site indexing

i have recently added around 30 pages to my website and changed a couple of file names (i know they wont get indexed now as they are not there anymore) my main page is still the same and has been indexed twice in the past week, however the new pages havent... I have added a xml sitemap and html sitemap linking from the first page also seperate links from the first page to make sure googlebot can find the new pages. but they dont show up when i search for them.... is it a case of waiting as its been 2 weeks since i added the pages or am i doing something wrong?

 

I assume you have a Google account? Have you added the sitemap url via Google webmaster tools?

 

Have you got a robots.txt document? Although unlikely, if robots are not accessing your sitemap then this will direct them to it:

Place this within the robots.txt document in the root directory.

SITEMAP: http://www. (domain) .co.uk/Sitemap.xml

 

hi yeah i have added the xml file to my webmaster tools....

i havent got a robots text file i`ve never had one to be honest... should i have?

 

A couple of weeks is probably not long enough.

Try search for:

site:www(dot)yoursite(dot)co.uk keyword phrase

They might be indexed just not showing in the serps yet.

 

You should 301 redirect the old file names to the newer ones to help indexing speed (as long as they are roughly the same sort of topic) otherwise redirect them to the most relevant page(s) on your site

 

I have been doing the search but they arnt showing none of the new ones are yet... thats why i`m abit worried...

 

They are not a necessity and when used they are generally used to PREVENT individual directories from being crawled, for example:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /images/

would prevent the cgi-bin and images directories from being crawled. However, as most search engine robots will view the robots.txt then it may be worth including the sitemap link to show the robots where it is. As I said though it is not a necessity and many people ignore it completely.

 

any other ideas or should i just wait it out?

 

Just one other suggestion - I had problems with the crawlers on one site, until I put the Analytics tracking code on the site map. Might just be hoodoo or coincidence ...

 

Another possibility would be to get links from social bookmarking sites (oyax folkd digg mixx propeller searchles etc) and from any other sites you can to some of these pages. This would also probably increase the link juice to your site as a whole.

To check whether a page has been indexed, I usually copy a couple of lines of text and then search for this in Google using "text" - not very scientific maybe, but it gives me a quick idea.

 

thanks for everyones answers, google has added a couple of pages now so I reckon its just a case of waiting it out....

just a couple of questions while i`m at it :

Which is best to use or is there no difference?

1,wwwmysite.co.uk-other-page.html
2,wwwmysite.co.uk_other_page.html

and how do you get multiple listings at the top of google ie:

wwwsitename.co.uk
link1 link2 link3
link4 link5 link6

hope you know what i`m talking about. for example type in ebay into google..(there will be few sites as big as ebay but small sites still get this)

thanks for the help

 

don't use underscores

use the hypnenated version word1-word2.html

underscores still aren't fully understood as a word seperator(!) by Google it makes their life much harder than using a hyphen

Achieving sitelinks for a phrase comes when you become an 'authority' for the phrase. If the phrase you are after is a generic, high volume one it could never appear (e.g. dining chairs) but if it's a company name, or a less competitive phrase (e.g. internet proviiiiiiiidings) you should be getting them in around 6-12 months with link building

 

Doh, all my pages have underscore... looks like i`m gonna be a long time changing them...

 

Dashes vs. underscores

 

don't go changing all your urls now you'll lose any work you've already done. Just do it from now on - new pages.

 

I had alot of pages with _ instead of - and wondered why they were indexed but not coming up for there keywords. I have actually changed every page now, which took forever coz of all the links. the other pages took about 3 weeks to get indexed so i`m sure they will be the same again now i have changed them all, I have plenty of work coming up so hopefully i wont feel any thing thru the site not getting as many hits...

 

I think you mean google sitelinks.

Google puts those up if it deems your site to be worthy

 

301 permanent redirect. And try to submit your new pages in a couple of social bookmarking sites. That should speed things up.