Support FAQ

Submit a Site aims to provide you with the most relevant information to help you understand both search engines and the submission process.

• Why is my site not yet indexed?
• Why is my site not appearing?
  • Your pages are dynamically generated
  • You employ doorway pages
  • Your page uses frames
• Why can't I find my site with my keywords?
• My site has not been added. Can I have my money back?
• I can't find my site in the search engine!
• How do I improve my search results and ranking?
• Why can't I find my site now that I've listed it?
• How do I restrict access to my site?
• Tips and advice
• What are META tags?
• Updating your site listing
• Webpage optimisation tips
• Not all my pages are indexed? Why?
• My web pages used to be listed and now they aren't
  • Changes from one index to the next
  • Multiple indices
  • Other reasons
• I need my site information changed
  • My information is outdated
  • You continue listing an 'old' version of my site
  • I am changing my URL
  • There's no description of my site
  • The description of my site is wrong in the results
  • I'm in your index, but not listed as a result for keyword "X".

1. I can't find my site!
   You've added your site to a search engine, but can't find it. Below you'll find common scenarios and solutions.

   A site can ONLY be deleted by removing it from the server on which it is hosted or by adding a robots.txt file.

   However, from time to time, web sites do erroneously get dropped from the search engines. If you find this, the best thing to do is to resubmit the web site. Web sites are not dropped from directories.

   If you can't find your site, consider the following:

   Your server was not connected to the Internet, was malfunctioning, or was busy.
   Search engine crawlers will try to contact your server during its next indexing cycle; however, if your server is unavailable for multiple cycles, the spider will cease its attempts to crawl your site.

   The search query you entered does not reflect your site's content.
   Please look over your homepage and assess, objectively, what the page is really about. What are the most common concepts? Which ideas are repeated? Do they reflect the search query you entered?

   Sounds silly, but it's a common problem. One user, a dog groomer, created a homepage to advertise his service. He searched for "dog grooming" and did not find his site. The dog groomer reviewed the site and found the problem: The text described breeds and behaviour in great detail, but only mentioned dog grooming twice. He rewrote the page. Now when he searches for "Dog grooming" he easily finds his page.

   A robots.txt file has instructed search engine crawlers not to index the site.
   Robots.txt files tell robots (also called crawlers) that a web site, or specific parts of a site, are off-limits. Check to see if such a file exists at your site by pointing your browser at the URL http://your.domain/robots.txt, replacing "your.domain" with the domain name of your site.

   The spider encountered a 404 error message.
   When a crawler updates itself, it occasionally comes across a 404 error message from a link-meaning that site is no longer available. The spider then makes a note to drop that link from the database and not to go back.

   Your site uses frames-frames are not indexable.
   Frames allow a web author to present several windows within one Web page, which is fine for design, but not for indexing. Framed content is not indexable. We suggest creating a section that describes your page to give the crawler content to index.

2. How do I improve my search results and ranking?
   Search results are generated automatically based on the words on a page, and how they relate to a particular query. It is possible the search terms used to find your page are common to many of the billions of pages in the index. It also may be possible that the main theme of the words on your page are not as relevant to a particular query as other pages are. If you want your link to rank higher in the search results for a particular query, consider the following:

   Emphasize the desired words and concepts on your page. Do not just repeat the words over and over on your page (word spamming), because anti-spam algorithms won't allow it.

   Take a look at the source code for pages that rank higher than yours, and compare them to your pages.

   Do not rely on meta information to define keywords. Some search engines do not use meta keywords.

   Do not use frames without using a section to describe your page. Some crawlers (notably Excite) do not follow frames to determine content.

   Robots may ignore pages, including home pages, that do not contain enough textual content for it to index.

   No one can guess what terms people use to search for sites, so the best thing to do is make your page as clear and informative as possible. For example, if you're advertising your Hawaiian Bed and Breakfast, use the homepage to emphasize bed, breakfast, Hawaii, and vacation. Don't use it to emphasize price, the way the ocean looks from a bedroom window or your famous pineapple rum concoction.

3. Why can't I find my site now that I've listed it?
   There are millions of sites on the World Wide Web. If you are unable to reach a particular site, it is because the other site is "down"-either temporarily or permanently.

   Unfortunately, there is nothing any search engine or directory can do to predict or prevent this. Crawlers visit sites on a regular basis and deletes links to web sites that no longer work.

4. How do I restrict access to my site?
   What if certain parts of your web site contain confidential information? What if several pages are still under construction and not ready for public view?

   You can prevent crawlers, also known as robots, from accessing parts of your site by using a robots.txt file, which tells crawlers that your web site, or specific parts of your site, are off-limits.

   WARNING: The robots.txt file is not a shield against unauthorized entry. Please do not post material to the Internet that absolutely should not be seen by an unauthorized person.

   This standard is not backed by an official organization or covered by law. Keep in mind that whilst search engines respect this standard, the possibility exists that someone out there might simply choose to not follow the standard and access the file anyway.

5. Understanding META tags
   A meta tag gives a spider specific information, such as keywords or site summaries, about a site. In web lingo, meta tags are defined as "information about information."

   Meta tags are written in HTML code. They stay behind the scenes, the user never sees them. A web author may surround sentences, even whole paragraphs with meta tags. Certain crawlers then read the information in the tags as a way to index the site.

   Unfortunately, meta tag information is not always reliable. It may or may not accurately reflect the content of the site.

   Some crawlers do not honour meta tags. This means that the index of the content of the meta tag is not used.

6. Updating your site listing
   Modified Content or Site Title (only applicable to manual submissions)
   You do not need to contact us if you alter the title or content of your site. Crawlers regularly crawl through every page of your site, gathering information to be indexed and noting any content changes you have made. However, to make sure your site is in our list of "to be re-indexed" sites, resubmit your URL.

   Modified Web Address
   If your site's URL has changed, submit your new URL. Submit the new URL and fill out the form so we can index your new location as soon as possible. If the old site remains at the former address, crawlers will continue to index it unless you remove it or put a robots.txt file on your system.

   To Modify Your Site's Summary
   Search engines derive the summary of your site from your site's content or from the "meta description" tag. To change the site summary that crawlers compile, you'll have to either change the content of your meta description tag or change the content on your site's homepage.

7. Why is my site not indexed yet?
   Search engines add and update new sites each time they crawl the Internet. A crawler can take anything from 1 week to several months to visit a web site. Either the crawler has not yet visited your web site or the crawler has refused to visit. If you use a web statistics application, you will be able to check if a crawler has visited your web site.

8. Why is my site not appearing?
   Check if your web site is included in the search engine by visiting the search engine page and typing: site:mysite.com into the query text box. If your web site appears, then it has been submitted successfully.

   Other reasons your site may not be included.

   • Your pages are dynamically generated. Some search engines, such as Google are able to index dynamically generated pages. However, because web crawler can easily overwhelm and crash sites serving dynamic content, there is a limit the amount of dynamic pages indexed.

   • You employ doorway pages. Search engines do not encourage the use of doorway pages. Search engines want to point users to content pages, not to doorways or splash screens.

   • Your page uses frames. Some search engines can understand frames bu these frames tend to cause problems with search engines, bookmarks, emailing links and so on, because frames don't fit the conceptual model of the web (every page corresponds to a single URL). If a user's query matches the site as a whole, the search engine returns the frame set. If a user's query matches an individual page on the site, the search engine returns that page. That individual page is not displayed in a frame -- because there may be no frame set corresponding to that page.

     If you are concerned with the description of your site as seen by search engines, please read "Improve Ranking Position". This describes the use of the 'NoFrames' tag, which is used to provide alternative content. If, instead of providing alternative content, you use wording such as "This site requires the use of frames", or "Upgrade your browser", then you are excluding both search engines and people who use browsers with frames turned off. (For example, audio web browsers, such as those used in automobiles and by the visually impaired, typically do not deal with frames, which are a visual mechanism.) You can read about NoFrames in the HTML standard here: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/present/frames.html#h-16.4

9. Why can't I find my site with my keywords?
   If your keywords are competitive or your page does not mention them exactly or often it will be difficult to find your page high in the results. You may want to try a less competitive phrase which more closely matches the text in your page or altering your page so that your chosen keyphrases occur within the page more often, if possible in the title also.

10. My site has not been added. Can I have my money back?
    No refunds are provided. Submit a Site has added your web site but for reasons outside of our control, your web site has not been crawled or indexed. In addition once your web site has been submitted, it is bound by the terms and conditions of the search engine company such as Google, Yahoo etc.

    • If the web site is deemed to be in contravention of the search engine terms and conditions, the search engine may refuse to visit your web site.
    • It is the sole discretion of a search engine company whether or not to visit and include your web site in the search engine.
    • The addition of your web site in a search engine is outside the control of Submit a Site and therefore Submit a Site is not liable if your web site is not added to any search engine, list or directory.

11. Not all my pages are indexed? Why?
    There are several billion pages on the Internet. Google for example, has indexed more than 8 billion web pages but cannot guarantee that the Google crawler will crawl every page on a particular site. If your site's internal link structure does not provide a path to all your pages, the crawler may not see all the pages on your site. Search engines follows links from one page to the next, so pages that are not linked to by others may be missed.

12. My web pages used to be listed and now they aren't

    • Changes from one index to the next.

      Each time a search engine updates its database of web pages (about once a month), the index shifts: there are new sites, deleted sites and site rankings change. If your site was dropped from a search engine and you have not made major changes to it in the last month, it will possibly be picked up again in the next index. It's possible your site was simply inaccessible when robots tried to crawl it. You may want to check and see if the number of other sites linking to your URL has decreased. This is a major factor in determining which sites are indexed by search engines, as we find most pages when robots crawl the web and jump from page to page via hyperlinks.

      It's also possible your rank decreased because other sites were found and assigned a higher rank. Rankings are not configured manually. Search engines use different ranking algorithms to determine where a web site listing will appear.

    • Multiple indices

    The major search engines update their indexes about every four to eight weeks. If you happen to enter the same query repeatedly while the indexed is being posted, you may see inconsistent results. You are seeing a result from an 'old' version of the index one time and a result from a 'new' version the next. Due to the sizes of search engine indexes, it is impossible to simultaneously replicate the new indexes to all international data centres, which may result in this behavior for a short period of time.

    • Other reasons

    If your page does not appear at all, here are some other possible explanations:

    • Your site may not have been reachable when the crawler tried to crawl it because of network or hosting problems. When this happens, the crawler may retry multiple times, but if the site cannot be crawled, it will not be listed in the current index. If it was a transient problem, your site will likely show up in the next index, which will be completed in a few weeks.

    • Technical glitches may occur, bypassing the crawling of your site. Due to the power required to crawl several billion pages, crawlers do experience hiccups from time to time. Again, this is a transient problem, and your site will likely show up in the next index.

    • The contents of your page or the links pointing to your page changed significantly.

    • Your page was manually removed from the search engine, because it did not conform with the quality standards necessary or complying with the search engine's terms and conditions. We will not comment on the individual reasons a page was removed and we do not offer an exhaustive list of practices that can cause removal. However, certain actions such as cloaking, writing text that can be seen by search engines but not by users, or setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling search engines may result in permanent removal from the search engine.

13. I need my site information changed

• My information is outdated

When you update information on your site it does not automatically update instantly in any search engine. The major search engines update their index once a month after their crawlers have crawled several billion web pages. This process is totally automated, so updated or outdated link submissions are not necessary. Changes to your site's content will be noted by the next crawl.

• You continue listing an 'old' version of my site.

A search engine may continue to list an 'old' version of your site (i.e. continue to list www.my123site.org despite the fact that your site now lives at www.my456site.org ). You need to update the links that are pointing to the sites. Crawlers jump from page to page via hyperlinks so someone must still be linking to the defunct page. Once others correct their links, the crawler will update. Once your new site is live, you may wish to place a permanent redirect (using a "301" code in HTTP headers) on your old site to inform visitors and search engines that your site has moved.

One way to determine who is linking to the dead site is to try a link search.

• I am changing my URL

Search engines cannot manually change your listed address at the exact time you move to your new site. There are steps you can take to make sure that your transition goes smoothly. Search engine listings are based in part on the ability to find your site by following links from other web pages. To preserve your ranking, you will want to inform any sites that currently link to your pages of your change of address. As long as the links change as you move your site over to a new location, your ranking should not be adversely affected.

• There's no description of my site.

A search engine index contains two types of pages: fully indexed and partially indexed pages. Your page is currently partially indexed, which means that although the search engine knows about your site, the crawlers have not read all the content on your page(s) in past crawls. This does not adversely affect your ranking or your inclusion in the search engine.

• The description of my site is wrong in the results.

Some engines use META tags to produce a site description. Other search engines such as Google use quotes from the web page in question. Google automatically generates different descriptions based on the search terms used to find the site, (these "snippets" display the search term(s) in the context of the page on which they appear).

Descriptions of sites in Directories are written by volunteers.

• I'm in your index, but not listed as a result for keyword "X".

Search engines do not manually assign keywords to your site, nor do they manually "boost" the rankings of any site. The ranking process is completely automated and depends on the relative ranking of each result found.

You can read more about our ranking process elsewhere in the "Improve Search Ranking " page. The best way to improve your position in results is to have relevant content, and multiple links from other web sites and an appropriate META tag description.

 

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