some troubles with google

home page not found & are this links ok

[mithdoc]

Hello,
Well, like others around here I have a problem with google not displaing my home page. I mean the site still is rated 5 and has some backward links but it is not displayed on Google for a particular keyword on first page.
Do you think the cause may by a large number of pages from my forums. I mean only this month Google vissited in my site more than 4000 pages.

The other question is about linking other sites. I just found today the word "link farm" ...scary thing. Would it be considered a spam if I insert a link for a related site on most of the pages in my site (and there are many pages)? And if 'yes" (which, of course, I don't want to do) what would be the number of pages where I can insert a link to a related site not to be considered a spam.

Thank you!

[Marcia]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, mithdoc. Yes, you're having the same problem a lot are and all you can do is wait.

For linking to a related site on all pages, that's not the *usual* thing to do except in the case of web designers on client sites, and even though that's legitimate and standard for the industry, even that's being wondered about.

No one can tell anyone with any certainty what's safe and what isn't safe. Generally if we're hesitant enough to wonder about something and ask, then we have doubts within ourselves in the first place and should back off over to the side of utmost caution.

Do a site search on cross-linking and see if you can find anything that applies. And if there's anything you're not comfortable about, just don't do it.

[twilight47]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, mithdoc.

This thread going on right now may have good info for you.

[webmasterworld.com...]

[mithdoc]

Hi,
Thanks for the welcome message and for your advices.

I just replaced almost all links to the related site with something that looks like "http://...link.php?id=123". Do you think this will solve the problem? Tell me yes, please!

Now, my site has in the community some sponsored categories with forums for users of online products of some companies. Of course their logo on those forums is linked to their page and ... same problem the forums have many pages. Should I replace the link for their logo in the same way?

[Powdork]

I just replaced almost all links to the related site with something that looks like "http://...link.php?id=123". Do you think this will solve the problem? Tell me yes, please!

Sorry, thats no guarantee. My experience is that those links are less likely to be followed, but still can be. If you are concerned, try calling the link from an external js file located in a directory protected by robots.txt.

[takagi]

Would it be considered a spam if I insert a link for a related site on most of the pages in my site (and there are many pages)?

At the footer of each page in these forums, you can see a 'Hosted by' link. At this moment there are some 80k pages indexed. Maybe the PR transfer is somehow limited in such a case. But this is not considered a 'link farm'.

<added>
I just checked it, and it turns out that the snippet at the SERPs don't contain the link! So Brett is cloaking?

In the SERPs you can see forum pages end like:

Older: <some title>
Global: Older: <some other title>
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</added>

[mithdoc]

Hello all and thank you for your replies.
I read almost every day many messages here on these forums and I found very good info! Thanks to you guys I found a problem with some pages duplicating content so I removed them.

Well, my site came now to the 4th posisiton on Google from nowere and I'm pretty glad for that. Few days ago it started with an in&out "dance" but it looks pretty stable now.

I am realy impressed that googlebot went so deep in the site and visited about 8000 pages in few weeks.

Best whishes and keep up the good work!

[g1smd]

>> I just replaced almost all links to the related site with something that looks like "http://...link.php?id=123". Do you think this will solve the problem <<

Google does not like links with ?id=123 in them, as it might mistake them for a session ID and then get trapped in the site.

[GoogleGuy]

Glad things are going well for you, mithdoc. It certainly can't hurt to avoid?id=xxx parameters.

[Thanasus]

I had a similar problem. I have a site with about 100,000 unique pages of content and googlebot was only crawling my home page. The reason was I had session ids passed in the URLs if cookie support wasn't detected. I removed this ability a few days ago, and freshbot has crawled a few of my inner pages finally.