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Page Rank 8 and back again


BlueYon

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Try it again. Maybe there was something wrong with the server. I just tried searching on photography and it said there were almost 800,000 searches last month.

 

Jack

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Try it again.  Maybe there was something wrong with the server.  I just tried searching on photography and it said there were almost 800,000 searches last month.

 

Jack

 

Yep it's working now. My ISP must be having problems because I've noticed some other flakey stuff tonight.

 

I downloaded WebCEO because of someone's suggestion. It also has this same feature, but also lists the "competition" for a particular keyword/phrase which is nice. That way you can pick your keyword, not only based on the hits, but also on the competition.

 

This is tough business. I have your SEO Assistant installed (great contrib, thanks) and my webpage Page Rank is only 1. No matter what I do, I can't get it higher. I've spent tons of hours submitting my site to search engines, reading lots of stuff on optimization and making changes, swapped links with lots of related sites to mine, but it never changes. And my Link Popularity is even worse... 53 links. :(

 

I can't get onto Zeal or DMOZ not matter how many times I try to submit to them. What's worse, every other related website I see, no matter how obscure it seems, has a page rank of at least 4 or 5 with 1000's of links!

 

ARRRRGGGGGG!!

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I can't get onto Zeal or DMOZ not matter how many times I try to submit to them.  What's worse, every other related website I see, no matter how obscure it seems, has a page rank of at least 4 or 5 with 1000's of links!

ARRRRGGGGGG!!

 

Chris, as far as I remember DMOZ policies, they discourage multiple submissions. Ususally they are just slow. It can take 6-9months to get listed on DMOZ. Check their forums, there you can ask about your submission status.

 

If you are just starting, it's ok to have small PR, it grows slowly (I've heard this, this is not my personal experience)

 

Check your competitors links on Google. This might help you understand where they get these links from ;)

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  • 6 months later...
1st I set my site to use safe search engine urls, force cookies and not to create a session ID for spiders. After 1 month this gave me a page rank of 1.

 

Spiders can't accept cookies, so if you force them, the spider will be redirected to your cookie_usage.php page when it tries to index ANY page on your site. Have a look at the following article:

 

Spiders may choke on your cookies

 

If you see a lot of hits for cookie_usage.php in your log files, this may be happening. Alos, many people disable cookies in their browsers.

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Spiders can't accept cookies, so if you force them, the spider will be redirected to your cookie_usage.php page when it tries to index ANY page on your site. Have a look at the following article:

 

Spiders may choke on your cookies

 

If you see a lot of hits for cookie_usage.php in your log files, this may be happening. Alos, many people disable cookies in their browsers.

 

not entirely correct, they will hit that page only when hitting pages which require a session like adding to the shopping cart, login, etc.

 

Those pages should therefore be in your robots.txt.

 

I would never force cookies but spiders will certainly not choke on the OSC cookies if you force them, assuming you set your settings right.

Treasurer MFC

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  • 1 month later...
I have read a few threads in this forum about improving page rank when using osCommerce and I have noticed a few things that nobody has mentioned so far. Here is what I did to get to a page rank of 8 and then lose it in after changing stupidly changing domain names on 2 of my sites.

 

This is what I did:

 

I started out with the standard layout of osCommerce and after months of having no page rank or my site being indexed past the first page I decided to try to fix the problems.

 

I have been using Google AdWords and having to pay for visitors to my site. So far I have been getting around 300 a day which easily is enough to get a page rank.

 

1st I set my site to use safe search engine urls, force cookies and not to create a session ID for spiders. After 1 month this gave me a page rank of 1.

 

2nd I installed the BTS template because it loads pages quicker then the standard osCommerce and also automatically generate the Meta tag information. I particularly like this mode because it sets the links in Google to display the prices at the end. This was not enough though. Any one who has had there site index by Google will know that it will display the first words that Google?s spider will come to on you page. Normally it is Top > Catalog> etc?  This is not good so I added the <?php echo META_TAG_TITLE; ?> <?php echo META_TAG_DESCRIPTION; ?>  to the top of the page. I then used the style sheet to change the height into 0px and make the words invisible. This worked and when Google index my site again I had a perfect description of my products.

 

3rd Google was still not indexing my pages past 3 layers so I installed a page with links to all my products. Again I used style sheet to hide this from customers but Google?s spiders will still see it. Now from what I have read Google does not like there being more then 100 links on a page. I have over 700 products so I had to split the links page into 8 pages (don?t for get to create back links to you main page). After another month my rank went to 3.

 

4th I linked my 3 duplicate osCommerce sites(for different countries) onto a links page  which put my page rank to 4 on my main page but rankings on my other pages was at 3 after another month of waiting. I then decided to put links to all my other sites at the bottom of the pages and again use style sheets to hide it from customers. This then spread my ranking across the rest of the pages.

 

5th I added 1 link to a friend on my links page to people who had a higher page rank then me and got them to link back. After 2 weeks this increased my page rank to 5. After that I went looking for all the sites I could link to with a higher PR. I managed to get over 30 people on my links page which put my ranking to 8 after another month.

 

Anyway, I decided to change my domain names on to of the sites so they would all match up and managed to lose the PR back down to 1. I think the PR will come back again but it will take along time.

 

A few more tricks

 

I have found that using the random new product mod increase?s Google?s spider visits. I have read some where it?s because Google thinks you a have updated the content.

 

Google likes .html extensions. If you are hosting from home change your apache config to include html extensions to run .php code.

 

HI ,

i have a website 123india.com greetings

which has got a very low pr inspite of getting links from major pr sites.Is there any way that i can improve my site ranking.Please help me out.

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Using force cookies is fine!

 

Spiders choke on session ID's not force cookies!

 

Why would you want the spider to index your shopping cart?

 

Saying spiders choke on cookies shows you don't know much about SEO.

 

You can not have a SEO site if you use session ID's!

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You can not have a SEO site if you use session ID's!

What do you base this on? I can show you many, many sites that index fine using SID's.

 

Jack

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What do you base this on? I can show you many, many sites that index fine using SID's.

 

Jack

 

Prevent Spider session doesern't work because there are a lot of spiders out there which oscommerce can not identifiy.

 

Also these companies that make there own spiders to pull links from related sites do not identify them selves as spiders. A lot of these companies also set up directories with links to your sites there by increasing your link popularity.

 

Don't forget Google its self does not always use the googlebot user agent. They can appear as normal IE browsers to try to catch people out who are cloaked pages.

 

Another point is what would happen if tomorrow Google annouces its no longer going to use the Googlebot user agent to identify its self? Things like this can happen.

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Look at this site:

 

http://scooters.researcheasy.com/

 

My site has been spidered by this spammy site. I never asked them to add my link, but because my site does not use session ids its the site can spider my pages.

 

I think they do this and try to charge people for advertising when they get a good enough PR. Google's algorithum picks up on sites like this and drops them. Maybe it still works for other search engines.

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Prevent Spider session doesern't work because there are a lot of spiders out there which oscommerce can not identifiy.

 

Also these companies that make there own spiders to pull links from related sites do not identify them selves as spiders. A lot of these companies also set up directories with links to your sites there by increasing your link popularity.

 

Don't forget Google its self does not always use the googlebot user agent. They can appear as normal IE browsers to try to catch people out who are cloaked pages.

 

Another point is what would happen if tomorrow Google annouces its no longer going to use the Googlebot user agent to identify its self? Things like this can happen.

 

This is the textbook definition of speculation.

Treasurer MFC

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Look at this site:

 

http://scooters.researcheasy.com/

 

My site has been spidered by this spammy site. I never asked them to add my link, but because my site does not use session ids its the site can spider my pages.

 

I think they do this and try to charge people for advertising when they get a good enough PR. Google's algorithum picks up on sites like this and drops them. Maybe it still works for other search engines.

 

but because my site does not use session ids its the site can spider my pages
incorrect on both counts.

 

but in any case, what is your point ?

Treasurer MFC

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Prevent Spider session doesern't work because there are a lot of spiders out there which oscommerce can not identifiy.

 

Also these companies that make there own spiders to pull links from related sites do not identify them selves as spiders. A lot of these companies also set up directories with links to your sites there by increasing your link popularity.

 

Don't forget Google its self does not always use the googlebot user agent. They can appear as normal IE browsers to try to catch people out who are cloaked pages.

 

Another point is what would happen if tomorrow Google annouces its no longer going to use the Googlebot user agent to identify its self? Things like this can happen.

Yes, there are spiders out there that do not follow the rules but that doesn't apply to the major search engines, especially google. And that is all you are concerned about when doing this sort of thing. If goolgle siends out a bot that is hidden, which I doubt, it would still follow the rules. That is not how they operate. If google, or any legitimate search engine changed something that would allow them to get into places on your site where they shouldn't be, then you would need to update your spiders.txt file. That is what it's there for.

 

It is certainly possilble to have an oscommerce site optimized for the SE's. I do it all of the time for site with great results. I don't run into any of the problems you mention. By advising people not to use prevent spider sessions, you are doing a disservice to the community, although I'm sure it's just from not knowing rather than on purpose.

 

Jack

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incorrect on both counts.

 

but in any case, what is your point ?

 

I'm not incorrect!

 

You try building your own spider to populate a database. When the spider hits a OSC site and OSC can not reconise its user agent then session ids are still included.

 

Your spider will see each url as a new url because thew session id is randomly generated at the end. Unless your spider is clever enough to reconise session id's at the end its going to think each url is a new one.

 

Example:

 

Say there is a company that wants to create shopping search engine. It will hit your site looking for all the products on your site and possible fill its self up with the same products many times over.

 

To avoid this problem programmers might tell there spiders not index sites with session ids. Did you see froogle spider many sites with session id's?

 

There are many shopping search engine sites about that use this method.

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It is true that there are some search engines that will use spiders that are not captured by the prevent spider sessions modult. However, the vast majority currently are, and therefore have no problems whatsoever indexing osC pages.

 

Additionally, becuase passing sids in the URL for non-cookie enabled browsers has become so popular recently, the larger search engines are already learning to strip anything that looks like a sid off the url before indexing it.

 

The choice is pretty clear. Either you can force cookie usage, or you can prevent spider sessions. I've seen very, very successful SEO sites using either method.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: As of Oct 2006, I'm not as active in this forum as I used to be, but I still work with osC quite a bit.

If you have a question about any of my posts here, your best bet is to contact me though either Email or PM in my profile, and I'll be happy to help.

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It is true that there are some search engines that will use spiders that are not captured by the prevent spider sessions modult. However, the vast majority currently are, and therefore have no problems whatsoever indexing osC pages. 

 

Additionally, becuase passing sids in the URL for non-cookie enabled browsers has become so popular recently, the larger search engines are already learning to strip anything that looks like a sid off the url before indexing it.

 

The choice is pretty clear. Either you can force cookie usage, or you can prevent spider sessions. I've seen very, very successful SEO sites using either method.

 

yes,

 

But its the whole linking and ranking postion problem the more links you have the more your site is considered important and will go higher in the rankings.

 

Google does not have that much a problem with session ids, its the other small sites that might index your site for what ever reason.

 

Check some threads on session ids.

 

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/30253.htm

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Sure, you're going to lose a few search engines by allowing people to checkout even if they do not have cookies enabled becuase a few search engines aren't caught by the 'prevent spider sessions' module.

 

I'd say that the number of customers you'd lose though, indirectly is probably much lower than the number of customers you'll lose, directly, by forcing people to use cookies. If fact losing customers this way is much more immediate, and there are an ever increasing number of people that no not like to enable cookies for fear of security issues.

 

The bottom line is, you're either going to lose a few backlinks from a few small serach engines, or you're going to lose of few potential customers per day, becaue you tried to foce them to use cookies, and they didn't want to.

 

While I always stress that backlinks are important for PR, there's probably not more than a half dozen relevent engines out there right now that are not caught by the most up to date spiders.txt, and none of them are likely to be greater than a PR4, if that. Six PR4 links isn't going to make or break you. And the amount of traffic provided from these links is going to be insignificant.

 

By comparison, losing a few potential customers per day by forcing cookies could have a more immediate impact.

 

 

Neither method is perfect, but so far, a better solution has not been suggested.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: As of Oct 2006, I'm not as active in this forum as I used to be, but I still work with osC quite a bit.

If you have a question about any of my posts here, your best bet is to contact me though either Email or PM in my profile, and I'll be happy to help.

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A few other point is what happens if you have a mixture of static and dynamic URL's on your site? The session ID's can gets lost.

 

Also you may see quite alot of sites using urls like:

 

/Hardware/Graphic-Cards/

 

It won't look good with

 

/Hardware/Graphic-Cards/?osCsid=78690ff69e8bd7b701c5a2f114a2c52b

 

For browsers not using cookies is like having a browser not using javascript.

 

OSC has its need to enable cookies page so it does not matter to much.

 

Normally the sites still getting good ranking wand using session ids are the ones that are very important, or have some sort of following around them. Maybe they have a lot of inward bound links our expensive marketing campaigns.

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hello all

 

 

All of the above is a great read.

 

I have two questions if anyone can help, i used the site: xxxxxxx with msn and had 650 pages listed ( funny thing is i have only 65 products, resubmiting one a mt helped i guess ) and with google i have 221 pages. But for some reason whan i check yahoo i have only the main page listed is this normal or have i messed up some how with yahoo. also so i get hit 150 times a day by msn, 30 a day google but not once the last few months by yahoo.

 

Second, someone said something about a low pr because the page is redirected, why would a page be redirected ( a second domain name ? ) and how would you tell.

 

Kind regards

 

Chris, if your reading this i will get back to you about what we talked about, ive had a few problems over the weekend but will PM you... thanks

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It does not have to be one or the other actually......

 

It's not to complicated to set up a site using a sid "repressor", it works in such a way that sid's are not generated untill an actual action takes place, since search engines spiders does not trigger this actions...the sids does not come into play for spiders at all, known or unknown....

 

Of course disable spider sessions are also set to true..just in case...as well as recreate sessions set to true too.....

 

Works like a charm.....

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My last message going to bed.

 

While I always stress that backlinks are important for PR, there's probably not more than a half dozen relevent engines out there right now that are not caught by the most up to date spiders.txt, and none of them are likely to be greater than a PR4, if that. Six PR4 links isn't going to make or break you. And the amount of traffic provided from these links is going to be insignificant.

 

Acutally my site has over 800 backlinks. I do not use advertising and I certainly did not add them all there my self.

 

I don't know if you know that Google likes link build up being added naturally and not a sudden amount heavy link building.

 

Again look another spammy site with my link on:

 

http://www.spares-clue.co.uk/mini-spare-superbike.html

 

I have at least 100+ of these types of links.

 

Even without and actually PR rating the links still count especially for MSN and Yahoo who like a bit more quantity over quality.

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Sorry to bump,

 

Forgot to say, if this helps anyone, again some one said about the breadcrumbs and what the spiders read first eg home/ top and my account comes up first. i got around this by removing the breadcrumbs in the header and moved home and my account into the information box.

 

Not sure if this has been the reason why, but i jumped from 20 to 4 and from 10 to second overnight after i resubmited my site.

 

But as i have no real know how i would not do what i have unless someone here with more knowledge thinks this would work.

 

Kind regards

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It does not have to be one or the other actually......

 

It's not to complicated to set up a site using a sid "repressor", it works in such a way that sid's are not generated untill an actual action takes place, since search engines spiders does not trigger this actions...the sids does not come into play for spiders at all, known or unknown....

 

Of course disable spider sessions are also set to true..just in case...as well as recreate sessions set to true too.....

 

Works like a charm.....

 

sid "repressor" sounds like it will work aswell. I will need to test it first to comment.

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Acutally my site has over 800 backlinks. I do not use advertising and I certainly did not add them all there my self.

 

I don't know if you know that Google likes link build up being added naturally and not a sudden amount heavy link building.

 

Again look another spammy site with my link on:

 

http://www.spares-clue.co.uk/mini-spare-superbike.html

 

I have at least 100+ of these types of links.

 

Even without and actually PR rating the links still count especially for MSN and Yahoo who like a bit more quantity over quality.

 

I don't see your point with any of this. Are you trying to tell us that you would not have gotten the vast majority of those 800 backlinks if you had not enabled the 'force cookie usage' and instead had enabled the 'prevent spider sessions'?

 

I'd disagree, and I don't think you've provided sufficient evidence to prove that you owulnd't have gotten those backlinks otherwise. My point was that I think you would still get just about every one of those backlinks by allowing SIDs in the URL but enabling 'prevent spider sessions'. You may have lost a few of the links, but those few links would probalby not nearly equate to the number of custoemrs you lose by forcing cookie usage.

 

Toyicebear, thats actually been tried already. See the contribtuion called 'SID Killer'. I believe this contribution does exactly what you are describing, however, there were some seious issues. One of the issues was the 'buy now' buttons that spiders do crawl, initiating a session. A later modification to that contribution attempted to fix that, and I think was successfull, but further issues arose, and the contribution was never sucessful.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: As of Oct 2006, I'm not as active in this forum as I used to be, but I still work with osC quite a bit.

If you have a question about any of my posts here, your best bet is to contact me though either Email or PM in my profile, and I'll be happy to help.

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