i have a site (www.jdhproperty.co.uk) with a number of pages that use embedded flash slideshows, and an index page with an embedded scrolling text object.

when i look at the pages indexed in google webmaster tools, the index page is fine, and the pages which have flash objects are not indexed - instead google has indexed the paths to the embedded objects and ignores the pages they are embedded in. most of the text on my index page is in the scrolling text object - this text comes from a separate "scrolling text.html" page, which is also missing from the google index.

the path to my sitemap is www.jdhproperty.co.uk/sitemap.xml
the path to my robots file is www.jdhproperty.co.uk/robots.txt

any obvious mistakes? i've tried using a whole range of sitemap generators, but i keep running into the same problem, so any help would be appreciated before i go completely mental.

Originally Posted by janimal

any obvious mistakes?

Only using Flash.

my, thats helpful.

It's not helpful if you choose not to follow it. Maybe that's what you're saying.

I am no master of flash...but I know spiders do not see it...they need text. Google has come out recently and said cloaking to aid in some matters is acceptable, such as adding a H1 to a title attribute on a image logo in a heading. So maybe a mainly flash page is another clearly honest use without deception.

Peace
Baby

janimal that does seem odd. You have linked to the html from the home page and you've also listed the html in the xml sitemap.

I think it's the first Disallow: in your robots.txt. I'm not sure how robots see an empty Disallow like that, but I would think that could be the cause. And there's no reason to have a Disallow without listing something after it.

Try taking the empty Disallow out of your robots.txt and see if that works.

thanks. i've removed the empty disallow - dunno how that got in there.. . i';ve resubmitted the map to see if anything new happens.

as regards the cloaking you're talking about - would this mean cloaking the embedded flash objects to allow indexing of the pages they're embedded in? how exactly do i go about that? these pages are not pure flash - there should be plenty of copy in them for the bots to get their teeth into.

there still remains the issue of the scrolling text item. there is an i-frame on the index page which contains a bunch of scrolling text. i assume that for the text to be available to search bots, the page which contains the text - http://www.jdhproperty.co.uk/scrolling_text.html - will have to be indexed as well? maybe i need to cloak the i-frame in the index page? how?

just gone back to the index stats page in google, and my index page has vanished from the list as well now.

when i type jdh property into google, the index page and one of the slideshow pages - http://jdhproperty.co.uk/bun.html - come up ranked 3 and 4 respectively. exactly the same as before.

here are the results of checking the urls against the bot file:


URL Googlebot http://www.jdhproperty.co.uk/ Allowed by line 3: Disallow:
Detected as a directory; specific files may have different restrictions http://www.jdhproperty.co.uk/bnk_bld.html Allowed by line 3: Disallow: http://www.jdhproperty.co.uk/bnk_fin.html Allowed by line 3: Disallow: http://www.jdhproperty.co.uk/mob.html Allowed by line 3: Disallow: http://www.jdhproperty.co.uk/bun.html Allowed by line 3: Disallow: http://www.jdhproperty.co.uk/chn.html Allowed by line 3: Disallow: http://www.jdhproperty.co.uk/out.html Allowed by line 3: Disallow: http://www.jdhproperty.co.uk/clf.html Allowed by line 3: Disallow: http://www.jdhproperty.co.uk/gen.html Allowed by line 3: Disallow: http://www.jdhproperty.co.uk/scrolling_text.html Allowed by line 3: Disallow:

doesn't tell me much, but it might mean something to one of you guys.

On the surface, it looks like your pages are being indexed (even the scrolling text one):

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLF,GGLF:2006-19,GGLF:en&q=site%3ajdhproperty%2eco%2euk

Are there any specific pages that you can see that aren't indexed? They may not be ranking, but it looks like they're all there...even your Flash text appears to be getting indexed.

If you're not ranking, as I suspect, that's a whole other issue and there are a number of things that could be contributing to that (outdated code including the iframe, a relative lack of content, inappropriate imagery, etc.) But that's more of a Website Review question than anything.

thats very strange. have been getting to that site.jdhproperty.co.uk via my google webmaster tools page, logged in, and i get this:

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:...ty.co.uk&hl=en

i've tested your link and this one above a few times, and yours comes up ok every time, while i get all the 'loading, loading...' stuff for the slideshows, and the ror sitemap, which hasn't been a ror sitemap for some time. at leat not made with the ror tool. so whats different about the way you're getting to it?

maybe there is some problem with my google account??

as for ranking, i come up on page 2 with most searches including the name of my hometown, which doesn't seem too bad, and a search for jdh property comes up no. 1 and 2, which is cool, because most of my customers will already know what company they are looking for. i can always polish that up later on down the line.

I see what's going on now. You have canonical URL issues. Google has the site indexed as domain.com which is why you see the pages indexed there. The site:www.domain.com isn't showing those pages though since Google picked the non www version of the domain to index.

What you want to do is use a 301 redirect to point one version to the other. It doesn't really matter which way, though redirecting non www to www is the more common.

I'm not sure how to do it on a Windows server, though I suspect Adam will know. If not I'll find you a resource to show you how.

The other thing you can do if you prefer to have Google see the www version is tell them through Webmaster Tools. There's an option for preferred domain.

The 301 is the better way to go.

thanks - looks like things are finally beginning to make sense. its good to know its not out and out muppetry on my part.

i'll hand on for the instructions on the 301 redirect before i do anything else.

great forum. i tried to get advice on this several times on the webamster forums in google and got completely ignored. fat lot of use they are.

cheers.

Here's a post I wrote awhile back on 301 redirects in relation to seo. I know I linked to at least one, maybe two sources for setting them up on an IIS server. I think you have to do it with asp code, though I'm not 100% sure of that.

I'm sure Adam knows how and will let you know next time he's back if the page(s) I linked to don't cover what you need.

http://www.highrankings.com/forum/in...1&#entry117701

thanks for the help, guys. the canonical issue does check out - i check the indexed pages on google, and get the limited list - all i need to do is remove the www. from the search bar, and i get a complete page listing. i'd have never twigged this for myself.

my hosting provider is trying to set up a 301 redirect for my domain in the hope that it will sort all this out, although some people are of the opinion that 301's don't really work for windows servers. we'll see,....

i guess i'll have to give it a week or so to let the databases catch up - if the problem persists i may be back.

cheers, jan

Good luck with the 301s. They should work fine, but you will need to allow the search engines to sort everything out.

Jan, don't rely on your host...you don't have to. And it usually redirects the non-www version to the root of the www version.

If you're rockin' the ASP science, it's actually pretty easy.

http://www.walkonmypath.com/asp-301-redirect-code/ (this is the correct code...pretty well every other ASP code sample forgets the response.end, and it will throw off Googlebot if you don't include it).

If you're not familiar with ASP...it's a lot of fun. You can interact with databases, build e-commerce sites, forms, all sorts of cool geeky stuff.

ok - i'm gona try and see if i've got this straight.

since i wasn't aware of the www./non-www. issue existing, it seems i've registered jdhproperty.co.uk, as opposed to www.jdhproperty.co.uk. i'm kicking myself in the head for this already, although i'm still not sure when i would have had the option of one or the other - i'm sure the www. was outside the field i filled to register my domain. i've alread ascertained that the three w's are the answer to my page indexing ills.

the code you linked to - does this go into the top of my existing index page, or do i create an index.asp page for this code? and what is the exact form the code has to take in my particular instance? i went through months of urrgh to get my site working in dreamweaver, and i'm afraid that i'm completely ignorant of asp code. the eyes see it, but the brain won't listen.