I recently added my new blog (Les Faits de la Fiction) to the Google crawl. I even went through the rigamarole of adding a sitemap to my root folder to tell the Googlebot just what to crawl and how often.
After all this, why is it that my blog is still nowhere to be found in a Google search? A search on the new Google Blog Search will turn up my site and all the posts contained within, but a regular Google search finds nothing. On an MSN search, on the other hand, my page is the top result for more than one set of search terms. Even a Yahoo! search, under the right set of search parameters, turns up my own little blog.
Now, I'm well aware of discrepancies between different search engines. Studies have shown that Google and Yahoo! share only an average 3.8 of their top 10 results in the 500 most popular search terms. This would certainly account for the fact that my page would be ranked differently in Google than it would under an MSN search, but this shouldn't account for it not showing up at all, now should it?
Chalk it up to a problem with the Googlebot, right?
Well, my father had no trouble finding my site with a Google search from his home laptop. Maybe this has something to do with the geographical differences between various datacenters. After all, he's in Connecticut and I'm in Boston, so there is a good chance we're on separate Google clusters.
But then my mother tried from her laptop. Despite being in the same house and using the same IP address as my father, she had the same search results as I did. The total number of pages found was even remarkably different between the two sets of results. A quick check of preferences and individual settings revealed identical setups.
This is a bizarre situation. Remaining absent from Google searches is surely a death knell for a site in this day and age. Of course, I have no way of knowing where and when my site is showing up. A quick "site" delimiter on my Google pulls up no results. The same search terms on my father's computer? He had no problem pulling up the results. (Try it for yourself if you care to participate in this little experiment.)
So what's the deal, Google? I'd really like some answers here...
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - bhw
Well, when I clicked your google search link, your site showed up as the only result.
Then for shits and grins, I did a new search on "Bryan McKay". I got a 3 million hits, most of which are for BrIan McKay.
But your blog showed up as #5 on the list. And so did your MA202 course project page (#10).
See, you DO exist.
2 - Bryan McKay
I appear to be finding my pages now.
Rather reassuring, I suppose, but still strange. Especially with my parents pulling up different search results on separate computers in the same household. Google works in mysterious ways, I suppose.
3 - Lisa McKay
Well, this morning's update has your page popping up first if I search English pages only, and fifth if I search on your name. Which is similar to the result that we got last week when we searched the first time. Mysterious ways, indeed.
4 - Bryan McKay
This morning I'm back to nothing.
Not entirely sure how Google works, really. I thought I was, but now I'm beginning to doubt. Perhaps an email might shed some light on the matter, although I hear they're notoriously difficult to get in touch with.
5 - Mike Morton
Well you've been posted on Reddit now (http://reddit.com/info?id=16v8) so that will probably give you a *little* boost. :)
6 - jon02129
Just tried your search, and also turned up 0 results. I'm also living in Boston by the way.
7 - Dan
I just tried it too, from New York, nothing at all!
8 - DZ
Same here, in N.B. Canada, 0 results from that link..
9 - J. Chambers
Tried too, I live in Northern Ireland, no results, however when I typed your blog into msn, you were listed #1! Strange, Very strange...
10 - Martin
google records previous searches and tracks the general search activity, they rank the results different based on what your interests(previous searches) are.
Could of course just be a delay in the update between google clusters.
11 - Pat Fish
Well here's a story.
Last year I averaged 200 hits a day. Every day. Towards the end of the year it began to climb. My average too increased to 300 hits a day. But from the middle of Dec through to the end, the hits soared to 800-900 a day. I didn't know what to make of it.
Then, boom, the hits dropped like a rock down to an average now of 70-75 a day.
That's quite a drop. I checked my site meter stats and find that I get very, very few hits from Google but plenty from Yahoo and MSN.
I have every week's stats FOR TWO YEARS from Site Meter saved into a spreadsheet so I have proof of this dramatic drop.
It makes no sense to average all year 250-300 a day then drop down to well under a hundred. The hits are going up again but it's not because of Google. They are slowly climbing because I guess my content is increasing.
I'm no technophobe so I don't know what happened. But something happened and it happened to Google. I shrug. I figure Google just boom, dropped all us little bloggers off their system.
I don't know how else to explain it.
I've had a blog since 2004. For the entire first year it averaged 100 hits a day. For the entire second year it averaged 250-300 a day. I'm talking a whole YEAR here.
Now it drops down to 50-60 a day with very, very few hits from Google.
But Google doesn't care about me so I feel helpless.
12 - Fab
Having the same issues with my site
www.canwefix-IT.co.uk
Google is very weird.....
13 - Mikael Bergkvist
This is why... they dont know you exists - yet.
[Hot links please Mikael. Comments Editor]
14 - Wes
I just tried and you were second only to "Book results for les faits de la fiction". I'm in Southwest VA if that matters. I didn't not search by your name, only for "les faits de la fiction" (w/o the quotes)..
15 - Shawn
I tried the link and I got nothing. Bizarre.
16 - RJ Elliott
Google uses a very complex algorithm that probably nobody fully understands, including their own employees...
17 - Adam
I'm having the same trouble with my site. I submitted it the regular way and then even made a google sitemap and it still isn't listed. When I look at my stats for the google sitemap, they all say unavalible, but it says right on it that the page is verified and there are no errors in the error log. I'm just as confused as you.
18 - Kevin
Well, the possibilty is that your mom is a stupid twit who can't type in a name without making a mistake.
Who wants to read your stupid frenchy blog anyways? It's going to waste some poor souls precious seconds that could have been better spent fondling him/her self.
Google will base your ranking depending on hits as well as other factors (META tags) w/e. No one likely goes on your site, so stop being so ignorant and stop submitting your own uneducated rants on news spaces. How about using your precious Google to find out answers on your own...
19 - nightwingxl
dude.. i'm in trinidad and tobago.. NO RESULTS..
20 - Bryan McKay
Kevin: Your explanation would have been great had it actually been applicable. If you noticed, two identical searches yielded very different results. As far as the rest of your comment, you ought to read the comment policy and refrain from personal attacks.
To everyone else: Thanks for your comments. It's good to know that I'm not alone here. Well, perhaps not good to know, but at least I'm not the only one affected. I really ought to get an email to Google together with a link to your testimonials on this thread included. It may not be a solvalble issue, but it would certainly be nice to get some answers.
21 - GileS
0 results for me = ... very strange!
22 - evolve
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada...yours was the only one that showed up for both google.com and google.ca
23 - Hrm
Well, it could be that a lot of people are growing tired of Blogs, as they serve no real purpose other than inflating one's own ego. They offer no real news that you can't get from other sources, and if anything only offer opinions such as this one. Yeah, you're allowed to have your own website or weblog, no one is trying to keep you from that, but maybe people are trying to keep it out of the way of stuff that matters? Afterall, if I wanted to see a blog, I'd go directly to that site, instead of searching for a topic and usually being misslead to a blog in hopes of the guy getting a few more hits on his site stats.
Thankyou, Goolge.
24 - Steven
Bear in mind that Google has several spiders and databases. They synch once a month (IIRC). When the databases haven't been synched yet, you may get different search results when trying the same query (because load balancing will take you to a different search server).
25 - me
Why doesn't your blog show up in the search? Because everyday people don't care about blogs and don't want to sift through them in the search results. You're not special, get over it.