So has Google found your site yet?

Over the last 12 months Google has undergone many changes to the way it looks at and lists your site.

This week sees another upgrade in Google.

As any search engine or member of the public will tell you, Google or any other search engine MUST provide the most relevant listings for a search query.

One of the major changes that Google is implementing is that it will not display more than one AdWords listings for the same company Domain Name. At present they also try to have only one listing (with a secondary) per website domain displayed in the top search results.

This affects mainly affiliated member sites.

This also affects companies that provide a member program. Say if you were using Google AdWords and there are 5 members from your company paying to use AdWords only one listing will be displayed and this will be the highest bid for that keyword.

In another words the average Joe Marketer will have to pay a high price to have his AdWord listing displayed.

For Google and for the Google search user this provides a more defined search. There will not be 5 AdWords placed for the same company or merchant as has been the case in the past.

With 3 or 4 AdWords for the same company displayed, allowed a person who paid a bid of 50 cents to be displayed at the bottom of the list while someone who could afford to pay five dollars for the same keyword to have his link at the top of the page. You stood a chance when your AdWord was displayed, now you have to have the highest bid at that particular time.

BUT, this is not an insurmountable problem. This is where owning your own Domain name and web site is a must.

At present many search engines only allow one plus a secondary listing for any one domain to be displayed in their top page or two of their search results.

NOTE:
There is no easy way around not owning your own domain.

Getting your affiliated member site listed in a search engine is becoming almost impossible, especially when you consider that there are tens and even hundreds of thousands of other members belonging to the same company, promoting their member site too.

This can and will affect many companies as they rely on their members to promote the companies site though pay per click - AdWords and standard search engine listing.

With odds of one hundred thousand to one you have better odds of winning the lotteries.

Once marketers understand the concept of creating their own website, one of the next hurdles they face is the content for their site. What so often happens is that they do not consider themselves as copy writers, so they copy the content from their member site. I have seen this many times where marketers websites are almost exact copies of their companies site.

The definition of a search engine is to provide the most relevant search results for a specific search.

Google are only trying to live up to this definition. So as they are only allowing one AdWord display listing for any one company or domain, Google are also only allowing one page with the exact same content to be displayed.

If your web page is a duplicate of your companies page, then your page is very likely to receive a duplicate content penalty with Google.

In other words if your site has been indexed by Google and they find your page to be an exact copy of another page, it is highly likely your page will receive the penalty and not the company site.

Remember that the Google Bot's are checking and indexing around eight billion pages each month. It takes a very powerful computer system to keep track of all those pages and the content on those pages to return relevant searches. It doesn't take to much brain power to realize that as Google indexes a page it can also compare your page with the thousands that fit into your product, service or information category.

It is generally thought that for a 1st offense your page will be removed from their index for 30 days then for the 2nd offense for 60 days then for a 3rd offense your page will be removed for 90 days. After the 3rd offence you can forget about Google.

But it gets worse, if your page contains duplicate content and Google spots it, for the time your page is cooling off for 30 days it affects the rest of your site as you will no doubt have many links in the site map etc, to the banned page so this can and does affect your whole sites ranking.

The news is not all bad as anyone who has the ability to consider marketing any product and is prepared to attempt creating a web site, also has the ability to reword and rewrite the content from their company site.

Most other pay per click search engines or ones that accept paid inclusion like Overture already use similar policies that Google is now implementing.

There are exceptions to the duplicate rule like RSS News feeds, Directories, ezine article Directories and sites like Ebay and Yahoo stores where these individual stores use the Yahoo or eBay domain name.

Using good common sense, you should never have any problems with Google or other search engines as you are promoting your website as your own unique sales display.

Don't get me wrong Google is my first choice in Search Engines.

Google offers many f`ree tools for web masters. You can find some of tools listed here.

http://www.google.com/help/features.html

If you to Google.com search, you can check the links to your Website. (incoming links). Where I have www.internet-income-index in the search box, you would type in your website domain.

"+www.internet-income-index.+com

Now if I can get 151 links back to my site without submitting it to search engines, think what you can do...

Most Internet Marketers average between 20 and 50 links using the Google links tool.

My point is if you add one link to your website in a single Internet directory, Google and other search engines will find you and your site just by following the link you placed in that one directory.

If you check issue 103 of this ezine dated May 26 - 2004 Google only had 2 links to my ezine site listed.

I have placed a link on my other personally owned sites and have added ezine articles I have written in a couple of Ezine Article Directories. You will find EzineArticles.com will be listed above my site in a search for my ezine site as they are a very high profile site.

The higher the profile or page rank Google gives any site that you have your site link in, the higher Google is likely to rate your site providing you have played by Googles rules.

Did you know that many search engines consider you have 2 sites one with http;//www. in front of your domain and one with just the http;//yourdomain.com plus if you have a sub-domain name like http://www.search.yourdomain.com they treat this generally as a different domain or website. The word search is the sub-domain in this instance.

But it is far easier to promote just the one domain as opposed to promoting 3 variations of the one domain name. I know that from past experience after I listed it in the Dmoz.org Directory without "www."

http://VoipConference.info

"+www.voipconference.+info with 21 incoming links

compared to 320 incoming links (without the www.) "+voipconference.+info

TIP,
Domain Name Branding your website using a one off name like Google or eBay is still best when it comes to search engine marketing and for domain name recognition if you are prepared to invest the time and money, but if your budget is limited then using a domain name that describes your business or includes keywords relating to your product or service is equally good.

May Google be kind to your site.

PETER GREEN.

Editor of ~ The INDEX ~ ezine.

Editor@Internet-income-index.com

http://www.Internet-Income-Index.com

Your Free Weekly Internet Marketing News, Ideas, Resources and Sources Ezine.