hell, I'm a shareholder. I guess it's just a waiting game.

# ? Dec 8, 2014 02:15

mcsuede: Dec 30, 2003; Anyone who has a continuous smile on his face conceals a toughness that is almost frightening.
-Greta Garbo

I spool up new sites daily and am usually indexed within 24 hours (at least the index is started). Often these days it's near instantaneous.

1) Put up a robots.txt as already suggested http://html5css3box.com/robotstxt-generator/
2) Create and submit a sitemap (also list in robots, I use screaming frog for this but you can probably find something free on google)
3) Create a Google+ Places for Business for your company, with that URL in the description
4) Post a G+ introduction post, linking your URL
5) Link back to your G+ profile from your site using rel=publisher (also link out to any other social properties)
6) Submit your site/business to legit business directories. Spend a few hours at this, your goal is to generate business citations. If you want to use a service, I recommend Neustar Localeze or MozLocal. If you want to put in serious effort, I recommend https://www.whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder

It's possible that your domain is blacklisted in some database, but more likely Google just thinks it's too thin to bother indexing and possibly spam as your backlink profile is almost non-existent and the site is so small.

7) Build more pages with solid content. Google wants these pages at minimum:
7a) About
7b) Terms of Service
7c) Privacy Policy
7d) In addition, create a page for each section (Consulting, Design, Manufacturing)

8) Mark up your footer business address with schema:

code:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/LocalBusiness">
<a itemprop="url" href="http://www.epocean.com/"><div itemprop="name"><strong>EP Oceanographic, LLC</strong></div></a>
<div itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress">
<span itemprop="streetAddress">5 Spinnaker Ln</span><br />
<span itemprop="addressLocality">Pocasset</span>, <span itemprop="addressRegion">MA</span> <span itemprop="postalCode">02559</span> <span itemprop="addressCountry">USA</span>
</div>
</div>

Those steps should get you indexed pretty quickly. Some of them aren't technically "indexing" tricks but the goal is to send Google enough signals that your site is a legit site, for a legit business, and deserves to be indexed. I'm assuming you've done all of your due diligence already with Webmaster Tools to see if there are any Fetch errors.

mcsuede fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Dec 8, 2014

# ? Dec 8, 2014 02:42

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# ? Apr 2, 2023 08:15

Space Skeleton: Sep 28, 2004

sharkytm posted:

No robots.txt means that the spider just crawls every link, which is just the only page there.

That's the default behavior yeah but there are ways for a server to tell crawlers to take a hike so to be safe it's a really good idea to include a robots.txt in the root directory of each site anyway. From minor experimenting I have found that Google seems to go with what "www.sitename.com/robots.txt" says even if it finds conflicting instructions elsewhere.

# ? Dec 8, 2014 19:52

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > 4 Months, Several Revisions, and no listing on Google. Not even using Site: