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Website Basics: Getting Indexed By Spiders

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A web site has no value if customers can not find it. The most common way for new customers to get to your web site is from a search engine like Google, Yahoo, and Live. These sites use a computer program called a 'spider' to 'crawl' the 'web' looking for new web pages

EVERYTHING you do on your website should be done with spiders in mind.

A spider (or crawler) has two main jobs: read and index the content of pages, and find new pages to read.

Here is how a spider finds new pages:

  1. the spider program goes to a page
  2. the spider records every link to another page that it finds
  3. the spider goes to each page if found in step 2 (and repeats these steps)

You can also manually go to google.com, yahoo.com, and Live.com (and others) and manually submit your new site. This puts your site on a list for the spider to visit. It is best not use a free or fee based service to 'submit your site to 1,000's of search engines'; you should do it manually. Generally this is only done once when you create your site. You do not have to submit all pages on your site.

Getting Your Page Found By A Spider

A critical thing to remember is that your new page (or your entire site) will only be visited by a spider if one of the following is true: 1) you submit the page/site to the search engine, or 2) there is a link to the page from a page that will be searched by a spider.

So if you create a new page on your site there must be a link to that page. The link does not have to be on the main page. Suppose you create a page http://yoursite.com/newproduct.htm. This new page will NOT be found by the search engines unless there is a link from another page on your site (that is spidered) to this new page.

This 'hidden page' feature has some advantages. For example, I have a test page on our web site that I use to test out new layouts, etc. Since there is not a link to this test page, it is not indexed by Google. I can access it by typing in the page address in the browser. You could use this to have a special page that only those customers that received a special mailing could find.

Check If Your Site Is Indexed By Google

Here is a quick way to check if your pages are indexed by Google.

Go to http://google.com and in the search window enter:

site:yourwebsite.com

The results should come back "results 1-10 of about XXX from yourwebsite.com" where xxx is the number of pages google has indexed.

If there are no results, it may mean that you site is not being index by google. If the number of pages indexed is less than you expect you should look and see if there is a path to get from the main page to each page on your site.

 

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Yarn Tree117 Alexander Avenue, Ames, Iowa 50010.
Phone: 800-247-3952 or 515-232-3121. Fax 800-291-0789 or 515-232-0789
email info@yarntree.com  Please use the secure form to send credit card information.

For wholesale information please call 1-800-247-3952. All prices shown are suggested retail.

order.gif (553 bytes)  Ordering. All the items shown here are available to retail stores from Yarn Tree. We encourage you to contact your local needlework store. However, if there is not a needlework store in your area, or if you have any questions or comments, you may contact us directly at 800-247-3952. Stores may open a wholesale account by calling 800-247-3952. Stores outside the USA may contact us by e-mail or fax. Please use the secure form to send credit card information. Contact us.