****.smugmug.com/ in google

Probooth

Im not sure what is going on here.
when i search for my domain/name in google the top returned result is my homepage, but it shows up as probooth.smugmug.com/ instead of probooth.com like it should (and does in yahoo and bing search results).

links to pics of what im talking about:

http://www.probooth.com/Other/results/16884795_QFzzMQ#1275333434_WXdhKR8-A-LB - incorrect in google
http://www.probooth.com/Other/results/16884795_QFzzMQ#1275333436_NtbkHtQ-A-LB - correct in yahoo
http://www.probooth.com/Other/results/16884795_QFzzMQ#1275333438_Pn3qhv8-A-LB - correct in bing

any ideas?


Thanks,

BJ

rainforest1155

Hi BJ,

That's normal and there's nothing to worry about. Especially if you didn't have your domain set up to work with SmugMug from day one, search engines have your SmugMug nickname address indexed for content. Over time, the more sites you have linking to your custom domain, the more will it come up in search results while your SmugMug nickname address hits will drop down further.
Some pages may only show SmugMug nickname results due to the way that some search engines work (for example Google won't index the same page twice for different addresses).

Sebastian

Probooth

rainforest1155 wrote: »

Hi BJ,

That's normal and there's nothing to worry about. Especially if you didn't have your domain set up to work with SmugMug from day one, search engines have your SmugMug nickname address indexed for content. Over time, the more sites you have linking to your custom domain, the more will it come up in search results while your SmugMug nickname address hits will drop down further.
Some pages may only show SmugMug nickname results due to the way that some search engines work (for example Google won't index the same page twice for different addresses).

Sebastian

Thank you for the reply Sebastian.
I only previewed smugmug for a short time before setting up my domain with it. this was over a year ago, so it still seems a little weird that it would index only the probooth.smugmug.com (probooth.com was no where to be found on google - my 'events' page was the next result way back on page 5 of googles results. probably due to google only indexing one page per address as you explained)

Is there a way to get the probooth.smugmug.com domain name de-indexed so probooth.com will show up?
I understand your explanation, but i am finding it hard to believe this can not be changed (or assisted) somehow manually.

thanks again

BJ

jfriend

I see two main issues here:

1) Your site just doesn't have a lot of search relevance for the word "probooth". Yes, it's in the domain, but I don't see it anywhere else on your site. I suspect that if you make sure it's on your homepage and a bunch of other pages, that will significantly help your relevance when someone searches for probooth. Fortunately, if someone is really looking for you with the term "probooth", they will see the twitter search result as #2 in the list and if they look at that link, it links to your custom domain.

2) As for your domain competing with the smugmug domain, that will depend upon external references to your site as much as anything. You should make absolutely sure that you are responsible for NO references on the internet to the .smugmug.com version of your site. That means to make sure you never put this in dgrin, nothing anywhere else on the internet that you post to. And, start finding ways to create references to your custom domain elsewhere on the internet (bulletin boards, blogs, local business listings, etc...). If you have a custom domain, Smugmug is supposed to not direct anyone to the .smugmug.com version of your site, but if they come at that portion of the site from an external link, Smugmug will allow it to work. If Google finds it from an external link, then it will index it that way. Since both domains are in Google, it seems your issue is just making sure the probooth.com domain ranks higher so it's the one most people find.

Probooth

Thank you both for your help. it seems some browser settings had "forced" the smugmug address to the top (based on my prior browsing history) in both firefox and chrome. in turn i guess google neglected my actual address in the results. thanks to helping me get to this finding! also, thanks for the seo tips jfriend, i definitely need to improve that end.

BJ