Need help, lost top Google rankings, need it back

google spider search rankings

[just_a_guy]

A few months ago when I would perform a search for Koolance (can I say this?) my company site would pop up on the first page, now after changing the layout of our website to a more perfessional look we lost our top rankings. What acn we do to get these first page rankings back? Just how does Googles Spiders work? HELP!

[brendan]

Your site is not in your profile it would help if you put it in there so people can see what you are talking about.

Loosing your ranking could be for any number of reasons if you put the URL in your profile then I will have a look and try and help.

[Macguru]

Hi just_a_guy.

Welcome to WebmasterWorld.
Did you read paynt's welcome post [webmasterworld.com]? Nice way to get started here.

Google is updating it's database right now. Results are not stable yet. They will probably be in one week, or less.

May I suggest you to enjoy the Google knowledge base [webmasterworld.com]? Lots of info you can grab really fast in there.

[just_a_guy]

Ok, I inserted the url in my profile.

[pageoneresults]

This may be your problem...

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;URL=http://yourdomain.com">

P.S. I can't recall the last time I saw the home page for a Yahoo! Store in the top ten.

Why the redirect? I would have suggested building a nice complimentary opening page and then let the user click on a link to enter the store. I absolutely suggest against any form of redirect unless it is a server side solution. Even then, 301 redirect is probably the only way to go.

[Mike_Mackin]

>I absolutely suggest against any form of redirect unless it is a server side solution.

Plus it doesn't make for a happy user experience either.

[typo]

[edited by: Mike_Mackin at 6:04 pm (utc) on July 27, 2002]

[taxpod]

Your "domain" is a meta refresh redirect to a yahoo storefront. Has it always been?

I just took a quick look but it seems your yahoo store front is mostly image maps with hyperlinks. There isn't very much there for a robot to chew on as to site contents.

But going back to your domain, I see that the page has PR but I didn't think meta refresh forwarders got any of that. Also the PR for both your domain and the Yahoo store front are showing PR4s.

The thing is that both these pages ARE in the database so you are not "gone."

[Axacta]

I just put your home page through the SEW validator and it found 29 unique errors and 62 total errors. This is a lot for a page of less than 9k. Googlebot just may be having trouble reading your page.

[just_a_guy]

the question is is how can we fix these errors?

We use the Yahoo store editor for the store and we are not exactly coding guru's.

Can these errors be pinpointed? Are there any tools available that we could use that would find these errors, and maybe suggest solutions to these errors?

As far as the redirect page is concerned, we had a person that was assigned to work on it, but...well he is gone now leaving us hi and dry.

[edited by: just_a_guy at 6:29 pm (utc) on July 27, 2002]

[Axacta]

Hire somebody. Shouldn't take more than a few hours for a pro to fix it up - but this is an amature's opinion. ;)

<added>

Check out the Commercial Exchange forum: [webmasterworld.com...]

[edited by: Axacta at 6:31 pm (utc) on July 27, 2002]

[just_a_guy]

send your resumes to...............

No, really.....now what exaclty is this SEW validator that you used?

[Axacta]

SEW is Search Engine World, which is a sister site to WW. Here's the home page: [searchengineworld.com...]

Go to the bottom of the page and click html validator, plug in your url and click validate. It will tell you everything that's wrong with your page. The idea is to have zero errors, although some at the board disagree and say some errors are permissable, and sometimes even necessary. Show the results to some webmasters, get some quotes, and get it fixed. If you hurry you still might catch Googlebot's next spidering which is about to happen within the next few days. Chances are that you might be back in the August update.

<added>

Check all of your pages.