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iWeb and Google: Getting your pages indexed

IJ Reilly

IJ Reilly

macrumors P6
Original poster
Jul 16, 2002
17,912
1,506
Palookaville
Having created a web site on .Mac with iWeb, how does one get the site indexed by Google? Google already spiders my domain-hosted web sites on a regular basis, according to the reports generated by my ISP. Will Google ever find a web site hosted on .Mac on its own, or must I create a link to it from a page I know Google already spiders?

Thanks!
 
IJ Reilly said:
That difficult, eh? :)

The implication from the page is that they review before adding, and don't guarantee when or even if it will be indexed. The googlebot by contrast seems to be automatic. Hits my domains every month. How do you get the attention of the goolebot?
Click to expand...
They are the same thing. When you sumbit your domain with that it puts into the list to be looked at by the bot. However, not every site that the bot looks at will be put into the database. But almost all are. Its basically saying you can't so if the bot thinks its not worth it. It just will not put sites that look like they have almost nothing on them in there.:D
 
iGary said:
My question is how do you get iWeb to render text as text, not an image...
Click to expand...
It is rendered as text. The only time it renders text as an image is if you add any special formating (e.g. shadow). Normal fonts are rendered as normal text.
 
trainguy77 said:
They are the same thing. When you sumbit your domain with that it puts into the list to be looked at by the bot. However, not every site that the bot looks at will be put into the database. But almost all are. Its basically saying you can't so if the bot thinks its not worth it. It just will not put sites that look like they have almost nothing on them in there.:D
Click to expand...

Thanks, good explanation. I had a vision of some guy in a cubicle at Google hunched over a computer display saying, "yep" and "nope." :)
 
G wizz said:
Once I have created a webite in iweb, how do I then post that to my website address I have just purchased :confused:

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

If you mean link it to a domain, then you need to set forwarding at your domain registrar. Check your account with them; you should have an option for forwarding all requests for your domain to a url, which you can set as your .Mac page. If you mean, upload it as a site to a non-.Mac server, then you will need to export the site from iWeb and upload these files with an FTP application to the server where your domain is hosted. If you are doing the latter, understand that you will lose some of iWeb's functionality, such as podcasting and blogs.
 
Also don't forget that it in some instances it can take a little while (like a month) for the bot to actually visit a website, even though it's been formally submitted.
 
AlBDamned said:
Also don't forget that it in some instances it can take a little while (like a month) for the bot to actually visit a website, even though it's been formally submitted.
Click to expand...

Well, it's been almost a month, still no Google. :(
 
IJ Reilly said:
Well, it's been almost a month, still no Google. :(
Click to expand...

How, when, and where your page shows up in Google is a very complex thing.

No one knows exactly how the Google algorithm ranks pages, but I can tell you that this will help:

  • Having a page title that matches content
  • Human-readable URLs (no site.com/?1020,202/p4y3.htm stuff)
  • Using meta-tags that are relative to your content
  • Linking to higher ranked and more popular sites
  • Higher ranked and more popular sites linking back to you
  • Page visits, and whether they are direct or through another site

Indexing it and submitting it to Google or other search engines isn't even necessary, and some SEO (search engine optimisation) experts even advise against it.

The Google "spider" crawls its way through the web, and if your site is popular, it will be attracted to your part of the web, if you have content, tags, links, titles, and urls that relate, it will be able to navigate your web better. The better and quicker it can do that, the quicker you'll see results. (Best way I can put it lol)

Hopefully your site comes up soon and gets a good rank. Best of luck :)
 
Josh said:
How, when, and where your page shows up in Google is a very complex thing.

No one knows exactly how the Google algorithm ranks pages, but I can tell you that this will help:
Click to expand...

I know, from googling a specific phrase, that my .Mac site isn't indexed yet. I don't necessarily expect the site to become popular, but I do want someone who's interested in the topic to be able to find it.

Can iWeb set meta tag content? I haven't found a way.
 
If you want your site to show up in Google search results you basically have to pimp your site everywhere. Find list sites with similar interests, put your Web site in your signature on forums, take out paid advertising. Basically anything you can do to get your site out there. Google ranks things higher based on how many links there are to a site, thus the google-bombing phenomenon. Also, sometimes it is really hard to break into the google ranks on certain subjects. For example my professional Web site and my Web comic show up near the top of the list for their respective titles, but when you try to google my name you have to click through a few pages because there was a soldier who died in Iraq with the same name as me who has tons of sites devoted to him.

As for Googling a specific phrase, just because your site says something unique does not mean your site will show up if you google that phrase even though you have been indexed. Exactly what is indexed by the googlebots is anyone's guess. They pride themselves on keeping that information secret (for good reasons too or the corporations would skew all search results).
 
baleensavage said:
As for Googling a specific phrase, just because your site says something unique does not mean your site will show up if you google that phrase even though you have been indexed. Exactly what is indexed by the googlebots is anyone's guess. They pride themselves on keeping that information secret (for good reasons too or the corporations would skew all search results).
Click to expand...

I'm searching for a person's name, which I think Google indexes in a straight-forward manner. It's kind of frustrating -- I can find lots of other references to this person on Google, but not mine.

EricNau said:
To find out if your site has been indexed, google the url (this is more accurate than googling a specific phrase).
Click to expand...

Great suggestion. Not found, though. :(
 
I'm beginning to wonder if this is even possible. Now nearly six weeks later, my .Mac site is still not indexed by Google, or Yahoo. I've submitted links to both, and linked my .Mac site from one of my domain sites, which I know is already Google-botted. Still, nothing.
 
Actually you can edit the iWeb created web site directly. When you publish them to MobileMe, the files are stored in your iDisk. Navigate to "iDisk"/Web/Sites/ and you'll find the web site you created. You can edit the html files directly and add whatever meta tags you like.

I wanted to hide my sites from search engines so I added a robots.txt file to the web site root to ensure it would be ignored. It's a family pictures site so I don't want it showing up in search results.

The contents of the robots file is:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /
 
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