Forum Moderators: open
A couple of weeks ago I decided to have a go at improving the ranking for my web page on google. basically I altered the title to make it more descriptive and include the area where I work, i also repeated some of the keywords into alt tags.. though i didn't think i'd gone over the top.
Having been away on holiday last week, I came home to find that google had re-spidered the page and it was coming up as the first result for my chosen keywords - "web design coleshill" good result ..so I thought!
Unfortunately I've tried it again today and i'm getting no result. except if I type in "midlandweb" then it brings up cached titles and descriptions from prior to my update. Why is this the case? have I been booted? or does Google sometimes revert to a back up?
I'd be grateful if anyone could take a look at my code and tell me if i'm messing up somewhere..
many thanks - Trevor
We try not to post URLs here.
You can refer to a site in your profile.
That said, try taking your JavaScript off page.
I know the javascript doesn't help, but thats not going to revert the results to cached, no longer existing pages is it? what I don't understand is that the new versions appeared ..then went.
Trevor
When the new title and description are listed, does the URL in the listing have a date next to it in green? If so, then I'm 99% sure that there's no need to worry as it should settle at the next Google update [webmasterworld.com]
If when you are listed the listing has a date next to the URL in Google's search results then it behaves as a temporary listing, superseding the listing from the last update. When the temporary listing gets old (a day or two), you revert back to the update. If you weren't in the update, then you disappear.
I'm probably being really thick here, please allow me a bit of slack for my ignorance..but as I understand what you've said..
Google spiders the page, then puts it in immediately as a search result. This is however temporary, and its continuation as a 'result' is dependant on its then being included in the actual "update" which occurs a few days later?
So am I right in assuming that the update missed my page and therefore I'm stuck until next month with the old (unsearchable) version? if so what would be my best course of action to remedy the situation? what was the criterea for it being de-selected (if thats what has happened)
Trev
Yes, for this subset of pages that gets 'fresh' crawling (high PR pages and anything in ODP or Yahoo!).
> and its continuation as a 'result' is dependant on its then being included in the actual "update" which occurs a few days later?
It could be up to about four weeks later. It's not necessarily the 'fresh' listing that ends up in the next update, just a fetch of the URL from the current crawl.
> So am I right in assuming that the update missed my page and therefore I'm stuck until next month with the old (unsearchable) version? if so what would be my best course of action to remedy the situation? what was the criterea for it being de-selected (if thats what has happened)
I don't imagine the process to be de-selection as such (as in a ban or penalty), rather you were in yesterday's fresh index but not today's. There's not really a situation to remedy, instead you had a temporary bonus for being 'fresh' crawled and recently updated.
That written, I would expect that your chance of being 'fresh' listed increases if you change the page a little each day.
Of course all this assumes that you are being 'fresh' crawled and that you had a 'fresh' listing. I'm just outlining one possibility.
I don't recall Google ever describing how 'Fresh' works, so this is my personal model of what happens.
