Google not indexing site after 8 weeks despite of googlebot visits

[nabby]

Eight weeks ago, I started a new site having a new url and domain. The reason was, I wanted to get out of the Geocities free pages. The new site has been online all the time, and it has decent content and meta tags. Googlebot has visited the site several times. However, Google search still doesn't find it at all, not even with the most appropriate search terms.

On the old Geocities pages, I changed all those pages identical and included in them a link to the new site. The pages had a redirect in the meta tag, so, after 5 seconds the visitor would be automatically transferred to the new site (if he didn't click the link before that already). Some two weeks ago, I though that the redirect might be a bad thing for Google, so I removed them - now the pages only have normal links to the new site.

So, did this affect, and can I expect my site to be listed in the future? Or do I just need more links from different sites to my new url? (There are some already, although Google's own 'link:' search doesn't return any results) Yahoo and MSN show my site in top results, but not Google.

I'm just worried as I read somewhere that for new sites it's bad if they get the freshbot to explore the site before the deepbot does that. So, does Google even understand that the old and the new site are different sites? The old site is now in Google results somewhere at place 15, but I'd like to see the new site there instead (and even a bit higher).

No need to say, I can't use any robots.txt or .htaccess or such on the old Geocities pages.

Can somebody help?

[ronburk]

First you say "Google not indexing site", which has a very black and white meaning. But then you say:

Google search still doesn't find it at all, not even with the most appropriate search terms.

which makes it sound like you don't understand how to tell if something is indexed or not. What does "appropriate" have to do with it?

Pick a page. Pick a 10-word phrase from that page. Enclose it in double quotes. Search for it in Google. And then tell us, are you talking about not being indexed, or just not ranking as high as you would like for some specific term?

[nabby]

Well, you are right. I was too hasty with this. Google finds my page if I search with its url ("www.site.com") or the index page's title. The site is about a musical artist, and if I search solely with the artist's name, my site doesn't come up in the results (top 500, that's all Google shows, although it says that it finds thousands of results). Yahoo and MSN search show my site in top results when searching with the artist's name. So, is it that you have to "build" your success in Google, differently from other search engines?

[g1smd]

What do you get for these three searches:

site:domain.com
site:domain.com -inurl:www
site:www.domain.com

One of them should return zero results.

[nabby]

site:domain.com
Returns the site (index page)

site:domain.com -inurl:www
No results.

site:www.domain.com
Returns the site (index page)

By the way, only the index page shows up in Google results. I'd like to correct that. The index page has text links to most other pages of the site too, but is it just a matter of time when those will show up too?

[g1smd]

Run Xenu LinkSleuth over the site and see what it finds.

[ronburk]

The site is about a musical artist, and if I search solely with the artist's name, my site doesn't come up in the results

Google is not as easily gamed as Yahoo! and MSN. You should probably look at a 1-year strategy for getting onto page 1 of the SERPs for any even modestly competitive keyword. Or just ignore Google and stick with the engines that are more susceptible to manipulation.