Why Does Google Hate Me? (again)

[burnsai]

Here's my problem!

I have a site with about 500 pages on it. Here's what the various search engines are showing for indexed pages when I type "site:www.mysite.com" into the search engine:

Bing- 351 pages indexed (415 photos indexed)

Yahoo- 508 pages indexed

Google - 168 pages indexed (only 143 photos indexed)

What the &$$#%^^!!!!

The weird thing is that when I check an individual page URL in google with - "site:www.mysite.com/section/category/entry-222"

...google will show that the page is actually indexed. Even though it doesn't show up in the "site:www.mysite.com" search.

The reason this all worries me so much is that my traffic has not gone up for about 2 months now - I can't get it to increase no matter how hard I try.

The only things I can think of that may be causing problems with google are:

1. Many of my page titles are very similar.
2. My site loads very slow.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[InternetMarketingIQ]

Google is just software. When they find content that is similar on the same site they make a decision on how much to crawl.

People all thing their sites are great... but Google has to crawl and make decisions on BILLIONS of pages.

If you want to figure out why you are not getting completely indexed join Google Webmaster... make sure you are submitting a valid Sitemap. Make sure your prioritize the pages that matter.

Google doesn't hate you... they don't even know who you are. Google is just software.

[kkchoon]

Easy way to this - build backlinks to pages!

If you want more pages to be index and being taken seriously by Google, backlinks to your pages and domain, as your pagerank grow, Google will index more content.

BTW, remember to setup proper navigation link to lead to those pages, the link juice would flows to those pages much easier and more pages would get into Google index.

Kok Choon

[digital29]

Try to build backlinks for those pages and have patience. Eventually all of them will be indexed

[Jeremy Morgan]

Build a google sitemap, and that will help. It might take a month or two, but you'll see more indexed pages.

Also, do you have duplicate content issues? This will also get some of your pages removed from the index, if they're too similar to other pages.

[burnsai]

Some good advice.

SITEMAP

As for the sitemap - I have been reluctant to submit one because I submitted one about 6 months ago and my traffic instantly tanked. It went down 30 percent overnight and didn't come back for 2 months.

I decided to give it another shot - so I submitted another one to webmaster tools yesterday - and sure enough - 3 hours later my traffic began to take a dive - it's down about 20 percent and dropping.

I'm hoping this is a temporary "google dance" thing and it will come back soon.

DUPLICATE CONTENT

I'm pretty sure I don't have much duplicate content. Although I did notice that google was telling me I had duplicate title tags for:

www.mysite.com
www.mysite.com/index.php


I did a 301 redirect to take care of that issue.

I'm also changing up some of my titles. It's a dating site so most of the pages are profiles with similar prefixes to the titles.

LINKS

I have a ton of links to my internal category pages, but maybe I do need more links to my profile pages. Gonna work on that tonight. I have over 300 profile pages so this is gonna be a bit of a chore. Thank God for Bookmarking Demon and Angela's Backlinks.

SITE SPEED

I think this is the thing that is really hurting me. Google webmaster tools tells me that my site is slower than 87 percent of the sites on the net. That can not be a good thing.

[Fraggler]

Submitting a sitemap will not make your traffic tank like that, something else will cause a drop in SERPs. Something like changing on-site properties such as the Title of a page. Google has to analyse the page again to make sure it is still appropriate. The 301 redirect will effect it too.

A 20% swing could be from anything. 20% from 3 hours? You must have some serious traffic for this to be a measurable change. It is the weekend. Are you comparing it to your average or today's average?

If you are using wordpress then Google already new about your sitemap. All it does it let Google know about your pages. It will take a long time for it to crawl them.

Link to your 'lost' pages to help them get promotion too.

[indodistro]

your webhost server cannot indexed by google crawler becaose of no international traffic allow

[burnsai]

Hey Fraggler,

I've had other prople tell me that submitting a sitemap can't hurt my rankings/traffic - but this is the second time it actually has. And it's worse than I thought.

Here's a timeline of my traffic (google only) - my google traffic has been steady between 330-400 for about a month.


Thursday, 18th - 399
Friday, 19th - 345
Submitted sitemap around 7pm Friday
Saturday, 20th - 114

And it's looking like it's not gonna get any better today.

One more piece of information for anyone who is following my tale of woe...

I also added an HTML sitemap to my site (in a footer link). I have heard that google does not like to see more than 80 links on a page - since my sitemap has 407 links to my other pages perhaps google thought it was spammy.

One good piece of news. I now have 202 pages indexed by google since submitting the sitemap.

[Fraggler]

You are doing more than submitting a sitemap though. You are also adding links and changing titles to pages. You have also told Google that index.php is actually the root so it has to push the authority and link juice from that page to the root (even though they are 'the same page'). This will cause an adjustment to your ranking.

Check your traffic for weekends. It is unusual not to have a drop on Saturday and Sunday.

Check the rankings of the terms that usually bring you traffic. It might give you a better idea.

I really don't think it was the sitemap submission that caused the drop. Too many other factors to make that assumption. I am not sure what you changed last time you submitted.