Forum Moderators: open
Any thoughts on what I might be doing - or not doing - that makes my homepage not acceptable? Perhaps some current wisdom on what Ink may do differently when evaluating homepages versus subpages?
FYI, the homepage is pretty standard: Links to the important subpages, average kw density, kw's in links to subs, etc.
Stumped.
All my pages do fine in Ink except for my homepage too. Homepage is MIA and has been since the moment I PFI'd (well, actually it came back for a few months and then disappeared again). I'm inclined to think it's not a PFI problem, but rather a problem with Ink and the way that they are displaying homepages. Perhaps Ink gets confused under certain cicumstances (not sure what those are). So strange. Keep us updated if you can find a resolution.
Odd!
Possibilities that I can think of:
--Homepage is assessed differently by the algo?
--Dup content filter, especially when homepage is a quasi site map, as mine is?
--Bug? But I hate this, since often "bug" really means "I can't figure it out, so it must just be a bug." (Usually there is a reason, even if it's a dumb one.)
I see other homepages doing well with higher and lower kw density. Sharper and less sharp Titles. Etc. It's driving me crazy.
Tigger, when you say "switched pages" can I conclude that you are implying something like submitting a site map or some similar approach? That might be worth a try.
Mine doesn't yet, since the site is relatively new. That's the only thing I can think of ... so far.
Appreciate the insight - didn't know that. Still, we have some subpages doing well that were also PFI, and less than 200 words. Do you believe there's a different rule for the homepage?
I realize that many pages do, in fact, do quite well with less text, but overall, INK heavily favors text. It's equivalent to saying that pages with many backlinks do well in Google. Not always the case, but quite often.
Actually, we have done EXTENSIVE research on this and it is definitely the case. Also, I recall an INK rep saying that webmasters need to provide mucho text to expect good results. Oddly enough, I have noticed a bias towards index pages in INK :)
As far as the homepage issue, that was my thought (not enough words). You also have to keep in mind that INK is quite "buggy" and not very reliable in general.
I generally don't post actual research on the forums, but no one reads this one anyway :)
I have no idea how the .net URL got into the index.
I also notice that none of my pages (except ones submitted recently) have been indexed since last October, although they all used to be spidered and indexed regularly.
On certain searches, I can get the .net page to show up at the top and the .ca to show at the bottom, even though the .ca is the hosted web site and the PFI URL.
But most of the time they are buried since all my other pages outrank the home page.
I've taken back my submission and am now working with two others of my most important pages. One of them was already #6 for my preferred search term, so this may be promising.
It could be that it just didn't work.
But I also realize that I don't know how often INK updates their SERP's in such a way that a previously lost page might come back (akin to a G update event). I see small fluctuations in the INK SERP's, but nothing major so I'm not sure if enough time has passed yet.
Any thoughts on how much time passes between significant updates (if they even have significant update more than annually!) and/or how long a change might impact a page's ranking?
Any other thoughts on how to bring back a homepage? FYI, I noted this before, but all of my subpages are doing just fine.
Not an authority, just suggesting. My site site is penalized and after PFI it is dead last on the results. Still shows on a few Google /Yahoo results but the average user wouldn't find it.
I'm trying to sort it out now, i.e., trying to get some feedback. Will post if I learn anything.
Anyone else with light to shed, feel free to jump in! :-{
My search submission partner, bCentral, has grudgingly admitted that this is a problem, despite the fact that Ink's own guidelines say that gtld's redirected to the main web site are acceptable and indeed common practice.
Of course, even if I could get steelrail.net removed from the index and then took it offline, there is no guarantee that steelrail.ca would come out of the doghouse. And of course Inktomi and their search submit partners refuse to deal with this problem, although at least bCentral did acknowledge the problem (after many frustrating exchanges). By the way, PositionTech did not even do that much.
It's all very frustrating. At this point I am ready to support any campaign to urge the public to boycott Inktomi-based search engines (e.g. msn.com), and to switch to Google when Yahoo goes to Inktomi (does anyone know when this is happening?). I belive this will happen anyway, because Inktomi has so many problems that Yahoo will be unable to hold onto their share for very long after cutover.
I doubt it too. I recently removed my .net offline, linked to the (now gone) .net to let Slurp know that it's off and all it does is only get the robots.txt from my .com. Nothing else. A few 6+ month old pages with the .net are still indexed.
For the past few months it had a 301 redirect, it didn't help and the penalty doesn't seem to be lifted automatically. Extremely flawed and unfair system. Let's hope they get their act together.
I've read in numerous places that INK has trouble with 301's. It never dawned on me that doing things properly would result in a problem with any SE...let alone a big one link INK...but the evidence is starting to build.
Will keep all informed as I learn. Man, INK has a way to go on the basics, huh?
