Interpreting SE Behavior

[KSA]

Hi guys,

I'm sure some of you SEOs can help me interpret what's happening with my site in the search engines.

Here's some info about SE inclusion and link popularity related to my real estate site.

SE: SE Inclusion/Link Popularity

Google: 23/26
HotBot: 23/0
AllTheWeb: 182/452
Alta Vista: 1/458
Lycos: 1/0
MSN: 26/120
AOL: 23/26
Yahoo: 1/461

Here are my questions:
1. Google crawls the site almost every day. I added several link pages a while back. Google updates the cache on some of my pages every time it visits, but hasn't even cached the new pages yet. How come? Can I do anything?

2. Yahoo sees 461 links to my page, but only crawls the home page??? How can I get it to index the rest of the pages?

3. MSN is the only engine where I appear high (page 1) on the SERPS for my keywords for the home page. I recently updated the site to do what I thought was some better meta tag optimization. Shortly thereafter, tho it could be unrelated, MSN went from thinking I had 101 pages down to the current 26. Is that a problem?

The site's only really been around since the middle of March, but I am finding the behavior of the SEs quite mystifying.

Any ideas, insight, input, explanations or advice is welcomed.

Thanks,

Kathleen

[HHI Golf Guy]

1. Google crawls the site almost every day. I added several link pages a while back. Google updates the cache on some of my pages every time it visits, but hasn't even cached the new pages yet. How come? Can I do anything?

I saw that you have two "robots" meta tags on each page. One is the wrong syntax. Get rid of both of them - they are not needed.

If you're site and new pages aren't in the G index quickly, then G does not like your site for some reason. Make sure you adhere to all of the TOS.


2. Yahoo sees 461 links to my page, but only crawls the home page??? How can I get it to index the rest of the pages?


Is it a new site (within the last 3-4 months)? As of late, Yahoo seems to have a waiting period before listing all of the pages in the index. Check your logs to see if people landed on interior pages from Yahoo in the past. If so, and those pages are no longer in the index, your site has been penalized.


3. MSN is the only engine where I appear high (page 1) on the SERPS for my keywords for the home page. I recently updated the site to do what I thought was some better meta tag optimization. Shortly thereafter, tho it could be unrelated, MSN went from thinking I had 101 pages down to the current 26. Is that a problem?


The MSN index (or indices) are in a HUGE state of flux. For example, one day one of our client sites will show as #1 out of 214 million sites for the phrase luxury homes. The next day it will come in as #4 out of 19 million sites. Where did the other 195 million sites go and why did the rankings drop with less competition?


The site's only really been around since the middle of March, but I am finding the behavior of the SEs quite mystifying.


For sites that are not fully optimized you can expect to see big fluctuations in your rankings on an almost daily basis as sites are added and removed from the index, backlinks change, and SE's twek their algos.

[KSA]

Thanks for the post. Guess it will take a while longer since the site is new. Luckily, at least to this point, I'm hovering on MSN between 1-5. And, that hasn't changed since it dropped all the pages. Just noticed I also show on AllTheWeb and Alta Vista at #29 on each. But, of course, I'd rather be somewhere on Yahoo and Google!

I'll check the Google TOS. Yahoo has only had 1 page indexed from the beginning, so maybe that one is related to the newness.

Thanks for the tip on the robots tag. I hadn't realized there was a duplication. They're all gone now.

Any other ideas or observations would be great. :)

Kathleen

[HHI Golf Guy]

All The Web and Alta Vista will give you a ballpark estimate of where your Yahoo rankings will be. The Yahoo Slurp/Inktomi bot supplies the info for all three databases. Each db has slightly different algos.

[webmaster]

You could also use "deeplinking" to get the spiders deeper into your site, by this I mean dont get all your link partners to link to your homepage, ask some of them to link to internal pages, and dont forget to practice anchor migration which means you be sure to change your anchor text from page to page, so that the anchor matches up with the page you are getting links to.

[sarahk]

Hi Morgan

Welcome to the forum! For anyone who doesn't him know Morgan is the "webmaster" at RealEstateWebmasters.com (http://www.realestatewebmasters.com) and the inspiration for the next generation of real estate forums.

Sarah

[webmaster]

Hi Sarah,
Thanks for the welcome - it's nice to see there are other such places willing to share ideas and information so freely.
I will try to stop by once a week and see if I can help you guys on the SE side of things
Cheers
Morgan

[KSA]

Morgan,

Thanks for the tip - I'm glad to see you on this forum, also!

Luckily, Google finally got around to caching the rest of my link pages. Took a couple weeks. The deep links might wake up Yahoo, and just help out in general.

I'll have to work on that.

Thanks again,

Kathleen

[webmaster]

I feel so wierd, im a "fixer upper" on a forum - been a while heh :cool:

[KSA]

Yea, but for the rest of us it refers to something needing work. :eek:

For you, it's literal. :D

[CTABUK]

Welcome, and it's a lot better than Newbie, Junior Member or the classic 'Pion'

[webmaster]

Yes it is quite appropriate given the nature of the forum. Hey who is in charge here, any chance I can get you to turn on quick reply? That would make posting easier for everyone.

[sarahk]

good old SiteTutor (http://www.national-real-estate-directory.com/real-estate-forum/member.php?userid=57)

[Phoenix Realtor]

Hi Morgan,

Welcome!!!

Small world isn't it? I am sure that I will "bump into you" at other places on the net too. :D How is real estate webmasters (http://www.realestatewebmasters.com) treating you?

See you around!