Problem with google

[AndrewPK]

I seem to be having a problem with google all of a sudden, whenever a google search result brings up our site it seems to be leading to the site map, not the relevant page.

I know google is indexing many of our pages and I have even submitted a XML sitemap to google!

Does anybody know of a reason why google might be giving preference to the site map over the product pages and more importantly what do i need to be doing to stop it

Thanks In Advance

[David@MPL]

Probably because they've only indexed 38 pages from your site.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:incredibid.co.uk+incredibid&num=100&hl=en&lr=&filter=0

[David@MPL]

While I'm on, I also found this typo
Visit Our Online Store
As well as our Ebay Store we also have an Ebay Store where you will find many of our items on as one off auctions, as well as special one off items

visit our Ebay Store
From your eBay store page.

[AndrewPK]

Oh Fudge, thanks for that will change it now

[RuralWeb]

I assume that you should have some sort of menu menu system working in the space below Departments - its not showing for me. You may want to check it out.

[AndrewPK]

Double fudge, menu should be back in place now

Seems to have been working in Firefox but not IE

[feemish]

Most of one of my sites disappeared from the google index recently, leaving only the index and sitemap page...
When i looked closer i saw that all the previously indexed pages had gone into the farcical supplemental index... and they now dont get returned in the search results. Looks like lots of your pages are there too.
I've searched hard and cant find a way of reversing this, or a reason as to why its happened.

Feemish

http://www.arka-shop.co.uk/acatalog/flesh-tunnels-flesh-tubes.html

[RuralWeb]

I've searched hard and cant find a way of reversing this, or a reason as to why its happened.This is usually due to having page titles too similar which many of yours are. Go through your pages and change the titles so they are unique - the next time googlebot visits you may be put back into the main index.

[AndrewPK]

This is usually due to having page titles too similar which many of yours are.

most of our pages have the default actinic added titles, made up of the section name and store name, which as mentioned above makes them all very similar, they all start with "Incredibid LTD" on our site,

over the past few days I have gone through and started to change them to be more descriptive of the page they are the title for and already I have noticed an improvement in google search results.

thanks for the help folks

[David@MPL]

The vast majority of our pages are in googles supplemental index and our page titles are all different. Any thoughts Malcolm? I'm hoping DMOZ will list our site (eventually), but seen as they've got big problems over there at the moment I don't really know what else to do.

[David@MPL]

Ah, further to Andrew's post, we also have Mandrake Press in the title, it this likely to be the problem? Alot of sites do this don't they?

[RuralWeb]

Any thoughts Malcolm The pages in the supplimental cache were indexed last in May 06 - this indicates that googlebot is not getting to/revisiting your pages. It may be an idea to change your homepage to have navigation links and get some deep linking going on. Also see if you can get some external links to poorly indexed pages.

[pinbrook]

its better to have custome page titles, V7 allows you to do this.

or reverse the automated title so you get product name before the company name

[David@MPL]

The pages in the supplimental cache were indexed last in May 06 - this indicates that googlebot is not getting to/revisiting your pages.
See, now this is something I've been wondering about, according to our logs we get about 10 google robots a day, however we get between 50 and 100 yahoo robots a day.

It may be an idea to change your homepage to have navigation links and get some deep linking going on. Also see if you can get some external links to poorly indexed pages.
Thanks for the advice, it's greatly appreciated :)

[feemish]

This is usually due to having page titles too similar which many of yours are. Go through your pages and change the titles so they are unique

Hi RuralWeb,
Thanks for the reply

Do you mean page title or the html file name ?
I use a CUSTOMVAR property to title the pages, so theyre more descriptive... Do you really think theyre too similar ?

http://www.arka-shop.co.uk

[RuralWeb]

Do you really think theyre too similar They look similar to me but its google that has the final say! Try changing them and see what happens - you have nothing to loose. Algorithums change all the time and a solution one day may not work the next.

[feemish]

Hi RuralWeb again,

Sorry to hassle again,

were you referring to the page titles or the actual .html page names ?

Thanks

http://www.arka-shop.co.uk

[RuralWeb]

were you referring to the page titles or the actual .html page names Page titles are the main ones but files names are taken into consideration.