my site doesn't show up on search engines
-
My site doesn’t show up on search engines, and I can’t figure out why. I have selected the option which should make it visible to search engines. The domain is seeingtheforest.org
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
-
Hey Alan,
The following link will contain lots of great advice about how to make your site more visible to search engines:
http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/seo-on-wordpress-com/In this article, you’ll see the suggestion to verify your site with Google Tools. I highly recommend following those instructions!
I hope this helps! If you have any other concerns, drop me a note. Thanks much!
-
Okay, thanks, I’ll give it a try. The mystery is that it found almost identical pages on my own wordpress site, alanhonick.com without me doing anything! The main thing on the site, a page with the video named “Seeing the Forest”, comes up as the second item on google when you do a search for that phrase, and “seeingtheforest.org” doesn’t come up anywhere that I can find, no matter how deeply you go into google.
Anyway, I’ll try your suggestions and see if it makes any difference.
Alan -
Hey Alan!
The other difference that I notice between alanhonick.com and seeingtheforest.org is that you’ve got quite a bit of content on your personal site that is being indexed by search engines. On the other hand, seeingtheforest.org links to many outside sites. So, rather than adding searchable content to your site, many of the links lead outside your site.
You might want to consider adding as much content to your new site as possible. Otherwise, Google won’t find you as quickly and efficiently as you wish.
Drop me a line and let me know if you have other questions! Cheers.
-
Hi,
I don’t think there’s actually a whole lot of difference in the content, at least enough to account for the fact that seeingtheforest.org seems to be completely blocked to search engines. It simply doesn’t show up.
I recently found an email in my spam folder that might be the explanation, but perhaps you could help me figure it out. When registering seeingtheforest.org, I did opt for the private registration, simply because it was recommended. Could that have been what is making it impossible to find? If so, can I change my registration to public? Evidently domainsbyproxy is demanding a yearly fee to make the domain searchable.
Here is the email I found in my spam folder, sent from the address (email visible only to moderators and staff)
________________________________________________
Attention: Important Notice , DOMAIN SERVICE NOTICE
Domain Name: seeingtheforest.orgATT: Registration Private
REGISTRANT CONTACT: +1.4806242599
seeingtheforest.orgResponse Requested By
16 – May – 2015PART I: REVIEW NOTICE
Attn: Registration Private
As a courtesy to domain name holders, we are sending you this notification for your business Domain name search engine registration. This letter is to inform you that it’s time to send in your registration.Failure to complete your Domain name search engine registration by the expiration date may result in cancellation of this offer making it difficult for your customers to locate you on the web.
Privatization allows the consumer a choice when registering. Search engine registration includes domain name search engine submission. Do not discard, this notice is not an invoice it is a courtesy reminder to register your domain name search engine listing so your customers can locate you on the web.
This Notice for: seeingtheforest.org will expire at 11:59PM EST, 16 – May – 2015 Act now!
Select Term and Package Here
Payment by Credit/Debit Card
Select the term using the link above by 16 – May – 2015 -
Some more information. I went to “whois” to search for the owner of my domain (actually me), and it is in fact Domains by Proxy, with the actual Registrar going by the name of Wild West Domains LLC.
When I purchased the domain name through WordPress, it was recommended on the WordPress that I make it private, and was charged a slight extra fee for doing that. There was no mention of the fact that this would make it impossible for search engines to find unless I paid an additional yearly fee. I think Domains by Proxy wants to charge me about $50/year to make it searchable.
I didn’t make the registration information for alanhonick.com private, and it is fully and easily searchable by all search engines, so this difference in public/private registration must be what’s causing seeingtheforest.org to be unsearchable.
Knowing this now, I certainly would never have paid the extra fee to make it private, and I need to reverse this and make it public, assuming that is the cause.
Please advise me as soon as possible, since I have a partner who is complaining that no one can find the site.
Thanks.
-
Some more information. Evidently Domains by Proxy dba Wild West Domains LLC was serious when they said their offer to make seeingtheforest.org searchable would expire on May 16th. When I click the link, it goes nowhere.
I really need to fix this, as the domain is not just difficult to find, but impossible, simply because I chose the registration option that WordPress recommended.
-
More information. I searched for how to change a domain from private to public, but it seems I need to log in to my domains by proxy account, and as far as I know I don’t have one. I found instructions to do it through Go Daddy, but there is nothing similar that I can find yet on the WordPress support site.
-
There was no mention of the fact that this would make it impossible for search engines to find unless I paid an additional yearly fee. I think Domains by Proxy wants to charge me about $50/year to make it searchable.
Purchasing the private registration upgrade on your domain does not exclude your domain from being indexed by Google and other search engines. You do not need to make this payment in order for your site to appear in search results. As an example, I have a test domain (groovydomains.net) setup with private registration. It still appears as the first result on Google when you search for the domain:
As Robyn mentioned, you don’t have much content on your site (6 pages). You may want to start regularly posting to increase the availability of new content on your site.
It also doesn’t look like you’ve setup Google Webmaster Tools. I would recommend doing that here:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
That will display some additional information like what Google is seeing when it indexes your site.
If you still would like me to remove the private registration, I’m happy to do so. However, this is not required for your site to appear in search results.
-
I don’t know. There seems to be something else going on, and I think it’s more of an issue than using the Google Webmaster tools, though when I get time I can try that.
First, this isn’t a blog; it is simply a site for this video, with a few pages of background information. There isn’t any more content to post.
Second, the same video also appears on my own site, alanhonick.com which has even less content than seeingtheforest.org and when you do a search for “seeing the forest” with or without quotes, where the video isn’t even the most prominent thing on the site as it is on seeingtheforest.org, the page with the same video on alanhonick.com comes up near the top of the search results.
No matter how deeply I’ve gone into google, when I search for “seeing the forest” with or without quotes, I’ve never been able to find seeingtheforest.org and I’ve gone at least through 50 google pages.
I know this sounds paranoid, but it’s almost as if something is actively blocking seeingtheforest.org from google.
Do you have any other suggestions?
-
I just did another test on google, for “seeing the forest” with the quotes. At ten per page, the results stopped after 36 pages. There were many more obscure sites where the phrase is buried somewhere in text, rather than prominently as it is several times on seeingtheforest.org
And again, when I do this search, the page for the video on alanhonick.com comes up second, after another a blog with the name Seeing the Forest, and the address seeingtheforest.com
Could seeingtheforest.com somehow be blocking seeingtheforest.org from the search engines? I’ve done a number of sites using wordpress, and google has always indexed them quickly and efficiently so they come up immediately in search results.
As I said, something else seems to be going on here.
-
I don’t believe seeingtheforest.com would have any way of blocking seeingtheforest.org from search results. Could you go ahead and complete the steps for Webmaster Tools as indicated here?
https://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/
That should provide a good overview of what Google is seeing for your domain.
-
okay, I’ll give it a try. Can’t do it right away, but I’ll send another message after I do it. On the face of it, it appears that google is seeing nothing for the domain.
-
I went through the process as recommended at https://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/
And got through the step of entering the HTML verification file in the proper place in the Available Tools page on my site, but then when I hit the “Verify” button as instructed, I got this message:
“We weren’t able to verify your property: http://seeingtheforest.org/”
Any suggestions?
-
It looks like you may have posted the incorrect code here:
https://seeingtheforestmovie.wordpress.com/wp-admin/tools.php
The HTML code you receive should look like this:
<meta name="google-site-verification" content="rc2RXSkjV5rz9P2s2hTwdDsnwTu4tD-gmruKUrqBGjs" />Can you make sure you’re using the HTML method under the Webmaster Tools?
-
I followed the instructions at the wordpress page you gave me, clicked the link on the google search console page that says “Download the HTML verification file”, and this is the code it sent to me:
google-site-verification: google11bbdb8f16b3cb3e.html
If I’m doing something wrong, I don’t know what it is.
-
I believe you’re selecting the HTML file upload method. You’ll want to choose the HTML tag method. Here’s a screenshot with the correct selection:
Can you let me know if that’s similar to what you’re seeing?
-
No, it’s different. This is a screenshot of what I’m seeing:
http://alanhonick.com/2015/06/08/screenshot/ -
Hi Alan,
On that screen, please click the “Alternate methods” tab at the top (next to the “Recommended method” tab currently selected). There, you can choose the “HTML Tag” method, which is the one you’ll need to use for WordPress.com.
-
Thanks, that method seemed to work. Sorry I didn’t figure that out on my own. However, when I went to look at what google was seeing for the site, it seems like it wasn’t seeing anything. For all the categories of statistics it said that google hadn’t processed the site yet.
Should I just wait to see if google processes it at some point now, and it shows up in searches? How long should I wait to see if this had helped?
- The topic ‘my site doesn't show up on search engines’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 