Google wants to create quality search engine results just as badly as
you want to acquire high search engine rankings. Fortunately for us,
Google provides web masters with plenty of information...
Q. Does Google index dynamic pages?
A.
Yes. Google indexes dynamically generated pages. This includes pages
with the following file extensions: .asp, .php, and pages with question
marks in their URLs. However, these pages can cause problems for the
Googlebot and may be ignored.
Fortunately, there is a solution.
If you feel that your dynamically generated pages are being ignored,
you may want to consider creating static copies of those pages for the
Googlebot. Keep in mind, if you choose to do this, be sure to include a
robots.txt file that disallows the dynamic pages so that Google doesn't
see those pages as duplicate content.
Q. Does Google index sites that use ASP?
A.
Yes. Google is able to index most types of pages and files with very
few exceptions. This includes pdf, asp, jsp, html, shtml, xml, doc,
xls, ppt, rtf, wks, lwp, wri, swf, cfm, and php. This is not a complete
list, but it gives a good overview.
Q. Does Google index sites that use Macromedia Flash?
A.
Yes. Google indexes pages that use Macromedi Flash. However, Google may
have problems indexing Flash pages. If you are concerned that your
Flash content is inhibiting Google's ability to crawl your site, you
may want to consider creating HTML copies of those Flash pages. As
always, you will need to include a robots.txt file that disallows the
Flash pages so that Google does not recognize those pages as duplicate
content.
Q. How can I get my web site into Google's Mobile index?
A.
Google Mobile offers Google Web Search, Local Search, and Image Search
for web sites that are configured for mobile devices. Google adds new
sites to their mobile Web index every time they crawl the Web.
To
let Google know about your mobile site, it is best to submit a Mobile
Sitemap. To help ensure that Google's mobile crawlers can crawl and
index your site, you should:
* Use well-formed markup
* Validate your markup
* Use the right DOCTYPE and Content-Type for the markup language that you are using.
Q. Will participation in Adsense or Adwords affect my listing in Google's free search results.
A.
Google's advertising programs are independent of their search results.
Participation in an advertising program will have no effect on your
organic search engine rankings.
Q. Why does my site have a PageRank of zero?
A.
Yes. Google has an answer for this as well. According to Google, a page
may be assigned a rank of zero if Google crawls very few sites that
link to that particular site. In addition to this, pages that have
recently been added to the Google index may also show a PageRank of
zero. This is simply because they haven't been crawled by Googlebot yet
and haven't been ranked yet.
The key is to be patient. A page's PageRank score my increase naturally with further crawls
Q. My URL changed. How can I get Google to index my new site?
A.
Google can not manually change your URL in the search results. However,
there are steps you can take to ensure a smooth transition.
First,
you can redirect visitors to your new site. To do this, simply use an
HTTP 301 (permanent) redirect. This ensures that Google's crawler will
discover your new URL.
To preserve your rank, you will need to
tell others who link to yours about your change of address. To find a
portion of the sites that link to yours, you can go to the Google
search engine and type in : site:www.mydomain.com . To obtain a
comprehensive list of links that point to your page, perform a Google
search on your URL in quotes: "www.mydomain.com".
Q. How often does Google crawl the web?
A.
Google's spiders crawl the web on a regular basis to rebuild their
index. Crawls are based on a number of factors, including Pagerank,
links to a page, and a web sites structure. This is just a small list.
There are a variety of factors that can affect the crawl frequency of
individual sits.
Q. How do I create a Google friendly site?
A. To help Google find, index, and rank your site, it is suggested that you follow their Webmaster Guidelines.
Here are some of the general guidelines that Google offers to web masters:
* Have other relevant sites link to yours.
* Submit a sitemap.
*
Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory
Project and Yahoo. For a complete listing of web directories, go to
* Make sure each and every page is reachable from at least one static text link
*
Offer your visitors a site with links that point to the most important
parts of your site. If your sitemap is larger than 100 links, you may
want to break the site map into separate pages.
* Keep the links on any given page to a reasonable number (less than 100)
* Check for broken links and correct HTML
*
Create a useful site that is full of information-rich content. Your
pages should be written in a way that clearly and accurately describes
your content.
* Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate.
*
Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your web site. Most search
engine spiders see your site in much the same way as Lynx would.
* Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session Ids or arguments that track their path through the site.
*
Make use of the robots.txt file, which tells crawlers which directories
they can or cannot crawl (http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html)
Q. How can I report a site that is spamming the Google search results?
A.
Google is constantly working to improve the quality of their search
results. Therefore, they have implemented a program that allows web
searchers to report spam that they find within the search engine
results. These Spam Reports are submitted directly to the Google
engineers and are used to devise long-term solutions to fight spam.
However,
before you submit a site as being spam, Google highly suggests that you
take a look at their webmaster guidelines to determine if sites are
acceptable or not - http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html
Q. Why are sites blocked from the Google index?
A.
Sites may be blocked from the Google index if they do not meet certain
quality standards. Google does not comment on the individual reason
that pages may be removed. However, they do reveal that certain actions
such as cloaking, writing text that can be seen by search engines but
not by users, or setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of
fooling the search engines may result in removal from the index.
If
you receive a notification that your site violates Google's quality
guidelines, you can correct your site to meet their guidelines and then
request reinclusion.