Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
As Backus has said, I have never had any problems with AV for using site maps, and I don't think Laisha was referring to sitemaps.
Laisha may come and clear it up ;)
But no sitemaps SHOULDN't BE a problem in AV.
Dazz
Which means Directories are ... ???
Some of my sites are pure directories with no content other than themed links. These seem to have no problems with SE's, including AV.
I think the deciding factor here might be the ration of linkt to other text. IE., if the page were only links with no other info/code at all, no formatting, no text, nothing, then that could be argued as being spam.
However a page with site-consistant formatting including an what we all know to be a site map would probably not raise alarm bells - in my opinion.
Onya
Woz
Even breaking them down into categories with a text heading may do at a pinch.
Also see how they done it and also check for meta tags.
This is probably the most definitive way.
Dazz
Hopefully they don't go down the pan all together, but you would be wise to keep other more important engines in mind, for instance Google loves sitemaps.
Dazz
i'd also say make sure other pages on the site link to the site map - that way, the site map becomes part of the site rather than some sort of doorway page which could be classed as spam.
i'd also go along with the suggestion of text on the page - maybe a very brief description of each page?
Yeah!! I can include text for the links.
that can be done.
Thankx!!
AV says that these are reasons that AV may block a site. I have several pages which are categorized links to other sites, and those have always done well.
Notice that some of the criteria mentioned can only be discerned by manual viewing of the site, for instance pages with off-topic or excessive keywords.
My guess is that these reasons are used in specific cases, i.e., when there is a complaint.
However, AltaVista generates such a small percentage of traffic that I honestly don't worry about it.
that's probably because i was writing my message at the time you posted yours! (2 minutes time difference)
>>If I have to use Robot tags then how will the page be
>>indexed by the google spider ?
<meta name="robots" content="NOINDEX"> should still allow googlebot to follow the links on the page without indexing the page ...
if you have a page on your site with outbound links to other parts of your site but no inbound links from the rest of your site, then that is generally deemed to be a "doorway" page. search engines ban doorway pages or sites that use doorway pages. google in particular makes it very clear that if you have a page on your site with no inbound links to it, then it will not be indexed.
i would say if you make the site map an integral part of your site (ie, have every page on your site linking to the site map) then you shouldn't have any problems. the very worst that could happen would be for google to drop your site - i don't think it will happen - but if it does, remove the site map and google should relist your site.
you might want to check google for other sites with a site map - i see 5.1 million results. [google.com...]
looks like it's ok to me.
you originally mentioned altavista. the following worldwide search from the uk gives me 10481889 results
[uk.altavista.com...]
looks like it's ok with altavista as well.
you might also want to check the google forum for more specific information about google.
Sorry to be late to the thread, Sujith173. I was out of town last week.
Welcome to Webmasterworld! Looks like you got lots of help from the experts. Anything not cleared up yet? We are happy to help.
