Have I been bad???

[parryl]

My site had been listed on google for at least 6 months, but now
doesn't appear at all. I see it is still listed on Yahoo, though. I'm certainly not an expert at web design and am not trying anything devious on purpose - I'm just an author, innocently struggling to sell his book on the web!

The URL is:

http://www.geocities.com/ricecrustbook

The only unusual things I can think of that I do are:

use a kickme.to/has.it redirection pointing another url to the above site
use some javascript to "hide" my email address from spammers on a few pages
use frames, which I now understand is not good, so I will change

Please help me understand why the site has been removed from Google and how to proceed to get it listed again?

Help appreciated!
Parry

[dannysullivan]

Did you change to using frames recently? That might be part of the problem.

Looking at Yahoo, I see that they are listing all the text from your home page, even though in reality, this is part of seperate pages that make up the entire framed content. That's a new one one me. But it's a good thing, because it essentially gives Yahoo more content to lock onto.

In contrast, Google may be reading the info in your noframes area but perhaps may have decided to no longer index it.

Overall, I'd suggest getting rid of the frames and perhaps getting your site off of Geocities entirely. Crawlers have often tended not to get some pages hosted by free web sites. As Yahoo owns Geocities, that may be one reason why you see them picking you up, doing the extra effort involved.

[AussieWebmaster]

Google has been dropping the positions of a lot of geocities aol type sites lately.. will have to do a little more investigating this week.

[parryl]

Thanks for the thoughts thus far.

Danny, in answer to your ?, yes, I've always used frames...

1] You say Google may have been reading the noframes area, but now decided to no longer index it. Question now is, if I get rid of the frames, will their crawler then index it when it revisits, or is the crawler now somehow "flagged" to never return?

2] You mention getting off of geocities. I use it because honestly, right now I just don't make enough $$$ to pay for a domain name and site hosting. Have you any suggestions for better, but inexpensive ways to get a site up?

[Marcia]

Parry, this is a problem right here

>>use a kickme.to/has.it redirection pointing another url to the above site

Those find me, send me, bounce me and toss me site redirections were very popular several years ago among the personal homepages crowd (where I got my start on the web) but they really accomplish nothing, and redirections end up being problematic.

When you get inbound links to your site, which is necessary, which URL will the links point to? If you apply for an ODP listing, it will be the Geocities URL they'll list. You will not find any of those type of URLs in search engines; they're cute, but they're not promotable.

Domain names are $9 a year for a .com and for hosting, there aren't any banners on your geo site, so you must be paying them something to keep ads off - you can get hosting for that amount, probably less.

Your site is for a book but it's travel related - very competitive, it'll take digging deep for some very specific keywords. You'll be wise to look around for a variety of ways to promote and not restrict to just relying on search engine traffic, including networking by getting involved with some of the writers communities online.

In your place I wouldn't waste any time - I'd go see if parry.com is available and grab it up. It's easy to remember and it's never a bad idea to establish branding for a name - you never can tell what the future will bring.

[dannysullivan]

1] You say Google may have been reading the noframes area, but now decided to no longer index it. Question now is, if I get rid of the frames, will their crawler then index it when it revisits, or is the crawler now somehow "flagged" to never return?

They MAY be no longer indexing the content in your particular case. Or they might be. I can't really tell, because the page itself simply isn't listed. I do think that getting rid of frames is generally better to do for all major search engines. It will certainly help eliminate one of the variables here. And the crawler would see this automatically, the next time it revisites.

You mention getting off of geocities. I use it because honestly, right now I just don't make enough $$$ to pay for a domain name and site hosting. Have you any suggestions for better, but inexpensive ways to get a site up?
Exactly with Marcia on this. Domain names and hosting can be very cheap. I use Tiger Technologies (http://tigertech.net/), and that's $20 per year for the name, $7 per month for a great service. I'm sure others know of similar good companies and low prices. Yes, you are paying something. But you're also elminating a big chunk of these type of worries.

Alternatively, you might consider launching something with Blogger (http://blogger.com/). Just as Yahoo owns GeoCities and may do a better job indexing that content, Google owns Blogger, gives pages away there for free and may also perhaps do a better job indexing as well.

If Blogger got picked up by both Google and Yahoo, then you could point people at GeoCities back to Blogger. But honestly, I'd spend the money to have complete control of your own area on the web.

[parryl]

OK, thanks guys, this is great advice.

As you recall, after 6 months of being in Google, my geocities site was suddenly dropped for some unknow reason.

As a first step, I've removed the frames from the site, and before doing anything radical like moving to a different service provider, I'd like to keep it where it is and just see if google comes back and re-includes it in their index.

Is it reasonable to expect Google to re-visit and how long should I wait?

Continued thanks,
Parry

[K.S. Katz]

Is it reasonable to expect Google to re-visit and how long should I wait?

From my experience, it takes between 6-8 weeks for Google to revisit. (This is of course an average. I've had some sites that get visit more regularly.)