My Blog and Google

[Fabien]

Hi,

I have a little (euphemism) problem. I use s9y to write a blog about human personality, and specialy a model named "Spiral Dynamics" (in French "Spirale Dynamique"). I have written 364 articles on this subject.

When I search for "Spirale Dynamique" on Google the blog appears only on the third page, after sites that are smaller than mine and with only a small page on the subject.

However, Google indexes the blog. If I search for "Spirale Dynamique" and a specific word of an article, Google knows it.

But, I have discovered that Google indexes only the main page, the category pages, the author pages and not each article separately. I would prefer the contrary: only the articles and nothing else!

I don't know what to do. So any help will be very very welcome.

Warmly, Fabien

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

When I google for "http://www.google.de/search?q=Nicolas+S ... =firefox-a"

I do indeed find that your individual entries are indexed!

You might want to use the google sitemap plugin which can improve your situation.

HTH,
Garvin

[Fabien]

Hi, Thank you for your answer.

It's strange, but you are right. Pehaps only some articles are indexed… I'll verify.

If the articles are indexed, what help will be the plugin?

So, my problem is still the same. Why does Google hates me and my beautiful blog?

Cheers, Fabien

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

The plugin helps to build a sitemap for google so that it will easier recognize all your entries. And some SEO people say that sitemap also has a positive impact on page rank.

But the only way to get your blog listed higher in the ranks of google is for other blogs or websites to link to you.

Best regards,
Garvin

[Michele2]

Since you brought up page rank, it matched for my search. My blog is over two years old. I do have individual pages indexed but no page other than the homepage has been awarded page rank.

I'm not a PR chaser by any means but when no entries, including two that made it to the first page of Digg and another that has a link from a major website, have any PR awarded it worries me that Google is somehow penalizing the pages.

Has anyone else encountered this problem?

[garvinhicking]

Hi Michele!

What's your URL? Maybe the URL Rewriting is misbehaving. We only recently caught a bug in the Apache ErrorDocument Handling on certain kinds of CGI installations. This was yet only fixed for the upcoming 1.4 version, but the fix could be applied to older versions. With your URL I could verify if you are a candidate for such a fix.

Regards,
Garvin

[Michele2]

Don't know why I didn't simply post the link in the first place.

http://www.blogaboutcrafts.com

The current install is fairly new as I had to fire my old webhost after they broke the site - gotta love such folks.

I was thinking it might be a rewrite issue but how all that works is still a mystery to me. Thank you for taking a look at this for me.

Some of the individual posts probably have better incoming links than the homepage which makes me even more curious as to why none have any.


Michele

[kleinerChemiker]

maybe you could check my blog as well?

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Both of your blogs properly emit a HTTP 200 header, so I see no reason why google would not index it.

The only two things that could cause it are an (invalid?) sitemap file (through the sitemap plugin) or if you entered any "nofollow" or similar rules into your templates...

Regards,
Garvin

[Michele2]

As far as I know I'm not using the sitemap feature. Read a recent article somewhere that had a great list of suggestions of what to nofollow on blogs to help with indexing and PR but I haven't implemented any of them yet.

It's good to hear everything's working right.