sitemap info not showing in search results

[Kracov]

i uploaded my sitemap index and the rest of the sitemap files to my website almost 2 months ago now. still, none of my sections appear in google or bing results. my main site does, just not the sections. maybe i mistyped something or didn't do proper formatting. here are a couple of them-

sitemap index
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<sitemap>
<loc>http://kracov.org/sitemap1.xml</loc>
<lastmod>2010-1-1</lastmod>
</sitemap>
<sitemap>
<loc>http://art.kracov.org/sitemap2.xml</loc>
<lastmod>2010-01-01</lastmod>
</sitemap>
<sitemap>
<loc>http://codswallop.kracov.org/sitemap3.xml</loc>
<lastmod>2010-01-01</lastmod>
</sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

sitemap for the main page
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>http://kracov.org</loc>
<lastmod>2010-03-03</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://kracov.org/projects/shory/index.html</loc>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://kracov.org/misc/2012.html</loc>
<lastmod>2010-1-3</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.3</priority>
</url>
</urlset>

 

[troytime]

haven't a sitemap is great; however you need to have a few other things before google includes you and ranks you

here's a few:
1. your site needs to be crawlable. right now, it is NOT.
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache.../+kracov&hl=en&client=firefox-a&gl=us&strip=1 Thats what google sees.
2. your site needs to have content. pictures, text, semantics
3. you need a few other sites to link to your site.

obviously your first priority is fixing your website so google can see it.

 

[Kracov]

i don't understand. my site does have images, text and links (links in a CSS menu).
i have no idea why the google cache has a white page with just "web hosting" in it. maybe google hasn't crawled my site in a couple months? i guess i have to wait a bit longer. i requested for my site to be submitted to dmoz.org but it's been over a month now. i also requested for links exchange for a few art websites, but haven't heard back from them yet.

 

[Ken g6]

Try looking at your site with Firefox, with NoScript enabled. All I see is the Kracov gif, a divider bar, and the web hosting link. Google doesn't look at image contents, so without alternate text it doesn't even see the gif!

Your main menu seems to be generated with JavaScript. Try putting a static menu inside <noscript> tags for those like Google that have JavaScript turned off. And don't forget alternate text for each image.

 

[Kracov]

ok i'll try the image texts. however i didn't understand what you meant by noscript tags. i'm actually not very familiar with javascript, i mostly cut and paste code.

 

[Markbnj]

ok i'll try the image texts. however i didn't understand what you meant by noscript tags. i'm actually not very familiar with javascript, i mostly cut and paste code.

It's kind of complicated if you aren't familiar with the way web content is delivered to a browser, but think of it like this: the web page that your user ultimately views is a combination of the static HTML markup existing in the file on your server, and the dynamic HTML markup that is generated by the browser when it executes javascript code embedded in the page. Users don't see the javascript code; they see the HTML created by running the javascript in the browser's javascript interpreter.

Google is not, for the most part, interested in dynamic content. Their spider does not execute javascript and take the resulting dynamically-created HTML markup into account when cataloging a page. It only looks at the static content. Your page seems to be all dynamic content, and little to no static content. That means that to the Google spider your page looks empty. Ken is simply suggesting the addition of semantically meaningful static content to the page, so that Google knows what the page is about.

It might occur to you that there are few strictly static pages left on the web anymore, and so Google must not have very much to catalog if it ignores all dynamic content. But it only ignores dynamic content produced in the browser on the client side. Typically websites produce most of their dynamic content on the server-side by executing scripts and processes that generate markup. Google sees that stuff just fine (within some limits) because by the time its spider gets the page the server-side scripts are done with their work, and the content appears static from the spider's point of view. The only time you run into this issue is when you produce most or all of your content in the browser using javascript.

 

[Kracov]

so what is the solution? ken mentioned something about a static menu inside noscript tags.

also i checked the cache date, March 27. that means that Google did crawl my site long after i made the sitemaps. does it ignore my sitemaps because i don't have static images or something?

 

[Ken g6]

Notice how the Google cached copy of your page has one link, to "web hosting"? Notice how that doesn't appear on the regular page when JavaScript is enabled?

If you go to your main page and view the source, down near the bottom, you'll see:

<noscript><a href="http://www.hosting24.com/"><img src="http://analytics.hosting24.com/count.php" alt="web hosting" /></a></noscript>

See, that link was included because it's in the source, but it didn't appear on the page because it's inside noscript tags!

This one line of HTML has everything you need to understand to let Google index your site. Create a link to each page, inside noscript tags, and Google will index those pages. Add alt text (alt="text") to your images, and Google will better understand the contents of your pages.

 

[Kracov]

okay, i'll try that. so if i add links to the noscript tags, google will start following my sitemap.xmls?

 

[Kracov]

i'm pathetic. i don't even know where to put the links or what format to use them as. do i make a new script code for each link that i need there? (example http://art.kracov.org)

or do i just paste links after the end of hosting24.com's /script?

 

[Ken g6]

http://art.kracov.org/ is a good example of a page (almost entirely) without JavaScript. The code that makes each image and caption appear there is not "script", not JavaScript, but HTML.

So, yes, create some HTML like that, with all the links that are contained in your JavaScript menus. Place that entire block of HTML in <noscript>...</noscript> tags, immediately after the <script>...</script> tags that generate your menus. (That's before hosting24.com's script.)

I also found something about getting search engines to index your sitemap info by placing it in robots.txt. You don't have a robots.txt file yet; it should be here.

But having a static menu for those without JavaScript is good, even if your site is otherwise indexed.

 

[Kracov]

thanks for your help, Ken.

just to make sure that i'm doing everything right for robots.txt-
UTF-8, correct?
inside the file
http://kracov.org/sitemap1.xml
http://art.kracov.org/sitemap2.xml
http://codswallop.kracov.org/sitemap3.xml

do i include the sitemap_index in it too?

 

[Ken g6]

Nope, that's an invalid robots.txt file.

You need to specify what robots should do with those URLs:

Sitemap: http://kracov.org/sitemap1.xml
Sitemap: http://art.kracov.org/sitemap2.xml
Sitemap: http://codswallop.kracov.org/sitemap3.xml

And is it possible to remove that analytics code at the end? This ain't a web page.

P.S. I'm not sure whether Sitemaps for different subdomains should be on your main domain's robots.txt or on the subdomains, or both. Both probably wouldn't hurt.

 

[Kracov]

the analytics isn't my doing. i assume my webhost did that stuff, which is why i was entirely confused with the noscript stuff at the beginning.

 

[troytime]

you need to find a new web host. a host that adds shit to your files when it serves them is ridiculous.

then you need to make your website crawlable by the search engines.
drop the dynamic menu and use regular text links.

don't waste your time with dmoz, and link exchanges are worthless as well.
you need one way links (someone links to you, you don't link to them)

 

[Kracov]

yes, there are better paid webhosts. right now i can't afford that but i will eventually. there's no better free webhost than 000webhost.com, it allows hotlinking, has a great file size limit, etc.

why drop the dynamic menu? lots of websites use it, even Google, Facebook, Newegg etc. CSS is extremely popular nowadays.

i guess promoting web traffic is tough if i can't PAY websites to link to my site.

 

[Ken g6]

why drop the dynamic menu? lots of websites use it, even Google, Facebook, Newegg etc. CSS is extremely popular nowadays.

Yes, but your dynamic menu doesn't use CSS. It's pure JavaScript. And that's why Google can't index it.

For a better example of a dynamic menu, look no further than...

<--over there.

Specifically, click my name. Or your name. Or someone else's name. Up pops a dynamic menu. But this menu is created with HTML, and displayed by changing a CSS property (display:none). If your menus worked this way, you'd have no problem.

 

[Kracov]

i see. is it possible to convert my menu to CSS? stupid question i guess. i might want to look for a CSS editor like the dynamic menu editor i had.

 

[Ken g6]

is it possible to convert my menu to CSS?

Actually, it does appear to be possible to get the menu out of the JavaScript. See, the JavaScript generates a bunch of HTML, with CSS and more JavaScript, and that's what you see as your menu. With Firebug, a plugin for Firefox, I was able to find that HTML. If you replace:

<script charset="UTF-8" src="menu.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">awmBuildMenu();</script>

with that HTML, your menu should appear the same and Google should be able to index it.

I'd paste the HTML here, but it's almost 100K of text! Zipped it's less than 4K, so if you PM me your email I could just email it to you. Then you'd just replace those two lines with the code I'd post.

It should work. (That means I haven't tested it, so I don't really know that it will work.)

Or you could just look for another menu provider. Personally, I think the menu entries don't fit the page look.

 

[Kracov]

thanks for the file, Ken.

i apologize though that i don't know what to do with it. do i save it as menu.js? i'm not clear on the instructions, i'm sorry.

 

[Kracov]

please don't give up on me Ken. although, i guess i'll try to find a CSS menu editor. the text file you gave me seemed to be unformatted, meaning no word wrap. not that it's important but it just seemed like if i needed to make changes, i wouldn't be able to because the codes are smushed together. i'd like to find a CSS menu editor where i can use my own images as part of the horizontal menu.

 

[Ken g6]

Hey, sorry I didn't get back to you sooner, but my Internet was down most of yesterday.

Simple instructions:

1. Delete these lines:

<script charset="UTF-8" src="menu.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">awmBuildMenu();</script>

2. Insert the text from the file I sent you where those lines were.

Yes, the text file I gave you was one long line. I tried formatting it and it comes out with ~2500 lines! I can send that to you if you want. But it's still not at all concise.

I'm sure somewhere there is a nice menu generator that gives you HTML with CSS and JavaScript, instead of the pure JavaScript you had. But I've never gone looking for one.

 

[Kracov]

hmm, that didn't work. the images were there- art, games, etc but there wasn't any dropdown menu.

but thanks for your help anyway. i guess its better that i find a CSS editor and start anew. i just have to figure out how to use images in the menu (Art, Games, Funny, etc)

 

[Kracov]

i'm sorry for the post necromancy, but there's another issue. actually i'm not sure if it's an issue. my sections are finally showing up in google results. though, it looks weird. two results actually are about art.kracov.org's sitemap, and also list the contents. so if you do a search at google, kracov's art -david, you'll see what i mean. i just think there should be a better way to not include my sitemap in google results, but rather have google crawl it and nothing else.