Hi,

I finally figured out how to do drop shadows with CSS that don't break my site in IE 6, or Google Images. So I've been going through my site, updating the code, and looking into a few other things, making sure there's a good meta description, checking them in Google ... and I noticed that a small handful have either fallen into the supplemental index, or out of the index all together. Naturally, Google obey Murphey's Law, and it's some of my best photos that can't be reached through the search engine.

Storm Clearing at Tioga Lake ( TiogaLakeClearingStorm.html )
Stream and Waterfall, Big Basin SP ( StreamInBigBasin.html )
Iron Horse State Park, Hidden Waterfall ( IronHorseWaterfall2.html )

The last example has the same comments as another photo from the same day and location; I had been planning to update this, and it fell off my plate. So that one makes sense, but the first two have a least a little bit of unique text. And there are other pages on my site with a sentence or two describing the photo, and similar link profiles, that are doing very well in Google. I should probably be happy, and go back and fix them, but I wonder if there's a reason these in particular dropped off?

Would I have a better chance rescuing the photos by creating new pages than by trying to pull these out of the abyss? Or am I better off creating a bunch of links to the current pages?

Finally, how much effect does a hyphen ( - ) have in the URL? If someone searches for Tioga Lake, will the first page above match based on the URL? I notice Google is getting better at looking for different word forms ( singular/plural, -ing ), so I wonder if there's much to gain from changing at least these pages to use a dash between each word in the filename?

Thanks!

I've always used hyphens in the page-name where poss (ie dubai-hotels.html, and not dubaihotels.html) because it makes the url more readable for humans and search engines. To your other question, adding some relevant text on the page and some links (with relevant text) will help your page get indexed under the key words you desire

I had always assumed Google would find the word Dubai under DubaiHotels.html, so I had built my site using that style of filenames, with the words running together using capitals to break things up. The new pages I've built have used dashes just in case; I'm not sure whether it helps or not.

Normally the inner workings of Google don't matter that much to me, but I'm kind of wondering already whether I can "pull" a page out of the supplemental index, or if it would be wiser to move all the content to a new URL using hyphens in the filename.

The ones not being indexed at all ... that might be one image per gallery, with similar links. Should I assume Google just doesn't find the non-image content worth a slot in their index?

I had always assumed Google would find the word Dubai under DubaiHotels.html

What counts more is the anchor text, words in the URL might have a small amount of weight but it isn't worth changing for already indexed and ranked pages.
DubaiHotels would be seen as one single word, whereas hyphens (-) are treated the same as a space.
The only real value that keywords in the URL have for google is when someone links to the page using the URL as the anchor text

with the words running together using capitals to break things up

You're giving away a programmer background there by using Hungarian Notation.
I personally stay well away from using any upper case characters in folder and file names, due to the case sensitive nature of *nix and just use lower case only to avoid any later errors.

And I agree with Mark.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

What counts more is the anchor text, words in the URL might have a small amount of weight but it isn't worth changing for already indexed and ranked pages.

Most of my pages are indexed, and rank at least decently, but I've noticed a small handful of pages that either aren't indexed at all, or are in the supplemental index. It sounds like it wouldn't be worth upsetting most of my pages, but these small handful might benefit.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

The only real value that keywords in the URL have for google is when someone links to the page using the URL as the anchor text

That makes a lot of sense. And really won't be the case very often, outside of digital photography review.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

You're giving away a programmer background there by using Hungarian Notation. I personally stay well away from using any upper case characters in folder and file names, due to the case sensitive nature of *nix and just use lower case only to avoid any later errors.

Good points. I don't use Hungarian in the sense of, say, "strConnectionString" but still, this is absolutely a programmer habit.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

And I agree with Mark.

About content and links to fix the situation? I've been going back over all of my pages to make sure they have enough text content.

For what its worth:

Jerry West, SEO Chief of WebMarketingNow.net recommends hyphens in the file names and not underscores. That and a token will get you on the subway. I tend to believe his advise because he does a lot of actual testing before he recommends stuff. If he thinks this works, it should work. But the benefit is going to be minimal.

I definitely don't think it's worth screwing with the pages that rank decently. Creating new pages with the hyphens will require writing new links to them and getting additional back links to them.