My best guess, it sounds like Google has not found enough inbound links to warrant giving you deeper spidering and indexing. Without a doubt, that is the key to getting more TLC from Google.

Other things to check:

1. Is your html creating a problem?
Check with the online W3C Validator for HTML [validator.w3.org]

2. Can your menu links be spidered from the Home Page?
Check by downloading Xenu Link Sleuth [home.snafu.de]

Simple answer, it just takes ages! 3 months for the last 2 sites Ive done!

If you read through google sitemaps documentation - submitting a sitemap DOES NOTHING to improve google's crawl - they do not use your url list to determine what to crawl. It is just used to display information to you about what was/was not crawled.

thanks for the reply i love this site.

any tips on how to get more inbound links?

also, if your store is at www.#*$!#*$!.com but some of your inbound links point to site.#*$!#*$!.com will the inbound links to site.#*$!#*$!.com improve the rank of www.#*$!#*$!.com. If not I officially announce that I hate Yahoo! stores. All my cool script applications are on the site.#*$!#*$!.com and a ton of people link them but I really want people to go to the store at www.#*$!#*$!.com.

We've got a whole forum full of ideas and discussion:

Link Development forum [webmasterworld.com]

thanks for the tip but can you still tell me the answer to this question?

if your store is at www.X.com but some of your inbound links point to site.X.com will the inbound links to site.X.com improve the rank of www.X.com?

If those two addresses resolve to the exact same content, but the url in the address bar doesn't not change over to the same domain, then you probably are splitting your link pop and Page Rank -- and possibly having one address filtered out of search results as well. If the addresses for one domain redirect to the other domain with a 301 status, then backlink influence should eventually pass right through.

You mentioned that this is a Yahoo store, correct? It is always possible -- I don't know for certain -- that Google has that kind of common situation all sorted out for Yahoo stores, even without the redirect. Perhaps some other member owns a Yahoo store and will know more definitely. As a general rule, you definitely need the redirect in place to see backlink influence pass over to the other domain.

To answer that question i would say that it does not. Explanation...

subdomain.x.com and www.x.com are considered two different domains.

if you had a link to www.x.com/interiorpage.htm it WOULD improve www.x.com

but a link to subdomain.x.com would not improve www.x.com in my understanding and experience.

"If those two addresses resolve to the exact same content, but the url in the address bar doesn't not change over to the same domain, then you probably are splitting your link pop and Page Rank -- and possibly having one address filtered out of search results as well. If the addresses for one domain redirect to the other domain with a 301 status, then backlink influence should eventually pass right through.
You mentioned that this is a Yahoo store, correct? It is always possible -- I don't know for certain -- that Google has that kind of common situation all sorted out for Yahoo stores, even without the redirect. Perhaps some other member owns a Yahoo store and will know more definitely. As a general rule, you definitely need the redirect in place to see backlink influence pass over to the other domain. "

Yes this is a Yahoo! store. Please excuse my ignorance but can you explain what these terms mean or point me to some type of FAQ? I'm unfamiliar with how redirects work, or what 301 status means, I don't know what a backlink is, or a linkpop. Is there a book that covers this?

The best idea is to turn to the authority -- the W3C -- to learn about status codes returned by a server.

Status Code Definitions [w3.org]

A "backlink" is what most of us usually call a link pointing to a page from a different domain, although in some contexts, it could also mean a link pointing from the same domain.

"Link pop" is a casual term, not technical, and I guess it is getting a bit old. I just used it to mean, in general, how strong the influence of backlinks is.

Backlinks build PageRank in Google, and text that backlinks use inside the anchor tags is also an important factor Google uses to determine what topics a URL is relevant for. As an example, a URL can rank well for a search on words that do not even appear in the content, if there is enough influence coming from backlinks.

okay but how does this stuff work?

"If the addresses for one domain redirect to the other domain with a 301 status"

i have a computer science degree. i studied networks, tcp/ip, packet structure, routing, etc. ... but i know nothing of how networking works beyond the MAC address. as far as ip addresses, DNS addresses, status codes and the WWW protocol I'm clueless.

the W3C explains all this?

"If the addresses for one domain redirect to the other domain with a 301 status"

This is set on the individual server, and the particulars are unique to the server software (Apache, IIS, etc) even though the end result is the same to a user agent.

so if i have a backlink for www.y.com that redirects to www.x.com with 301 status than the backlink for www.y.com could potentially increase www.x.com's pagerank?

Yes, as long as there is only one "hop" involved.

You need to know that using Yahoo for a store is going to make duplicate pages for your whole online store.

Yourdomain .com/store and duplicates such as yourdomain. yahoo.net or .com and more.

Also do not submit a site to google to get indexed especially automatically.

Returning to the original query. After about 6 weeks with a sitemap I now find G is indexing deeper than it used to and search results have greater relevance as well as the same or better positions but it did take time.

That could be coincidence of course.

I think it takes years now, not weeks unless you have found a very unique niche with Google?

You need good links these days or chances are Google will not index much of your site. I had a new site launched mid-August and submitted it to Google sitemaps. The site had very few inbound links and only the homepage was indexed. After securing some good links most of the site was indexed.

so lets say i have a yahoo store and i gave it a clever name called www.x.com ... but now i realize i should have some high volume keywords built into my address , something like www.x-keyword-buzzword.com ... yet now x.com has really established itself as a brand and most regular customers are familiar with the branding even though there's no buzzwords in it .. and i dont want to change because people fear that. ...

what should i do? start over with a new domain and a site name with built in high volume keywords

....or could i just buy a new domain like www.x-keywordbuzzword.com and have it redirect with 301 status to www.x.com? would the new domain be indexed also? so when someone searches for "keyword buzzword" they would get www.x-keywordbuzzword.com in the results, which would show the contents of www.x.com in the two line summary below the link and when the user clicks automatically redirect with 301 status to www.x.com ... could this work?

bump ... did my last post make sense ... i want keywords-loaded domains to redirect to my poorly-named domain. and i want the keyword-loaded domain to show up in googles index with the contents for the poorly name domain ...

lets say my page is called green widgets and the google text is like this

X
---------------
X sells alot of widgets some of them are green.
www.x.com

so if someone does a search for "green widgets" it will be way low on page rank because the domain name doesnt have the keywords

but if i buy greenwidgets . com and have a 301 redirect to www.x.com

if someone does a search for "green widgets" would pagerank improve, possibly indexing a site like this:

X
---------------
X sells alot of widgets some of them are green.
h t t p: // www. greenwidgets .com

i.e. the content is the same i just want the keywords in the url to increase my pagerank.

will this work, assuming greenwidgets is indexed on google?

yet now x.com has really established itself as a brand

Then you've done well - do not, for one minute, worry about changing the domain name just to spam an extra keyword or two in there. Would you tell Amazon to rebuild as amazon-merchandise-bargains.com? Or to buy that domain and redirect it?

And the redirection scheme is a bit toward the spammy side. Actively promoting domains that gain ranking but then redirect is not an approach Google appreciates. I say full steam ahead, building further on what you've already achieved.

The one way that this make sense is if you have a keyword domain that gets natural type-in traffic. But not if you need to actively promote a domain name that then redirects.

if someone does a search for "green widgets" it will be way low on page rank because the domain name doesnt have the keywords

Not necessarily, not at all.

thanks ted. thats totally reassuring. the one thing i think i might buy is redirects for people who misspell the established brand.

anyways, back to the original topic, is there a very detailed description of the google weighting system for aemi-technical types out there. I have a degree with some computer algorithm and statistics coursework but I hate going too deep sometimes .. i like a good understanding that;s intuitive ... just not going through too many control structures and variables in my head :)

a very detailed description of the google weighting system

That's more closely guarded than the formula for Coca-Cola and more rapidly shifting than a politician's loyalties. It's sometimes even called the "secret sauce" by Googlers.

well does anyone know anything about whats in the sauce? there certainly are some who claim to be authorities on the issue. are some usually more right than others? (i.e. people who have it "pretty darn close" like the Pepsi-Cola people rather than the Dr. Peppers, RC colas, the Faygos?)

we know darned well that most hamburger secret sauces are maynaise based.

Other things to check:

1. Is your html creating a problem?
Check with the online W3C Validator for HTML

this is what i got when i entered the url for the main page

No Character Encoding Found! Falling back to UTF-8. I was not able to extract a character encoding labeling from any of the valid sources for such information. Without encoding information it is impossible to reliably validate the document. I'm falling back to the "UTF-8" encoding and will attempt to perform the validation, but this is likely to fail for all non-trivial documents.

Read the FAQ entry on character encoding for more details and pointers on how to fix this problem with your document.

Sorry! This document can not be checked.
Sorry, I am unable to validate this document because on line 14, 28, 50 it contained one or more bytes that I cannot interpret as utf-8 (in other words, the bytes found are not valid values in the specified Character Encoding). Please check both the content of the file and the character encoding indication.

like i said its a yahoo! store

i suspect some of the spaces may actually be the ALT+255 whitespace character but I don't recall using it here. Additionally, that should still be a part of UTF-8, right? Is there any way to search for non UTF-8 characters in a document?

when it specifes likes 14,28, and 50 is it referring to the actual lines in the file when i open it in notepad or does it have a different mehod of specifying line numbers? when i did a "view source" here's what these lines had i'll put them in context and explain the code..

first error is on line 14:

13:"<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">"
14:"<!-- "
15:if (top!= self) top.location.replace(self.location);
16:// -->
17:</SCRIPT>

explanation:

in yahoo stores, if you want to create a menu bar across the site, there is a variables dialog where you can speficy tags for the head element .. sometimes frames are used to simulate the menubar when needed and the URL doesn't need to be bookmarked. however sometimes the real menubar gets stuck within the frams simulation, leaving two menubars across the top! ....this piece of code is used to break out of the extra frame and use the regular integrated non-frames menubar.

second error is on line 28:

19:<table width = "100%" bgcolor=#FFFFFF border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0>
20:<tr><th> </th></tr>
21:<tr>
22:<th><img src="http://site.example.com/SFM-Logo-23:orange_blue.jpg"></img></th>
24:</tr>
25:<tr>144
26:<th><font face="arial" size=-1">
27:<a href="http://www.example.com/">Store Home</a>
28: ¦
29:<a href="http://forum.example.com/">Message Forum</a>
30: ¦
31: <a href="http://site.example.com/">Fitness Calculators</a>
32: ¦
33: <a href="mailto:service@example.com">Email us</a></font></th>
34: </tr>
35: <tr><th> </th></tr>
36: </table>

explanation:
this part is the universal head element that draws the menubar across the top of the store for navigation between the store, various perl-based fitness calculators, and allows an easy to spot contact link.

third error is on line 50:

42:<ul>
43:<li><a href="http://www.example.com/axhd.html">Some text</a></li>
44:<li><a href="http://www.example.com/axstimx.html">Some text</a></li>
45:<li><a href="http://www.example.com/dsrbreload.html">Some text</a></li>
46:<li><a href="http://www.example.com/nutvitrix.html">Some text</a></li>
47:<li><a href="http://www.example.com/santight.html">Some text</a></li>
48:<li><a href="http://www.examplet.com/gnnovxt.html">Some text</a></li>
49:<li><a href="http://www.example.com/tlebol.html">Some text</a></li>
50:</ul>
51:<font face ="arial narrow" size=3><i><B>11/09/2006: New Products 52:arriving in 1-2 days!</b></i></font>
53:<ul>
54:<li>Some text</li>
55:<li>Some text</li>
56:<li>Some text</li>
57:<li>Some text</li>
59:<li>Some text</li>
60:<li>Some text</li>
61:<li>Some text</li>
62:</ul>

explanation:

this is just two bulleted lists from the top of the front page. i can't understand where there would be non UTF-8 characters.

in any case, can someone tell me what this means, what characters are allowable for UTF-8, and how to fix it?

I used the default settings.. .. perhaps i should fix the character set to us-ascii but wht of doc type? the yahoo generated page says :

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

but perhaps some of the code i inserted is deprecated or non compliant because i learned html in 1996 and don't always use the newest methods of editing. it didn't used to be this darned complicated!

[edited by: tedster at 3:29 pm (utc) on Nov. 22, 2006]
[edit reason] use example.com, remove specifics [/edit]

does anyone spot any clear violations of W3C coding on these lines?

am i looking at the right lines (is it literally referring to the text file?)

any help? my code is ancient. sigh .. i'll go read the w3c standard.

ha! .. doesn't matter if its W3C or not. My pages are all finally indexed. Praise the lord.

Now let me get started on google allowing censorship on their site in China... well thats bad news ...

but at least they indexed my site :)