Geeklog Forums

I know this has nothing to do with GL, but I might be able to draw some wisdom out of the fellow geeklogers.

Googlebot used to visite my local news site 3 times a day and listed me at the top of the key words. Somehow, I offended it and it stopped coming and dropped me to 100s pages behind, even though I continue to be at the top of MSN and Yahoo. I tried many ways based on what I read on the web about googlebot, but Bot is still mad at me.

I guess this is how I offended Bot. At the beginning I linked my site to several sites I developed for my clients. That made Bot thought that mysite was popular, so it gave me a lot of attention. Since those sites were not really mine, I dropped those links after I ranked high on google. And soon after that, google also dropped me. According to what I read on google website, that's what Bot does; when people drops you, Bot also drops you. But the problem is I couldn't lure Bot in anymore, no matter what I do, even though my links has increased. I am also a local dmoz editor, but Bot doesn't care!

Bot does come back to my site every now and then, but reads only a couple of stories; it used to read many, if not all of them. I know some of you guys even have to keep it away.

Yesterday, I submitted a sitemap.xml to google. So far it shows no signs yet. Hope it'll help.

Sam

This might be a dumb question but do you have a robots.txt file?

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It's not a dumb question. I don't have one currently. I tried it a while ago putting a robot.txt file to ask it not to visit my staticpages. But it didn't visit my other pages either.

BTW, have you notice bots visit the link.php? I don't remember it ever came to the link page. That means putting a link on somone's geeklog's link.php doesn't help, am I right?

Sam

My actual GL site is ranked pretty high on Google with certain links from my links.php page.

So I would say that it does visit your links.php page. I would suggest trying trying a robots.txt file again. (Note that it's plural)

Some useful links.

Robots.txt Validator

Robots.txt Generator

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GeekLog Hosting, Installations and Upgrades - WWW.AWEHOST.COM - Hosting starts @ only $4.95/mo.

You don't need a robots.txt unless you don't want to visit certain pages. But you might be one of the million sites with popular keywords that everyone also uses, so it's too hard to get a proper ranking. You can have a look here to see what search engines find in your site.

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Dutch Geeklog sites about camping/hiking:
www.kampeerzaken.nl | www.campersite.nl | www.caravans.nl | www.caravans.net

It's not a popular keyword site. It is just a local news site for the town of Paramus, NJ, called ParamusPost.

When you search on Yahoo or MSN for "Paramus News" or "Parmus Newspaper", we are at the top. But when you try that at Google you get the sites with most of them are not even relevent. Oops! I am seeing my site on the first page of Google for the first time, in a long time now. The DMOZ entery is listed at the second. Maybe my sitemap.xml is also beginning to work.

Do you guys know who topix.com is? That's the guy who founded DMOZ. When you search for you local news on Google, his site is always at the top.

Anyway this can be a case study for you guys. Thanks!

Sam

Another thing that might interest you guys. www.ParamusPress.com, that shows up on the google search I mentioned above, is my alternative name parked or redirected to ParamusPost.com. It has no content in it. Yet, Google lists it at the top. That means somehow, Google bot has blacklisted ParamusPost.com.

Sam

I see what you're saying about yahoo and msn. Also both sites have a 0/10 Google page rank which could be why they are not listed as high on Google.

Page Ranks

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I don't get what you are talking about. My problem is exactly the opposite. How comes ParamusPress.com, which is an empty url redirection domain, ranks a whole lot higher than the main site it redirects to? I think it is not as simple as they decribed there.

If you look at that other sites on that page, most of them have nothing to do with the search terms mentioned above. I wrote to Google using that search result as a proof to them that they have become irrelevent. Of course they didn't write back, except kicking back a canned reply. Google still has about 40% of the market share, I need that even though they have become less relevant.

I read somewhere on the net that there was a change in google's system around February this year and many sites were affected. According to another ariticle, Google bot would blacklist some IP range based on some unfavorable behavior from some of those IP's. That means, some people end up having to change webhost to make googlebot return to their site. That could be my case also because googlebot left me about the time I changed my datacenter, and now I moved to the third place and it came back.

My rank being 0/10 is quite baffling. I am listed by the local chamber of cormerce site, which is a high ranking site, as the local news site. And some other good local sites have also linked me. Anyway, I should be anything but 0/10. There is obviously some over-programmed behavior of googlebot that is doing something not helpful for their own relevancy.

BTW, the canned letter from Google also explained that if someone dropped me from their links they also would affect me a big deal. But at the cost of their own relevancy?

Well it is thier time to play the power.

I will continue to try that sitemap.xml thing.

Sam

Just want report back that I am back to the top, second on the list, of Google search, after changing datacenter. It's obvious that Google blacklist some IP range. Anyway, good to be back where I am suppossed to be.

sam

weird because after i posted here, one of my sites (isdp.net) seemed to get blacklisted and moved from 3rd or 4th to way way down.

Good to hear your site is back.

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GeekLog Hosting, Installations and Upgrades - WWW.AWEHOST.COM - Hosting starts @ only $4.95/mo.

If you haven't changed webhost, or IP. It is not likely that you ended up on a blacklisted IP range. So the possibility is that some sites might have dropped you from their links. At least that's the reason Google gave for dropping me.

Sam