It has now been just over a week since Google has failed to acknowledge this blog's posts in its searches, especially for books. I have been trying, with the help of Typepad's Help Team (thank you), to re-register the blog with Google - not that I ever registered it to start with - all to no avail to date. Actual online help instructions from both Typepad and Google proved to be inadequate on the detail when it comes to verification of a site, particularly a Typepad blog. How to upload a metatag or HTML file still beats me.
And this evening, I have now read on another Google page that site verification does not affect Google's crawl anyway. Google has an online help forum, but it's not clear who does the replying and I see a few queries like mine already. The answers don't provide me with further clue. Google contact appears to be by telephone only, so I can't raise a query by email.
No apologies for the controversial headline above. I'm hoping someone at Google might notice. Only recently when I queried the number of appearances of Asda on The Apprentice someone from Wal-Mart in the US left a comment to make sure I was clear on the matter.
If any regular readers have a clue on the above, please get in touch. I'd love to hear from you. (The only random hits are coming via something called bing.com these days, and oddly, Google's image searches.)
If I have to move this blog's resources to another location, it will be Vox or Wordpress; definitely not Blogger, another tentacle in the Google empire.
And yes, I'm smarting. Wouldn't you be?
UPDATE 23:34: Thanks to Typepad's help I have now managed to log in to Google Webmaster. Now I have to try and work out what the errors are...
UPDATE 14 June 09, 14:45: Did not have much joy with the Wordpress template in the end. Have now set up on Blogger too.
Well, I think that it's only a matter of time until all of this catches up with Google. I find it amazing that they offer no help or way to contact them at all - as if there were no people behind all the sites that need to be indexed there.
The Google experience is not that good for small guys on the net, and most everyone seems to be a small guy - and as google is really the only option right now, things shape up alright, but one has to wonder how much longer this is going to hold out.
There are a number of things that people do not use google to find using the search bar, and perhaps it's only a matter of time until people start diversifying, or a better search engine comes along.
Posted by: Robster | 01 December 2009 at 17:22
Thanks for letting me know, Corey.
I am probably marked for life by Google now. ;)
In respect of Bleed a River Deep, I do not get the same results here. Google does seem to be missing the headings of my posts as I just checked out my Apprentice posts and they've fallen off the radar too.
As for the stats, I checked sitemeter's against Typepad's and they were pretty much in synch.
What a pain!
Posted by: cfr | 10 June 2009 at 01:20
When I google "starting to hate google," your blog appears at the top of the search results. When I google "Bleed a River Deep," your post on it comes up second in the search results, and I'll click on that so you can see whether it registers on your site stats. Maybe your site stats application or widget is wonky?
Posted by: Corey Wilde | 10 June 2009 at 01:13
Ian, thanks for your comments.
The problem I have is that Google is no longer picking up the individual posts by their headings, especially the book posts, with its previous efficiency. It all started on June 1 when I noticed a substantial drop in hits. Books used to come up in the first one or two Google search pages and now they seem overlooked completely, or they come way down in a blog search. Thus anyone looking for info on a book will not be directed here.
I consider this a great shame given that I try to support new authors and midlisters.
Posted by: cfr | 10 June 2009 at 01:09
Maxine,
Thanks for your comment. Not sure what's happening with Google, but at least I can see the analytics now! I've also set up a sister blog on Wordpress. More to come on that one later.
Posted by: cfr | 10 June 2009 at 00:46
If it's any help Bing is Microsoft's latest rebranding of its search engine. Nobody appears clear why it's called that, but by all accounts it's a step forward from where it was before, and might start to gain some traction.
Google does periodically make some fundamental changes to its algorithms that can really mess things up for some sites. John Battelle wrote about this quite extensively in his book on Google, which incidentally is well worth a read.
If it's any consolation itsacrime does still seem to come back in Google search results, so you still seem to be being indexed (a query for '* site:itsacrime.typepad.com' gets about 621 results back, which looks reasonably promising. Thus, the optimist in me hopes it's not Google being nefarious, and more likely just a case of an unintended consequence of something in Google's backend.
Best of luck getting back up on search results though.
Posted by: Ian | 10 June 2009 at 00:26
If you do end up moving this blog, note that Vox is also Typepad --- Wordpress is independent and quite liked by many bloggers as it is "open source". I've tried it and quite like it.
Very sorry about your Google experiences. I think there is little use in hoping Google will (in person, as it were) answer, but Typepad help is usually very good and nice and, yes, human! Good luck.
Posted by: Maxine | 09 June 2009 at 22:10