Can't get google to spider my site!

My site (a phpbb forum, www.enginuity.org) has been up and running about 8 months now and I'm up to almost 1000 users. It's still not listed in google.

I've done a lot to the site to make it look more google-friendly. I'm using mod_rewrite to make the links look static to users that aren't logged in. I unlinked user profiles and other things to content that isn't relevant to search engines. I added keywords and changed the title to make them more clear and useful. That's all great for boosting me in the listings, but google isn't even SPIDERING my site.

I've heard of tainted IPs and such, so I got a unique IP for the site a little over 2 months ago. I created sitemaps and submitted them to google at the same time. Still nothing.

What do I need to do?

I have this problem too for one of my domains :S

It used to appear on the search engines and now it's not even there! :O

If you have a 1,000+ users, hopefully some are linking to you. If not, it's probably time to do some link building.

Altavista is pretty good with showing backlinks. Just replace yourdomain.com with your domain and see what it brings up:

http://www.altavista.com/web/results?itag=ody&q=linkdomain:yourdomain.com+-site:yourdomain.com&kgs=1&kls=0

What comes up if you search Google for: site:yourdomain.com ? If that brings up anything, I doubt your domain is banned.

If it is banned, you'll need to file a reinclusion request with them. I'd be honest about any blackhat tricks that have been pulled and make sure there's nothing currently wrong with your site first (keyword stuffing, cloaking, sneaky redirects, etc...).

Relevant links from related sites would be best, but even submitting to directories would be a good start (if you haven't already).

Here's a good list of free directories you can submit to. That link will sort them by Google PR, so go ahead and start at the top and work your way down.

Also, it's nice to mix up your anchor text when linking. For example, Directory Critic would probably like the way I linked him here more than if I had just put the domain name or "Directory Critic."

Just avoid the automated submissions. Going from 0 to 10,000 links in 5 minutes doesn't look natural. ;)

Matt Cutts is also a good source of Google info.

I could have swore I replied to this but now its gone... anyway..

Google's sitemaps tells me the site isn't banned, but I don't get anything results from site:www.enginuity.org. At some point google apparantly did spider the site as sitemaps gives me a list of keywords, but not since I started looking at logs about 6 months ago.

Is there a way to find out for sure if the site is banned, or should I just go ahead and fill out the reinclusion form?

- jared

One thing you can do right now, is add your website to your signature in this forum. Make sure it is a clickable link so the search engines can follow it.
That will be atleast one link to your site, now to try can get your member to link to your site.
Silk

My website

Looks like he's doing okay with backlinks. Unless all 700+ were blasted out in a day or two. ;)

Iwebtool's google ban checker seems to think it may be banned.

Are you sure you (or someone else on your behalf) hasn't pulled a few SEO tricks that Google wouldn't like?

I think it's time to file a reinclusion request. I'd be 100% honest about anything that's been done (since they'd know anyway) and make sure your site is 100% clean before submitting it.

I'd start by reading this reinclusion how-to by Matt Cutts.

No one has done anything to the site but me and I hadn't done much of anything (to a base phpbb install) until about 6 weeks ago when I did some SEOs. No tricks, no alternate content, just removed links to useless content, made the titles more SE-friendly and changed some graphical links to text.

I just filed an inclusion request, but I honestly don't know what could have gotten my site banned unless it was someone else on the same server or something. I checked through google's guidelines and looked pretty comprehensively for violations with none to be found. I listed all of the changes I made (which would have been after being banned if it is), hopefully something will come of it.

Any idea how long it takes to get a reply?

- jaredEdited by qoncept on 09/13/06 03:08 PM (server time).

go here and set up a google sitemap account (you can just log with your google account if you have one or just sign up for an account):

https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/siteoverview?hl=en&hl=en

log into your google sitemap service and add your domain. then create a google sitemap:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34654

his site will create a sitemap for you for free:
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

then upload the sitemap to your site.

next log back into your google sitemap service, select the website you added and select the "sitemaps" tab and tell google where your sitemap is.

google will then crawl your site. you can even click on the crawl status link to check your status.

I did add my sitemap a couple months ago, still no luck. I'm updating it now but I'm certain that's not the problem.

Like I said, I filed the reinclusion request a few days ago. Any ideas how long it takes for a response?

- jared

There is no set time on reinclusion requests, you may get a reply, or you may not. I filed one in July and never received a reply.

Well, apparantly something worked. I think it was a bit fast for it to be the reinclusion request, but for whatever reason, I now have a single page indexed on google. Hopefully more to follow!

- jared