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• This is my third try to resolve this in Google Answers. If you don't know don't answer. Google is incorrectly seeing our site www.6sigma.us. When the domain "www.6sigma.us" is searched in www.google.com then the domain of just "6sigma.us" comes up. We have no links for "6sigma.us" so we have lost all our links, PR and no search results for key words. I currently have a windows server asp website provider who states they have nothing to do with this problem. I would appreciate any specifics you know. Thanks Peter The google people did reply the following: Hi Peter, Thank you for your note. We understand you would like Google to display a different URL or link to a different page on your site. Regrettably, we cannot manually change the listed address of your site. Our robots use hyperlinks to find and rank pages on the internet. If a page you find suboptimal is appearing as a result for a particular query (for example: mysite.com/ instead of www.mysite.com or www.mysite.com instead of www.mysite.org), it's because that page has been ranked as more relevant for the query in question by our automated PageRank algorithm. PageRank takes into account not only the content on the page in question, but also the quality and anchor text of the links that point to that page. For more information about PageRank, please see ://www.google.com/technology/index.html That said, there are steps you can take to increase the likelihood that a particular page on your site is returned for certain queries. You'll want to tell others who link to you of your preferred address. One way to find out who is linking to different pages on your site is to try a link search (://www.google.com/help/features.html#link). Enter 'link:[your full URL]' into the Google search box. You may not find every page that links to you with this method, but it should help you begin redirecting the links leading to your site. (Please note that we do not serve link queries for all of the sites in our index, so this may not produce any results for your site.) Another option is to perform a Google search on your URL. From the result page displayed, select the 'Find web pages that contain the term' link, and Google will provide you with the webpages that mention your address. We hope the information we have provided above is helpful to you. Due to the tremendous volume of information and help requests we receive, we are not always able to provide personal attention to questions pertaining to individual websites. If this response did not adequately resolve your question, we hope that you will visit the webmaster section of our site at ://www.google.com/webmasters/. In an effort to better address your needs, we've dedicated this entire section of our website to answering common webmaster questions, providing website design and content guidelines, listing Google's quality requirements and recommendations, and much more. Of course, we cannot anticipate and answer everyone's questions on our website. Realizing this, we have also created a Google discussion group on Google Groups where Google users and webmasters can connect to share their vast knowledge and experience. You can access this group at http://groups.google.com/groups?q=google.public.support.general. If you have already checked the webmaster section of our website and haven't found an answer, we encourage you to post your question to the Google Support group. Regards, The Google Team Original Message Follows: ------------------------ From: "Peter Subject: Apparent Google Incorrect Link Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 20:22:50 -0500 Hello Google people. Last week our hosting company had some downtime and this maybe part of the problem. I did ask Google answers and they suggested I send an email to you. I am sure you are very busy but as you know we would like people looking for our services in Google to find our organization. Here is the link to the Google Answer from the researcher. http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=357417 Essentially Google is linking to 6sigma.us and not www.6sigma.us <http://www.6sigma.us/> when our site is searched "www.6sigma.us <http://www.6sigma.us/> " it does not appear our site's home page is registered in Google. Again this may be due to the fact our hosting company had several hours of downtime last week. Best regards, Peter

• Answer:

  Hello again, Peter ~ I hope you didn't get the wrong impression about Google Answers Researchers ... most researchers are very conscientious about ensuring our customers are satisfied with their answers and work hard to make sure you get the information you are seeking. I hope you weren't inconvenienced too much by having to change servers in order to accommodate using an .htaccess file, because unfortunately, that's not the answer to your question, and probably the least of the problems with your site. ================== Your Question ================== You are basically asking why, when you do a search for your domain using the full domain name, www.6sigma.us, it merely returns: 6sigma.us ... with no 'www' and no description, etc. First of all, when I answered your first question, I told you I did not experience that. In fact, I quoted verbatim the return I was getting. The explanation for that is simple ... Google has tens of thousands of servers in a dozen or more data centers. The results I see may not be the same results you see, because you are being directed to a data center which hasn't been updated, or is updated, and I'm looking at the results on a data center which hasn't been updated. Sometimes, you can repeat your search and see the different results yourself, because your search was redirected to a different data center. When you index over 6 billion pages, in that many locations, it is physically impossible to update them all at one time. As for 'why' this is happening, only Google knows, and they may not tell you. The email you got from Google is pretty much the "canned" response people get, a generic answer to a specific question, with directions to pay attention to Google's Guidelines. And still no answer to your question. ================================= Yours Isn't the Only Site Which Has Experienced This ================================= While it is no small consolation, yours isn't the only site that experienced this phenomenon. In fact, since about mid-March, this has happened to hundreds of sites, and there is a 32-page discussion of this happening on Webmaster World's site. The discussion in the Google News section is entitled "Big sites suffering no title / no snippet in SERPS Is google penalizing big sites?", and can be found here: - http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/22615.htm There is a lot of speculation about why that is happening ... but that is all it is, speculation. There are a lot of "suggestions" about what to change, too. But if you dig through that whole thread, and it *will* take some time, you will find that the number of sites that came back after a period of time is almost the same number of sites that made major changes and then got their site back. The one difference is that those sites which closely followed Google's Guidelines, that is, they didn't engage in any of the practices known to cause penalties or outright banning by Google. Those who played it straight, stuck to the basics of relevant content, good HTML and relevant links TO their sites ... came back after another visit or two from the Google crawler. Those who were playing games, such as spammy content, sneaking redirection, cloaked links, link farms, duplicate content, etc. If you take a look, too, at recent postings in Webmaster World's Google News, Google has dropped hundreds or even of thousands of links to sites ... and most of them are nothing but link farms, linking schemes, spamming links and irrelevant links when the only purpose for a link being there is to increase page rank. At one time or another, all of these so-called search engine optimization tricks worked - because some enterprising soul discovered they 'helped' in SERPs ranking. And later on, they not only didn't work, but those sites employing such tactics were relegated to the bottom of the SERPs rankings or disappeared from Google's index altogether. Recently, it's the links which have disappeared, which I touched on in my answer to your first question. So, ignore all the speculation on the "why" this phenomenon happened, and you're left with two options: 1. If your site is designed properly, you don't employ tricks to try to increase your SERPs ranking, wait it out. That strange URL with no description seems to disappear with a correct listing after a visit or two from Google's crawler. Speculation there seems to be it's a place holder until the Google crawler can index your pages and distribute the results among all the data centers, which bears out more than other speculation, and is mentioned in Jill Whalen's Forum, which is far more reliable a source than some of the answers in Webmaster World. or 2. If your site is using the so-called "black hat" optimization techniques, it's time to clean up your act and resubmit to Google with an apology. Unfortunately, from some of the information I've found regarding your site, www.6sigma.us, the latter is more probably the case. ======================== Observations About The Results That You See ======================== There are a handful of search engine optimization experts who enjoy a stellar reputation and whose advice regarding search engines, design, etc., are really worth paying attention to. These experts work to ensure every optimization meets or exceeds the recommendations by Google and other major search engines for relevant content and quality. These are names you might recognize, such as Danny Sullivan, Andrew Goodman, Jill Whalen and others. They do not employ or advocate the use of shortcuts designed to trick search engines, knowing full well that while they may work today, and even tomorrow, eventually they will hurt their clients far more than it will ever help them. Penalty is a harsh word, but when your site suddenly disappears into the very bowels of search engine results because of such tactics, it's a long road back - especially if you rely on traffic from Google for commerce! I took the liberty of discussing your matter with Jill Whalen, who gave me full permission to quote her, and this is what she said about the search engine listing that you are seeing: She first commented, "Often this happens if the file is excluded via robots.txt, or if the page happened to be down when the Googlebot came around. The reason that those others saw theirs straightened out after awhile was probably just because the sites couldn't originally be crawled, and then they were later crawled fine." On a closer inspection, she changed her mind and stated definitively, "It's a duplicate content problem, along with possibly keyword stuffing and possibly ... paid links." I'll discuss those issues further in this Answer. ============================== Some Real Problems With Your Site As It Is Now ============================== 1. The Javascript ------------------- There is a lot of Javascript which has errors and which doesn't validate to the DOCTYPE Declaration you are using. This, however, whether you move it outside your actual webpage and link to it or leave it in your page, is not the major problem. I ran your page through the W3C validator, and found that this is not valid HTML markup and no less than 137 errors in the coding. You can do the same by running it through the validator yourself, here: - http://validator.w3.org/ Again, this is the least of your worries, but I am sure at some time or another you'll want to ensure it is properly coded for your visitors' ease of use. So that's a handy resource to use. 2. Using .htaccess -------------------- With a very few exceptions, routers along the Internet as well as most hosts rewrite search URLs so that a domain name typed in a browser locator box, with or without the 'www' resolves to the correct location. On the local server level, your host usually has a mod rewrite so that 6sigma.us would resolve to the "correct" domain name, www.6sigma.us. Therefore, unless you maintain your own servers for hosting your domain, there really wouldn't be a reason for you to need the .htaccess rewrite, and it really has nothing to do with what you are experiencing in Google. So this isn't an answer to your problem, either. 3. Duplicate Content ---------------------- Google warns about duplicate content in its content guidelines, - ://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html and there is too much anecdotal examples of recent penalties for duplicate content recently to ignore. What does this mean to you? Simply that Google will compare and run the most relevant, relegating the rest to much lower positions in rank on its SERPs. Google does have pages of your site in its index with the www, but only certain pages. Other pages are in the supplemental results, and that's often because of duplication. An allinurl search shows that G does know about lots of the pages: - http://64.233.161.104/search?q=allinurl:6sigma.us&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=20&sa=N&filter=0 Grabbing some copy from your home page and plugging it into Google, you'll see that it's duplicated from other sites: - ://www.google.com/search?q=%22Doctor%27s+Offices,+to+City+Government++and+even+Six+Sigma+in+Nonprofits%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&filter=0 (with tracking codes / session ids), or - ://www.google.com/search?q=%22providing+business+information+to+our+internal+and+external+customers%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&filter=0 At this time, original content - not found anywhere else - would be in order. The other sites may be considered more relevant by Google for any number of reasons, and yours may well be relegated to a much lower SERPs rank accordingly. 4. Spamming ------------- While it is always good to utilize keywords on each page, spamming the pages with a lot of keywords has just the opposite effect. There's a reason Google recommends designing your site for visitors and asking yourself if what you've done would matter if you weren't trying to gain a higher position in Google's SERPs for your search terms, - ://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html because, as Google says in "Reasons Your Site May Not Be Included", "We will not comment on the individual reasons a page was removed and we do not offer an exhaustive list of practices that can cause removal. However, certain actions such as cloaking, writing text that can be seen by search engines but not by users, or setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling search engines may result in permanent removal from our index." - ://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html If you want to get an idea of what the Googlebot sees when it crawls your page, Google recommends using the Lynx browser (a text browser), to get a good idea. If you don't wish to go to the trouble of downloading and installing Lynx, you can get a close idea what it sees by using the Lynx viewer, here: - http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html I doubt any legitimate search engine optimizer would classify this anything other than spamming. This is another issue you really should address. Optimized to help is one thing, over-optimized to the point where it looks spammy can hurt you. 5. Cloaking and Redirects --------------------------- The domain six-sigma-training.net apparently redirects to your site. That site is in Google's cache differently though. Take a look at this: - http://216.239.39.104/search?sourceid=navclient-menuext&q=cache:http%3A//www.six-sigma-training.net/ Yet when we click on the original page, it's redirected. It is hard for me to detect exactly what is going on there, but if I can find it by some digging, Google can find it by application of its algorithm, and it isn't going to do you any good. Your home page is also cached, but with a tracking link, - http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:SLJywDzFqL0J:www.6sigma.us/%3Ftrackcode%3Dbizcom+%22%2Bwww.6sigma.us%22&hl=en which is probably another reason you don't see the cache of your home page under your normal URL. Here's yet another link the redirected site points to: - http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:6lfrBfvBW6QJ:www.afamilyplace.com/+&hl=en all the sites in this directory are cloaked sites pointing to DMOZ.ORG. There is a link to a search optimization service at the bottom of that page, but no matter what you do, I wouldn't use them if they're employing those tactics. =========== Summary =========== No one but Google knows why you are experiencing your problem, and at the moment, they're not going to tell you. I haven't encountered it myself, which is either because the data center my search is directed to either hasn't picked it up yet, or it has picked it up and already corrected it. The reasons could also be: 1. The site wasn't available on the last crawl (your web logs should show information on when you were last crawled), 2. There *is* something wrong with your site, such as over-optimization (spam), duplicate content, site redirects, etc., as any or any combination of those can cause a penalty. My best "guesstimate" is that your site has enough wrong that it is probably more than one thing. But again, that is a guess, not fact, as Google Answers Researchers are not privy to any insider information, including the specifics of Google's closely-guarded algorithms. You can either: 1. Wait it out and see if it doesn't correct itself, as has been the case with others experiencing the same problem; or 2. Clean up the trouble spots, and I have identified several, before you are penalized by Google. Then write to Google apologize for any misdeeds and ask for reinclusion. ==================== My Recommendations ==================== I would recommend consulting with a known, legitimate search engine optimization consultant. Take your pick of such names as Jill Whalen, Danny Sullivan, Andrew Goodman, Shari Thorow, but stay completely away from any so-called SEO who uses tactics such as spam, redirects, cloaking, etc. Their tactics may work for a while, but ultimately, they do more harm than good, and could possibly get you banned permanently from Google. Clean up your site. Rewrite your site for original content. If other sites (possibly affiliates, etc.) are copying your own, put a stop to it and insist they write their own content and then link. A good Search Engine Optimization consultant can also recommend ways to accommodate affiliate links. Don't even try to use any 'formula' for search terms to content, but instead do what Google suggests, design your site for your visitor and consider whether or not it makes sense to him. If you're too involved to see the difference, test it before you launch the new material. Dump the redirect/cloaking mentioned above. That will get you penalized. If it can be found using Google's simple search techniques, you can count on it being found by Google's sophisticated algorithms. If you designed the site yourself, fix the problems in the Javascript. If you used the services of a web designer, insist the designer clean up the Javascript errors until your site can validate to W3C standards. Like them or not, when you can validate to those standards, the search engines, including the Googlebot, have no problem indexing your site. Dump your irrelevant links. While you cannot help who links to you, it wouldn't hurt to develop relevant links to counteract any "paid" or other links which look like the exist for no other reason than to boost your Google SERPs rank. There are some links listed now, but some of them are tenuous at best. There is too much evidence that Google is cleaning out those types of links, so you need to make sure you have links that are relevant to your site. If your site is hosted, your host should have the rewrites for URL resolution at the server's root level. If you maintain your own server, make sure the rewrites are done correctly at that level, so regardless of which URL (with or without the 'www'), it returns to your site. Then resubmit your site to Google or wait til more visits from the Googlebot to see if it is automatically reinstated as it should be. Remember, this can take as long as 8 weeks, and regaining lost ground will probably NOT happen overnight. There are no shortcuts or quick fixes, and there is no one answer to fix things. Don't put too much store in the Google toolbar's PageRank number. It is merely a number and there are too many relevant sites with few (if any) links to their site, yet have content deemed so relevant as to be almost authoritative at the top of the list to put a lot of store in PageRank. I do not wish to appear overly-critical here. Often, when answering these types of questions, it is easy to pinpoint one particular reason for a problem with a listing in Google's index. In your case, and after some pretty easy searching, there were much more than any one particular problem identified which *could* contribute to the problem you are experiencing. To identify one potential problem without identifying the others might not clear up your problem, so a close look at practices employed and which to fix is in order. Although I cannot tell you exactly *why* you are experiencing this problem, I think I have identified enough trouble spots to give you an idea that at the moment, your site is not ideally designed or situated. I hope the above gave you some insight into both the potential problems within your site and how easily they can be remediated in order to deliver a site to your visitors that is friendly and really relevant. Best of luck, Serenata Google Answers Researcher