Google has not seen my footer links

[kmarkhughes]

Hi,

Over the past 2-3 weeks I have taken on board what people on the forum have said and altered my site accordingly.

One of the things I changed was to add links to my footer. These links included my keyword phrases. I used the code from the forum to include them.

I have just checked on google and it re-crawled my site on the 24th Sept. I looked at the 'text only' cache and the footer links and my e-mail address link do not appear in the cache text.

Why do they not show? I guess they are no good to me unless they show up? Does this also mean that google has not been able to view any other pages on my site - only the home page?

I also updated my headings to H1 tags. Shoshana mentioned how it had boosted her page rank overnight. I have seen no change (from 0!). Could this be due to the footer links not showing too?

Any help would be appreciated.

Mark :?

[Shoshana]

I have just checked on google and it re-crawled my site on the 24th Sept. I looked at the 'text only' cache and the footer links and my e-mail address link do not appear in the cache text.

It would be helpful to know what keywords you used to check on Google. You can only find the words in 'cached' that you actually typed into the search box. If you typed in 'links' it will usually only show the word 'links' in your footer.

Please let us know what you are searching on.

[kmarkhughes]

Hi Shoshana,

I can not find us under any keyword search at google at the moment to be able to check. (I go down 10 or so pages before I start to think about doing something else....). So the way I reviewed the cache was to simply put in our website address i.e cleartodrink.com. I then reviewed the text on page cache.

The page shows this note at the bottom of the text cache:

NOTE: It appears your browser does not support scripting (javascript).

Scripting is required to use this site. Please ensure scripting is enabled in your browser before continuing. If you have questions about enabling scripting on your browser please contact customer support at MyQuickResponse.


Is this any help to you?

Mark

[Christine]

Mark
My views on google may differ from what others think or know, but here goes.
Google cache's the main text on the home page for keywords that it can show to the customer, it considers the footer to not be relevant for the customer although it will use it to enter the inner pages there is no need for the customer to subjected to the footer workings.

Now that google has crawled your site it will continue to check you out to see how active you are maintaining it i.e. LINK Trade consistantly and clean up bad links, sites that don't have access to inner pages can be emailed and asked to provide a sitemap link in the footer or footer links but this is mainly for sol sites due to the javascript.

Google will continue to upgrade your site as it sees keyword text improving and your links growing.

Research some articles about your products effects and occassionally add paragraphs of interest for customers to understand the product and/or process better.

Your site oops store is looking real good, have faith in yourself, and patience.

To keep yourself busy might I suggest you check the meta tags on every page and see that you put Description tag and Keyword tag relevant for each page i.e. Title: Contact page for ClearToDrink.com Don't forget the title is entered in the GENERAL section not the meta tags.


When you get bored come on back for more. LOL

[Shoshana]

Christine wrote concerning Google:


it considers the footer to not be relevant for the customer although it will use it to enter the inner pages there is no need for the customer to subjected to the footer workings.

Christine, I will have to disagree with you on this one. All my footer links have been in the cached at one time or another. It was my email in the footer that Google had in cached that gave me the idea for one of my best key word 'woodentoys' and it was ONLY in the footer once and ONLY as part of my email address.

Also the footer is a wonderful tool for the customer to use. Many people put their credit card logos in there, their address, telephone # and email, and the clickable security logos as well as lots of stuff that may not appear on the page or in the nav bar.

It saves the customer from having to scroll back up to the top to find what they're looking for.

[Christine]

I agree Shoshana, that when google finds text that is relevant to the customer, even in the footer, it definately displays it. But I was trying to explain that google would not necessarily display it in a cached view.

I hope this is more clear now.

[Shoshana]

Christine, not to belabor the issue but that's exactly what I'm disagreeing with. Google DOES display it in a cached view every time for both my sites and for any other sites I've checked on.

That's why I wanted to know what keywords he was using to come up with the results and if those words were words he had in his footer.

Check on your own site with your best keywords that also happen to be in your footer, then click on 'cached' What did you find?

One other thing, you said Google displays it but not necessarily in a 'cached' view. What other view COULD they display it in? If you click on the url, the entire page is displayed without any highlighting. It's only in the 'cached' or the 'text only cached' views that show the highlighted keywords.

Keep going, maybe I'll learn something here. :D -- Whoops, I mean something MORE!

[kmarkhughes]

Thanks for the feedback Ladies.

So, if I understand it correctly.....

If I had searched for "Whole House water Filter", keyword term, for example, it should have shown the footer links due to the fact they nearly all include the keyword phrase "water filter".

However, as I am just searching for the information as a "site" (cleartodrink.com = search term) it has not shown them.

I must say I am a little puzzled why it would not show them. Shoshana and others have stated the idea for putting the footer down in html was so that the SE can see them and also crawl down further into the site. To not see them appear as part of the sites cache text is a little worrying....

I am also pretty sure I checked this cache text out before on Google (prior to it re-crawling and before I had put water filter after every filter type) and the footer links showed up. Maybe I am just dreaming it!!!!!

It must be starting to get to me (even more.... :lol: )

I hope what I am saying makes sense to you.

[Shoshana]

I just tried what you tried woodentoys-and-more.com = search term and Google brought up 673 backlinks but didn't bring up my site at all.

I think in order to see what is truly cached, you have to find your site through keywords.

There are more than 3 million sites with the keywords "whole house water filters" so it would probably be premature for you to show up anywhere on Google for this term at the beginning.

I still don't understand how you are seeing the cached but I wouldn't worry about it.

It took 6 months for Google to find A Baby's World. Actually they found it about a week after I published it, but then banished it to the sand box for 6 months. Then after I did the H1 and added Storkcraft, it took off.

Since it was my second site and I kind of knew what to expect, I did have more patience with it than with Wooden Toys.

[kmarkhughes]

In google I searched for my website - "cleartodrink.com".
Google came back with a result for just my site. Then underneath this there was further info:

"Google can show you the following information for this URL:

Show Google's cache of cleartodrink.com
Find web pages that are similar to cleartodrink.com
Find web pages that link to cleartodrink.com
Find web pages from the site cleartodrink.com
Find web pages that contain the term "cleartodrink.com"

I clicked on Google's cache of cleartodrink.com. This shows the text and images of the homepage, except the header logo and naviagation bar text.

This was the Google wording at the top:

"This is G o o g l e's cache of http://www.cleartodrink.com/ as retrieved on 24 Sep 2005 03:25:00 GMT.
G o o g l e's cache is the snapshot that we took of the page as we crawled the web.
The page may have changed since that time. Click here for the current page without highlighting.
This cached page may reference images which are no longer available. Click here for the cached text only.
To link to or bookmark this page, use the following url: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:wuGgga9SiYoJ:www.cleartodrink.com/+&hl=en


Google is neither affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its content."

I clicked on "cached text" and this is where the footer text is not shown.

Mark

[Shoshana]

I just did the exat same thing you did for A Baby's World. The only thing that showed up highlighted was my email address which happens to be ababysworld.....

The way you are doing it doesn't really provide you with a clear picture of what Googled has indexed. It only shows you the keywords you are putting in which are "cleartodrink.com"

[kmarkhughes]

I know why the footer links do not show!!!!
Its simple - like most things when it comes down to it. :)

The cached page shows up as a white background, and not as my website colour background. Guess what - my footer links are white, so you can not see them! However, if I hover over that area the cursor changes to a hand and sure enough links me to somewhere else on my site.

Problem over.

Thanks for all your suggestions and comments.

Mark

[abound]

I looked at Google's cache of your website, the load resulted in several bugs, hence prevented the page from being loaded completely.

Google will ALWAYS display ALL crawlable text independent of what you searched on. If it isn't in the cache, the spider didn't see it... if the text is not javascript based, but html or text based, then it means there was a problem reading the page. I don't know what the problem is in your case and don't have to time to look into it this morning (sorry), but that's what's going on. Once we can determine the problem and resolve it, then the cache will eventually refelect your footers... perhaps emailing Google support will help. They might look at your cache for you and tell you why your site could not be crawled. If you send me a reminder, then I'll look into it when I get home from work.

[Bethers]

and Google did display your footer when I looked at the cached page - of course I wasn't looking for highlighted words - just for what is cached. Highlighted words will only come when you use a specific search term and are found.

Moving up in ranking will not happen until google does a new rank change - and sometimes you won't be ranked then either. Do not dispair - it will happen. My Buy the Clock store isn't ranked, but they are finding me for some searh terms. Funny - that store got spidered within 24 hours of going live by Google - but is taking longer to rank. Google marches to the beat of a different drummer.

[Christine]

Mark
Congratulations, another lesson learned.


The cached page shows up as a white background, and not as my website colour background. Guess what - my footer links are white, so you can not see them! However, if I hover over that area the cursor changes to a hand and sure enough links me to somewhere else on my site.