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The Axandra newsletter archive

30 July 2002

WEEKLY SEARCH ENGINE FACTS
http://www.Axandra.com

Issue #14 - July 30, 2002
Copyright © 2005 Axandra / Voget Selbach Enterprises GmbH

Welcome to a new issue of Search Engine Facts.

1. Facts of the week: Query recent additions to Google

Do you want to know whether your Web site has been indexed by Google - yesterday, within the last seven days or within the last month?

GooFresh is a Web page that lets you query Google to retrieve pages that have been indexed recently:

http://www.researchbuzz.com/toolbox/goofresh.shtml

The GooFresh tool uses an inofficial "daterange" command in its Google query.

For example, to find out if your Web site www.domain.com has been indexed within the last 7 days by Google, do the following:

Go to http://www.researchbuzz.com/toolbox/goofresh.shtml
Enter in the "Query" field www.domain.com .
Choose "Last 7 Days" as the time period.
Click the "Get the Fresh Stuff!" button.

If you can find your Web site www.domain.com in the search results, your site has been indexed in the chosen time period.

By the way, if you want to know more about how Google ranks Web sites, take a look at our Google ranking report:

http://www.Axandra.com/search-engine-studies/index.htm

We analyzed hundreds of page one results on Google to find out what it takes to get a high listing on Google.

You can even download a free sample report here:
http://www.Axandra.com/search-engine-studies/sample.htm

Further information on how to improve your ranking on Google can be found under "3." in this newsletter (see below).

2. 19 common mistakes that prevent your Web site from getting top rankings on search engines - Part 12 of 19

Is your Web site not getting listed in search engines? Is your Web site listed but it's not getting top rankings? In our series we tell you the 19 common mistakes for low or no ranking and what you can do about it.

Reason #12: You don't allow robots to index your Web site.

Imagine you're a Internet marketing service company and you keep trying very hard to get a top ranking in the search engines for your customer.

Even after several weeks, the customer's Web site hasn't been listed in any search engine. Then you start to realize that the search engine spiders and robot programs cannot access the Web site because your customer blocks them (by mistake).

There are two ways to block search engine robots: a) with a simple text file in the root directory of the host server, or b) with a certain META tag in the Web pages.

a) Robots.txt

The host server might have a plain text file named "robots.txt" in the root directory. It contains rules for the search engine spiders. The rules in the robots.txt file follow the Robots Exclusion Protocol, a document designed to help Web administrators and authors of Web spiders agree on a way to navigate and catalog Web sites.

The content of the robots.txt file consists of two main commands: "User-agent" and "Disallow".

The User-agent command specifies the name of the robot for which the following commands should be applied to. You can set this to "*" to have the spidering commands applied to any robot.

The second command, "Disallow", specifies a partial URL that should not be indexed by the Web robot.

The text

---
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
---

tells all search engine spider programs to go away. If you find a text file called "robots.txt" in the root directory of the host server with the above content, you should delete it immediately. The text file says that no search engine is allowed to index your Web site.

Even if your robots.txt file don't contain the above commands, you should make sure that its syntax is correct. A robots.txt file with a faulty syntax also prevents search engine spiders to index your Web site.

To check the syntax of your robots.txt file, you can use this free tool (just enter your domain name www.domain.com): http://www.sxw.org.uk/computing/robots/check.html

b) The META ROBOTS tag

There's a second way to stop search engine robot programs to index your Web site: the META ROBOTS tag. If you find the following HTML tag in your Web pages:

---
<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="noindex,nofollow">
---

you should replace it immediately with

---
<META NAME="robots" CONTENT"="index,follow">
---

If you want all search engine spiders to index all Web pages, you can also remove the META ROBOTS tag from your Web pages.

Further information about both ways to stop search engines to index your Web site can be found at:

- http://www.wdvl.com/Location/Search/Robots.html
- http://www.ebrandmanagement.com/whitepapers/robots2.htm

3. How to increase your ranking on Google

Google heavily relies on link popularity and the so-called PageRank algorithm when it ranks your Web site (further information about the PageRank algorithm at http://www.google.com/technology/index.html ). That's why we developed ARELIS. ARELIS is a software tool that helps you to build and manage reciprocal links to your Web site.

With the help of ARELIS, our Axandra.com Web site climbed to a high PageRank within a few months (you must install the Google tool ar at http://toolbar.google.com to find out the PageRank of your Web site).

As you can see, building links is worth the time and effort. Fortunately, ARELIS makes it as easy as possible for you to build and manage your reciprocal links so that it doesn't take much time.

You can download a free demo version of ARELIS here:
http://www.Axandra.com/arelis/download.htm

BTW, we offer a special webmaster bundle this month: If you buy ARELIS within the next two days, you'll get our AltaVista study report (306 pages, US$39.95) for free: http://www.Axandra.com/special-offer.htm

This special offer is valid only for subscribers of this newsletter and only this month.

4. Previous articles

Five Google interviews
https://newsletter.seoprofiler.com/newsletter13.htm

META Description tag for AltaVista
https://newsletter.seoprofiler.com/newsletter12.htm

Search term position on AllTheWeb/FAST
https://newsletter.seoprofiler.com/newsletter11.htm

Document types, WiseNut vs. Google
https://newsletter.seoprofiler.com/newsletter10.htm

JavaScript usage on Google
https://newsletter.seoprofiler.com/newsletter9.htm

5. Recommended resources

>>> Lockergnome.com recommends ARELIS

The very popular Windows software Web site Lockergnome.com (Google PageRank 8 out of 10) recently featured and recommended our webmaster tool ARELIS in their 250.000+ newsletter .

>>> Our affiliate program

We pay you 35% + 10% every time one of your visitors buys our products (ARELIS, Search Engine Study Reports).

We help you to earn money with our products. You can choose from a variety of banners that can be accessed in our affiliate area. You can also use the images at http://www.Axandra.com/software-boxes.htm or you can create your own banners.

Testimonials about ARELIS can be found throughout our ARELIS pages and at http://www.Axandra.com/arelis/arelis-testimonials.htm .

Personal endorsements usually work best. Further information about our affiliate program can be found here .

Join our free affiliate program at
http://www.Axandra.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/signup.cgi

>>> What's up with your link popularity?

As mentioned above, a good link popularity is important for a good search engine ranking. If you don't know the link popularity of your Web site, just download this free webmaster tool Link Popularity Check .

>>> Marketing and promotion Web sites we recommend

If you want to publish one of the above articles on your Web site, you're allowed to do so! However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two sentences with a link to www.Axandra.com: "Copyright by Axandra.com. Internet marketing and search engine ranking software ."

Please recommend this issue to anyone you know who is interested in search engine facts. It's a good way to stay in touch with your clients, too.

If you're receiving this issue as a forward, and would like to get your own free subscription, visit

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