Festus
12-04-2006, 12:00 AM
Ok, I'm am so !#&# confused...
In the past I have been an absolute freak demanding my ad pages be htm or html pages, and that the pages didn't have any stop characters such as an ampersand (&), equals sign (=), or question mark (?) in their URLs. These demands, of course, were to keep search engines happy.
Well, I keep a close eye on my site's stats (something I imagine we all do) and over the past couple of months I have been getting more and more confused while watching my stats.
Here's the deal. I own two versions of Geodesic classifieds software, Premier and Enterprise. I bought the Premier version first, I think about 2 1/2 years ago. The Premier writes URLs that don't end with "htm" and "html" and the URLs do have stop characters. When I first bought the Premier version I was aware of this problem and bought it anyway for a number of other reasons. When I first bought the Premier version NONE of the pages showed up in the search engines. Now (about 2 1/2 years later), all or virtually all of the pages are indexed with Google. I simply went to Google and typed in site:www.mysite.com/directory . Clearly, Google is indexing these pages without trouble.
So, about a year ago I bought the Enterprise version but did not launch it until April of this year, and not until the upgrade that uses mod-rewrite and an .htacess file to remove stop characters and that also makes the URLs end with htm. Then I moved an existing database of ads from another ad system into my Geo Entprise system. The users love the Geo system (and so do I) and I have way more ads now (2,000+) than I ever had with the other ad system. But...Google has been steadily indexing fewer of my Geo Enterprise pages. Currently, about 1/4 of my Enterprise pages are listed with Google.
It seems Google is preferring my "bad" pages made with Premier over my "good" pages made with Enterprise. I am so confused... I am currently working on a deeper sitemap.xml file to see how much of that is to blame. In my current sitemap.xml file all of my Premier pages are listed but only about 1/4 of my Enterprise pages. Hmm, this is the same ratio Google is indexing my pages from the two different versions. Coincidence? We'll find out when I get my new sitemap.xml file up. But I do know Google was finding all of my Premier pages before my sitemap.xml file even existed.
I'll post an update here after the new sitemap.xml file has been up a while. I almost feel like turning off the htm files in Enterprise so they go back to the "bad" pages with the stop characters but I'm not brave enough.
By the way, what has happened with this forum's layout that I now constantly have to scroll from left to right? That's new. Always before the width of the forum fit my screen but now it is way too wide.
In the past I have been an absolute freak demanding my ad pages be htm or html pages, and that the pages didn't have any stop characters such as an ampersand (&), equals sign (=), or question mark (?) in their URLs. These demands, of course, were to keep search engines happy.
Well, I keep a close eye on my site's stats (something I imagine we all do) and over the past couple of months I have been getting more and more confused while watching my stats.
Here's the deal. I own two versions of Geodesic classifieds software, Premier and Enterprise. I bought the Premier version first, I think about 2 1/2 years ago. The Premier writes URLs that don't end with "htm" and "html" and the URLs do have stop characters. When I first bought the Premier version I was aware of this problem and bought it anyway for a number of other reasons. When I first bought the Premier version NONE of the pages showed up in the search engines. Now (about 2 1/2 years later), all or virtually all of the pages are indexed with Google. I simply went to Google and typed in site:www.mysite.com/directory . Clearly, Google is indexing these pages without trouble.
So, about a year ago I bought the Enterprise version but did not launch it until April of this year, and not until the upgrade that uses mod-rewrite and an .htacess file to remove stop characters and that also makes the URLs end with htm. Then I moved an existing database of ads from another ad system into my Geo Entprise system. The users love the Geo system (and so do I) and I have way more ads now (2,000+) than I ever had with the other ad system. But...Google has been steadily indexing fewer of my Geo Enterprise pages. Currently, about 1/4 of my Enterprise pages are listed with Google.
It seems Google is preferring my "bad" pages made with Premier over my "good" pages made with Enterprise. I am so confused... I am currently working on a deeper sitemap.xml file to see how much of that is to blame. In my current sitemap.xml file all of my Premier pages are listed but only about 1/4 of my Enterprise pages. Hmm, this is the same ratio Google is indexing my pages from the two different versions. Coincidence? We'll find out when I get my new sitemap.xml file up. But I do know Google was finding all of my Premier pages before my sitemap.xml file even existed.
I'll post an update here after the new sitemap.xml file has been up a while. I almost feel like turning off the htm files in Enterprise so they go back to the "bad" pages with the stop characters but I'm not brave enough.
By the way, what has happened with this forum's layout that I now constantly have to scroll from left to right? That's new. Always before the width of the forum fit my screen but now it is way too wide.