can't get listed in the search engines?

If you've tried submitting your site to major search engines and it's still not listed there may be good reasons why not. Unfortunately, the search engines themselves won't tell you why they've rejected your site. Here are some of the most likely problems:

You haven't given them enough time: for free submissions allow around two to six weeks before your site appears in the listings. Popular directories such as Yahoo and the Open Directory can take a lot longer. Note that if you try and submit your site too often some search engines will actually ban it altogether. Paid for submissions usually specify how soon your site will be listed, providing that it meets their criteria. Which leads me on to...

Your site doesn't meet their criteria: most major search engines will reject sites that cause errors, are blatantly pornographic, or have some sort of illegal content. They may also reject your site if it has very little content - a single page site may not get listed. Specialist engines may only list commercial sites, or sites from certain geographical regions. These criteria are usually fairly easy to find within the search engine's site.

The search engines think that you're trying to trick them: even though this may not be your intention, it can still get you banned. Some techniques that can look like tricks to the search engines (or 'spamming' techniques) include:
 

• Copies of the same web site at different addresses - this may happen if you own several variations of your domain name. The solution is to have just one web site with the other name variations forwarded to it. Only submit the main name to the search engines.
• Web addresses that re-direct the user to a different address - this can happen when you use cheap or free web hosting which uses 'domain name forwarding'. If your site is one of these then, when you are browsing it, your browser address bar will show a different address from the actual domain name. Also, setting up pages that automatically re-direct users, maybe because your site has moved to a new domain name, can cause the same problem. Avoid automatic re-directs on any pages that you want indexed.
• Over-repeated keywords - the same words or phrases repeated more than a few times in your text will get you banned.
• Irrelevant page titles or meta tags - make sure that the titles and meta tags match the page content.
• Text or links the same or a similar colour to the page background - it can look like you're trying to hide something so make sure that all text contrasts with the background.
• Body text in very small sizes - can also look like you've got something to hide so use sensible sizes to format your text.

You've submitted your site to the wrong category: this applies to directories such as Yahoo and the Open Directory. Make sure that you really have found the most appropriate category for your site before you try and submit it - these sites all carry instructions for doing this. Also, don't try to submit a commercial site using Yahoo's free submission - commercial sites have to pay for submissions and they will ignore your request.

The search engines can't see your site: this may be because your host server was down when they tried to index it. There are also a couple of design techniques that can act as barriers if used badly - namely frames and Flash. Frames used to be notorious search engine stumbling blocks. They are not so much of a problem these days, but can still cause unexpected results. Flash is also a problem - particularly Flash intros which can block the search engine getting into the site at all. If your designer is using Flash extensively then make sure that they build in access to a non-flash version of the site.

The search directories are overloaded with submissions: Yahoo is notorious for sometimes taking months to process free submissions. The answer is to use it's paid submission programme (and if your web site is commercial you will have to do this anyway). The same is sometimes true for other directories, however, it doesn't apply to crawler based search engines. (For a brief explanation of the difference between directories and crawler based search engines see 'get listed')

Your are using free web hosting: some search engines limit the numbers of pages they will index from a single domain so popular ones such as geocities.com are less likely to be included. Some engines even reject sites with these addresses as they have a reputation for being low quality and they want to offer searchers good quality results.

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last updated: 17/08/05