Will a "Not found" WMT crawl error lead to new site being unindexed?

[hehachris]

I have created a new website and added a link in my indexed blog on Oct 14. The new blog entry got indexed within hours.
But the website is still not indexed today. I checked my webmaster tools account and found a "not found" crawl error recorded on Oct 16, complaining a broken link somepage.html, while it should be somepage.shtml

So will this error be the cause that my site being unindexed? or Google really needs a long time to index a new site?

[tedster]

Welcome to the forums, hehachris.

If Google has an incorrect url for the one and only backlink you know of, then it seems unlikely that the new site would be indexed - not until the correct url gets picked up, at any rate.

Google does apply some stringent criteria to including pages from a new website in the index, but they often give a break for a short period where rankings are wildly better than expected. This seems like a short test period, because in most cases the great rankings go away. In some cases the new site gets immediate attention from around the web and only then do the good rankings stick.

It's also common for lots of urls from a new site to get indexed, only to see some or many then get dropped. Whatever is in your new site's future, it will probably require more than one backlink for anything stable to happen in the index.

[hehachris]

I am sorr ybut I didnt express it in clear. The error is complaining an internal link on the new web site, not my blog.
Actually the web site is an entry to a contest, and it only contains 2 pages. If it cant got indexed and ranked top 15 before mid of Nov, I will have no chance to win.

[edited by: tedster at 5:32 am (utc) on Oct. 20, 2008]

[tedster]

One internal link error will not stop other urls on the same domain from being indexed. But you'll probably need more than one backlink to win a top 15 ranking - and especially more than one backlink from a domain that is owned by the same person.

I'd suggest you read up in our Link Development Forum [webmasterworld.com], perhaps beginnings with the forum library [webmasterworld.com].

[hehachris]

My site was indexed for 1 or 2 days. But it disappeared in the SERP today! Does this mean that my site is being penalized?

[g1smd]

Sign up for Google WebmasterTools and look at the reports for your site. There may be some clues.

Run your site through Xenu LinkSleuth and inspect the results very closely.

[hehachris]

as indicated by the topic and the first post I do have a WHT account. There is no updated information there.
I tried Xenu Link Sleuth it found these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/[term removed]
error code: 403 (forbidden request), linked from page(s):
< 2 pages >

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/[term removed]
error code: 403 (forbidden request), linked from page(s):
< 2 pages >

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/check/referer
error code: 403 (forbidden request), linked from page(s):
< 4 pages >

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=referer
error code: 403 (forbidden request), linked from page(s):
< 4 pages >

http://www.google.com/search&[search terms removed]
error code: 403 (forbidden request), linked from page(s):
< 2 pages >

14 broken link(s) reported

But those links are actually accessible.

[edited by: tedster at 4:39 pm (utc) on Oct. 23, 2008]
[edit reason] remove urls an search terms [/edit]

[g1smd]

Yeah, those other sites don't let Xenu spider them. So, that's not an issue.

Apologies for suggesting WMT when you are already in. I just answered several similar questions in other forums, normally read more than a hundred threads per day at various places.

One issue that is coming up is that Xenu is seeing your index pages under two different URLs... both with and without index.html on the end. I would link to the shorter URL and redirect the other.

[hehachris]

Thanks for your suggestion, g1smd.
I found 2 other posts mentioning the "indexed, de-indexed, re-indexed, stable" for new web site. Hope this is my case.