Question about search engines (Google, MSN, Yahoo)

flyingdutchie

I have a question about how search engines work. This is why i ask this.

My site is called www.streetsofboston.com. I upgraded about 2 months ago from a power-user account to a pro-account and assigned www.streetsofboston.com to my smugmug account (by updating CNAME records). All works fine.

-However, when i do a Google of "streetsofboston", no hit to the site www.streetsofboston.com is returned!
-A Google search "site:www.streetsofboston.com" returns 0 hits as well.
-But plenty of other posts containing the text streetsofboston (including my posts here on www.dgrin.com) are found by google.
-I made the site blog.antonspaans.com live just over a week ago, and Google can find this site already. That's really quick.

My questions are:
- How is it possible that Google still can't find the site www.streetsofboston.com?
- However, MSN search and Yahoo search can find this site.
- Is it possible my site has been banned? (banned before i bought the domain from GoDaddy about 2 months ago)
-Or does google deem the site www.streetsofboston.com to be a copy of flyingdutchie.smugmug.com and prefers flyingdutchie.smugmug.com?

Please, advise.
(PS: I registered www.streetsofboston.com to Google Site Maps. However, i can not 'verify' it because one can not upload html files to our site)

flyingpylon

Search engines are weird. That said, it's odd that your site doesn't show up at all. Did you submit it to Google? I noticed that your home page doesn't appear to contain the actual text "streetsofboston"... though neither does streetsofboston.org, but that shows up in Google. I also checked Archive.org's Wayback Machine and it doesn't look like there was ever another streetsofboston.com. However, you can e-mail Google and ask them if your site is banned. They'll tell you yes or no, but not why (helpful, huh?).

At any rate, there probably aren't going to be many people searching for "streetsofboston". They're more likely to find you by searching for "Boston photos" or something like that.

Edit- actually, the Wayback Machine does show that someone was collecting stats for streetsofboston.com in 2004, so maybe there was a site there.

flyingdutchie

flyingpylon wrote:

Search engines are weird. That said, it's odd that your site doesn't show up at all. Did you submit it to Google? I noticed that your home page doesn't appear to contain the actual text "streetsofboston"... though neither does streetsofboston.org, but that shows up in Google. I also checked Archive.org's Wayback Machine and it doesn't look like there was ever another streetsofboston.com. However, you can e-mail Google and ask them if your site is banned. They'll tell you yes or no, but not why (helpful, huh?).

At any rate, there probably aren't going to be many people searching for "streetsofboston". They're more likely to find you by searching for "Boston photos" or something like that.

Thanks for your reply!
I think there has been a previous incarnation of streetsofboston.com, because google finds e-mail addresses: info@streetsofboston.com (on an old site call gfy.com (stands for 'go f@#!k yourself'... nice name, eh...)).
The site streetsofboston has been removed form the domain name registry (in september 2003?): http://www.namestead.com/expired-domains-lists/com_030918_domain-name-drop-list.txt

You're right. People will never search for the text 'streetsofboston'. But if Google can not even find my site using this particular text, it will not find hits to my site using more common search-texts either (currently, Google returns hits to the site flyingdutchie.smugmug.com, but i'd rather not use this name).

I already sent an e-mail to Google. I got a standard reply back, not very informative. I sent a reply to their reply and i'm still waiting...

Thanks!

digital faerie

go to this site:

http://www.google.com/support

there's another link to add your URL to Google's index:

http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

I remember when I did this, I was able to add a list of keywords galore as well in the comments section. I hope this works for you!

Tanna

flyingdutchie

digital faerie wrote:

go to this site:

http://www.google.com/support

there's another link to add your URL to Google's index:

http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

I remember when I did this, I was able to add a list of keywords galore as well in the comments section. I hope this works for you!

Tanna

Thank you very much Tanna!

I already went to the 'addurl' page and added my site there. It hasn't helped yet. Maybe i try again

digital faerie

flyingdutchie wrote:

Thank you very much Tanna!

I already went to the 'addurl' page and added my site there. It hasn't helped yet. Maybe i try again

I think it will take a few days to take effect. I thought the same thing when I added my site. Gave it a while, and then I started getting results. The trick is keywords, and keywords on your smugmug site as well. I think Andy had a good post about that, perhaps it was something about pro-user tips? Check that out for sure. Good luck!

flyingdutchie

digital faerie wrote:

I think it will take a few days to take effect. I thought the same thing when I added my site. Gave it a while, and then I started getting results. The trick is keywords, and keywords on your smugmug site as well. I think Andy had a good post about that, perhaps it was something about pro-user tips? Check that out for sure. Good luck!

Thanks.

I think i must take more than just a few days... i has been a couple of months now.

My site is actually found by Google, but under the URL http://flyingdutchie.smugmug.com. I'd rather have Google find my site under www.streetsofboston.com.

I have the suspicion that google deems the streetsofboston to be a copy of the (older) flyingdutchie.smugmug.com and refuses to index it.

I have no idea how to 'phase out' the flyingdutchie.smugmug.com in favor of the streetsofboston. I wonder how other smugmuggers did this who went from basic/power-user to a pro-account.

JimM

Google places a lot of priority on the title of your website, in your case "Pictures of Boston's Streets - powered by smugmug". You would have a better chance of finding it in google using these search terms. If you want to be found in other ways add it to your title. Maybe try:
"Boston, MA: Pictures of Boston's Streets, Streets of Boston"

digital faerie

JimM wrote:

Google places a lot of priority on the title of your website, in your case "Pictures of Boston's Streets - powered by smugmug". You would have a better chance of finding it in google using these search terms. If you want to be found in other ways add it to your title. Maybe try:
"Boston, MA: Pictures of Boston's Streets, Streets of Boston"

that's a good idea!

flyingdutchie

JimM wrote:

Google places a lot of priority on the title of your website, in your case "Pictures of Boston's Streets - powered by smugmug". You would have a better chance of finding it in google using these search terms. If you want to be found in other ways add it to your title. Maybe try:
"Boston, MA: Pictures of Boston's Streets, Streets of Boston"

Good idea, Jim! I will change the title, although i'm not sure about the "Boston, MA:" part ...

But the problem is that my site-name (streetsofboston) is still unknown to Google ("site:streetsofboston.com" returns nothing, and the strange thing is: googling for "site:streets-of-boston" does return a hit... i registered this domain as well). What i'd like to do is to have Google phase out flyingdutchie.smugmug in favor of streetsofboston, but i don't know how.