Hi Guys,

I have a common problem, but I believe with a difference...

The frontpage of my website: <removed> is not appearing in google rankings, but my other 'lesser' pages are. For example, if you type 'skiing holidays.com' into google, my page for 'Budget Ski Holidays' is shown but not my default page.

Also, if you type 'skiing holidays' into bing or yahoo you'll see my front page within the top five or so results.

Finally, I have cut and paste whole sentences from my frontpage and pasted them into google and again, no results.

Does this suggest some sort of penalty or ban from google? The url is an old one that I've owned for a while, but the content went up around 12 months ago and hasn't meaningfully changed since. I've at no stage since the site went up been in google's top rankings.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I'd really appreciate some help.

Many thanks,
Tim

Search Engines don't "care" about your "home" page, they want to show the best match for their users queries and if that is a "lesser" page then that is what happens.
You need to get used to the idea that only YOU think your "home" page is the "be all and end all" of your site.

And NO it's not a "penalty"

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Search Engines don't "care" about your "home" page, they want to show the best match for their users queries and if that is a "lesser" page then that is what happens.
You need to get used to the idea that only YOU think your "home" page is the "be all and end all" of your site.

And NO it's not a "penalty"

Well I think my site is penalised by google, and about yours I finding something similar

when I seach for your domain name it doesn't come up on the first pages and it should be at least on the 1/2 pages????
If you descover anything I will be happy to know

it should be at least on the 1/2 pages

Why???

Does anyone other than Jeff Albertson have an opinion?

I believe it is indeed a penalty, for three reasons:

1. As a holding page (i.e. no content) it ranked on the first page for 'skiing holidays' then disappeared from sight when the website went up (over a year ago).

2. I do not rank for whole sentences cut and paste from the front page into google.

3. Other pages in skiingholidays.com rank higher, despite the front page 'holding all the cards' - the links, the keywords, the ranking.

As I am not a SEO or even technical I was hoping that it wasn't the structure of the front page for example? I'm hoping there's no obvious flaws.

Additional Question
When I look at the google cache I get a google map api error. Is this significant?

Many thanks,
Tim

Does anyone other than Jeff Albertson have an opinion?

My cover is blown!!


AArrGh!!! there's no emoticon for what I'm feeling right now!!

When I look at the google cache I get a google map api error. Is this significant?

No! some external javascript driven "tools" often give errors from a cache server.
Crawlers do not trigger javascript on the site so it will not affect SEs.

As I am not a SEO or even technical I was hoping that it wasn't the structure of the front page for example?

Then take advice from someone who is both and has been for over ten years.
Luckily though, I'm not an "expert" or a "guru".

Ha ha...

"Then I would thank you to stop peering at my screenplay, "Homer". And if I see a movie where computers threaten our personal liberties, I will know you have stolen my idea."

And the site is not "banned", "penalised" or any of the other possibilities you envisage.

site:skiingholidays.com

You just have a mistaken impression of how SEs "work"

Jeff, you are correct, I obviously do have a mistaken impression of how SEs work.

How, given the evidence above and assuming (my understood) maxims of rich content (keyword content) and back linking, can the default page of a website rate lower than an internal page?

Especially for a search on the keyword 'skiing holidays.com'.

It simply defies logic, which again I believed google to be all about.

if you search for Skiingholidays.com your home page is listed first.
if you search for Skiing holidays.com your sub pages are indexed (note the space??)

Google is just bringing up the most RELEVANT page for the keyword search.

As Chris/Jeff said, Google doesn't care which page it shows, first. As long as it thinks it the most RELEVANT to what the user has searched for...

Thanks for your reply but I would like to challenge your thinking / understanding.

If I search in google for an exact, unique sentence from my frontpage, by your argument my site should appear first in the google rankings due to it's exact relevance.

If I search google for: "Search, compare and book packaged ski holidays or build your own by bundling low-cost flights, car hire and accommodation in one easy step" - I get nothing. Is my site not relevant? Of course it is.

If I search on yahoo and bing for this sentence, there I am. i.e. 'relevant'.

This to me goes some way to proving that my default page is being treated differently by google to other sites and other pages on my own site.

Is my argument flawed?

Ha! I may have to re-think my statement there cos when googling that phrase, Webmaster-talk comes up!

CHRIS... HELP!

Originally Posted by SkiingHolidays

Hi Guys,

I have a common problem, but I believe with a difference...

The frontpage of my website: <removed> is not appearing in google rankings, but my other 'lesser' pages are. For example, if you type 'skiing holidays.com' into google, my page for 'Budget Ski Holidays' is shown but not my default page.

This is may be because your inner page is more accurate and relevant according google for the particular search query.

Also, if you type 'skiing holidays' into bing or yahoo you'll see my front page within the top five or so results.

because Google, yahoo Bing etc search engine have their own alogrithm to index or rank a site.

Finally, I have cut and paste whole sentences from my frontpage and pasted them into google and again, no results.

Does this suggest some sort of penalty or ban from google

Does anyone have any suggestions? I'd really appreciate some help.

If your site is banned from google then google will not show your site home page or any other page of your site in search results

Many thanks,
Tim[/QUOTE]

T

The fact that your home does show for some queries should be proof enough that it's not banned. As far as inner pages ranking ahead of the home page for certain queries, that's common depending on the query. You may think that your home page is the best match for skiing holiday.com. Google thinks another page is a better match for that query. That's not a penalty though.

I agree it's strange that your home page isn't ranking for the exact phrase copied from your home page. You would certainly expect it to. I could understand where this thread might outrank your page, but I would expect your page to still show in the results, especially before you posted the phrase here.

Your home page does have a lot of validation errors, and I suppose some may be tripping up Google's spiders. However the cached version of the page seems to look like the real page so I suspect Google is finding it's way around your code.

When I viewed the cache I did get an error message saying the page needs a new Google Maps API key. Perhaps that's causing a problem. Not necessarily a penalty, but maybe the spiders return home as soon as they encounter your map. I'd generate a new API key and see if that helps. I'm not really sure why it should make a difference, but you never know.

An interesting experiment (and a way to see if the API key might be the problem) would be to move the Google Maps code further down the page and see if the content above it begins to rank for specific phrases.

One other thing I notice is there's a lot of code in your source before you ever get to the content you're searching for, including links to about 25 javascript files (do you really need all of those?) Maybe Google's spiders are getting lost on their way to your content.

If it means anything, when I google it your home page comes up first.

My experience is not large as I'm new on this and I run only two websites made by me and seo by me. Because of this and because my site is at the same situation I continue to say that it is a penalty.
I understand this as a warning from Google saying that your site has a problem and they are giving you a chance to resolve it, because Google didn't ban you or give you less page rank.
I notice that you have many pages indexed and some are repeat so maybe to Google is copies pages and I think that is not good.
But from what I have been reading these light penalties are more related to bad links and spam.
So I recommend you to ear all the more experiment people of this forum because nobody have 100% the Know how in this, has I think seo is very personal and is not a exact science.
What we can do is try to catch the largest information possible and think the best way to resolve the problem.

Hi Guys,

You've given me a a lot of food for thought and things to go back to my developers with. I thank you for your input, I really do appreciate it!

Best regards,
Tim

Glad to help Tim. If you find out why your home page isn't ranking for those exact phrases I'd be interested to know what you found. Do post here letting us know.

Originally Posted by vangogh

Glad to help Tim. If you find out why your home page isn't ranking for those exact phrases I'd be interested to know what you found. Do post here letting us know.

That's a good idea vangog I need that too.

thanks