google

[faceless]

I've been wondering why this section is hardly touched by google's bots for a while and it's either down to a deliberate avoidance, or it's to do with the section name. But on looking at how other sections work I think it's to do with the word 'news', so I'm thinking to change this to 'The Galloway Slant - News from the [something]', but I'm not sure what that [something] should be.

If you've any ideas feel free to suggest.

[Mandy]

I doubt it is to do with the title. If this is an issue, then I recommend you submit a "sitemap" to google. It is done by creating a "sitemap" file in the root directory of the site, and "submit" to google that sitemap.


p.s. Suggestions from my side :

"The Galloway Slant - News from the other side"
or
"The Galloway Slant - News which the MSM doesn't cover"

[faceless]

I did that a good while back. The only options left are that it's deliberate or a keyword problem, which is more likely.

[Mandy]

I assume that means the site map file already contains the URL :
http://couchtripper.com/forum2/viewforum.php?f=28

You may want to log into google's "admin" side and check when the last time the sitemap was read, and if there was any errors. Google's "admin" side has some useful tools/stats, and it confirmed which pages are in the database.

UPDATE : I did a search on google for pages on the site which are spidered :
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Acouchtripper.com

It finds the root of the Galloway Slant on page 1.

That proves the page is spidered, but if the concern is a lack of hits, then your suggestion to focus on keywords might work (if you know which keywords a user will use).

p.s. Note that the sitemap could state how often a site is updated, but I don't think that speeds up the google bot much. Though checking the cached copy of google might tell you when last time bot was around.

[popinjay]

News From The Galloway?

It's a bit JLC, but I think it works.