Newbie :- Has my site been indexed by google ? i'm not sure if it has or not ?!?

[justwondering]

advice please :-

Basically my first site www.show-plates.com, its a wordpress site , i've had the privacy set to no index , while i worked on the site , last friday i took off the privacy setting to allow search engines to crawl my site....

when i type in my full domain name , it does not appear at the top but 3rd one down....but its just the domain name that shows in the listing , same for Yahoo and Bing.

I cant work out if its been indexed or not....or the way it shows in the engines , do the engines just know my site exists , because i've asked them to crawl my site etc and they have yet to crawl the site ?

With me been new to S.E.O and websites...the time it seems to be taking for the site to be crawled etc and my lack of experince is not helping as i'm not sure how long it should/could / would take...

I've set up a google webmaster account , i've setup both the www. and none www. version , choosen one etc , veriefed both addresses , but when in google webmaster account , it basically says " No Data " for most of the things , it recognizes i've choosen the www. version and that i've verifed that the www and non www version are both mine..the site has no duplicate content.

i havent upload a xml sitemap to google...as i'm unsure how to generate one...but is that really a important thing to do ?

can someone offer me some advice please.

 

[retired_member13]

It looks like you've got some pages in the index, but not the homepage.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?ie=UTF-8&q=site:show-plates.com

This usually means that the homepage has been deindexed (as G must have had the homepage in order to get the subpages) although a blank listing for the homepage appears within the "omitted" listings - click the link at the bottom of the above "site:" page.

There could be a number of reasons for this:
You had the privacy settings wrongly set for a period which caused deindexing.
The site was down for a period.
The content is copied from somewhere else (eg the site is white label from another number plate provider)
You've broken G's webmaster guidelines (eg: spammy links in, link farming) and the site's been penalised for some reason.
The content on the site is the same on every page.
Etc etc.

Without knowing more details it's hard to help any further.

(Re reading your OP it was probably the privacy settings in WP - if you set a site to "private" G will deindex it, so you'll have to wait a few weeks for G to see it again if you had it set to private for a period - this won't hurt the site long term though)

 

[dashu1]

What you need to do is search for:

site:www.show-plates.com

That shows you all of the pages indexed by Google, and there are 4 of them, so yes it's been crawled and is being indexed, but it takes time.

The webtools account will show "no data" for anything between a few days and a few weeks.

Cheers.

 

[justwondering]

Thank you both for your replys .

Ty

so i'm kinda worried now...the site content is not copied from anywhere else its not a white label site either, it is a paid for theme which i've written all the text and content , designed most of the graphics.

i've not set up any spammy links etc , i've not really done much seo on the site yet at all , i was waiting for google to index the site first , so i could see changes.

what other details would help you to know more ? pls let me know.

thank you.

 

[justwondering]

is it odd that 4 pages have been indexed ? do they normally just de-index the front page if its set to privacy , it was set to privacy for around 4 weeks and its a new site , it was first opened to indexing last friday.

 

[justwondering]

Ty "The content on the site is the same on every page."

if the content was same on two pages would that make a difference ? so if the content from the home page was the same on another page , would that stop the home page been indexed? the way the theme works is that you make a wordpress page , then pick it as the front page...

i've checked the support page for this theme and have checked other peoples sites using the same theme and there sites seem to be indexed....so i might just be grasping at straws..on that one.

 

[Blossom]

Creating an XML sitemap will help.

As will posting your URL on places that get indexed quickly (but you've already posted it here so that's ok).

I'd give it another couple of weeks before you start to worry. But I'd avoid using the privacy setting in future!

 

[philiporchard]

If the page isn't blocked in any way, you'll probably find it appearing Google within 24hrs of this post

 

[justwondering]

Ah ! i shall report back in 24 hours time...fingers crossed

 

[justwondering]

Creating an XML sitemap will help.

As will posting your URL on places that get indexed quickly (but you've already posted it here so that's ok).

I'd give it another couple of weeks before you start to worry. But I'd avoid using the privacy setting in future!

so for future reference , how much quicker would my site be indexed if i had uploaded a site map to google ?

is there also bing and yahoo type webmaster tools , that i should be using ? for setting up the site , like i did with google , so yahoo and bing do not see the www. and none www. version as duplicate content ?

ty

 

[retired_member13]

is it odd that 4 pages have been indexed ? do they normally just de-index the front page if its set to privacy , it was set to privacy for around 4 weeks and its a new site , it was first opened to indexing last friday.

Changes to a site usually spread from the homepage first - as G updates homepage listings more regularly than subpages.

ie if you turn on privacy, the homepage would be the first to disappear, followed by the subpages days or weeks afterwards as their update frequency in the index is much lower.

 

[justwondering]

good news the front page of my site has been indexed when i type in the full domain name into google it pulls up details for the front page....

when i do a site:mydomain.com , it shows the same keyword text for page it has indexed...so i'm not sure why that is , all content is different on each page it is a wordpress site.

at least i have some peace of mind and now i need to start doing some s.e.o

how often am i likely to see a change to my rankings ? if i added fresh content/news every 2 - 3 days would i be crawled more often ?

if i'm crawl more often , when is each crawl weight added to my ranking , so i will be pushed up through the ranks ?

 

[justwondering]

hmmmm my site still has not been indexed......i just read my last post , it had not be indexed , but the front page had been crawl...

i've checked out the webmaster tools , all seems okay (but i am a newbie to this)

shows a couple of errors , thats because i deleted a couple of test pages....so it sees them as not been there etc....

help please

 

[Blossom]

so for future reference , how much quicker would my site be indexed if i had uploaded a site map to google ?

Impossible to say as far as I know.

is there also bing and yahoo type webmaster tools , that i should be using ? for setting up the site , like i did with google , so yahoo and bing do not see the www. and none www. version as duplicate content ?

ty

Yeah, just google them (oh the irony)


As far as your current problem goes, not sure what you mean as index of show-plates.com is showing up when I do a search.

 

[justwondering]

hi blossom , okay , this is what i have been doing to check if my site has been indexed.

www.woorank.com , shows the page as no pages indexed....

i know the pages have been crawled , but not put into the google index...

if i type in show-plates.com , then it always finds it , but that i assume does not mean it has been indexed....i cannot see it indexed for any of my keywords either , i've got back upto 15 pages in google , trying to find it.....

do you know of a place or a code i can type into google for it to pull up Stats of which search terms i'm indexed for and which page in the directory i'm ranked ?

my keywords are show plates , number plate builder , number plates , but i just dont rank anywhere.


i'm finding it quite frustrating...

sorry for all the newbie stuff....

 

[justwondering]

p.s i know i should add more content....but the basic idea was , see the site quoted as "indexed" on say woorank.com , then i had a bench mark to work from , to see what affect any changes i made had etc.

 

[Blossom]

hi blossom , okay , this is what i have been doing to check if my site has been indexed.

www.woorank.com , shows the page as no pages indexed....

I don't know how woorank works and how often it's updated. It could be that your site is too new.

if i type in show-plates.com , then it always finds it , but that i assume does not mean it has been indexed....i cannot see it indexed for any of my keywords either , i've got back upto 15 pages in google , trying to find it.....

Yes, that does mean it's been indexed.

It's likely that you aren't ranking for the keywords you want because of any or all of the following reasons:

- The keywords are too competitive
- You site is still too new and will be bouncing around a bit
- You don't have enough content
- You don't have enough domain authority/backlinks to compete for your search term as yet.

Based on a quick glance of your site, I would guess that content and age are really the main factors holding you back right now.

The keywords you want to rank for are really competitive, so I'd say give yourself at least a year. You aren't going to see results overnight. You might be better off starting with longer phrases so you don't feel disheartened.

do you know of a place or a code i can type into google for it to pull up Stats of which search terms i'm indexed for and which page in the directory i'm ranked ?

Not off the top of my head, maybe someone else can help.

 

[justwondering]

What i cant understand is why does woorank.com , show my site as not indexed , woorank is pretty good i've found from past experince.

I'm happy to add more content , happy to go link hunting...but i'd kinda stopped because i thought i had not yet been indexed....i'm confused (and clueless ) lol

 

[Blossom]

Your site is right there in Google. That means it's been indexed. The index page returns a Google result. There's no point trusting third party tools over what's right in front of your eyes in Google itself.

I don't specifically know how WooRank works. But I have used a similar tool which relies on pulling search data, and it's updated in sections over a period of time. This may or may not be the case for WooRank.

If your site wasn't indexed, it wouldn't show up at all. I'll show you an example of a non-indexed site I'm working on: benitos-sheffield(co)uk (please don't visit the URL using Google Chrome or it may be indexed - and it's not finished yet).

If you search Google for that exact domain name then you will see it doesn't show up at all.

 

[justwondering]

thank you for that blossom i did a quick search via i.e.7 so not worrys.

but do you know of a way to type in my domain name , then for it to show me where i rank and for what key words ?

woudl be really cool to see where my site is in the index , other than for my exact search term of my domain name .