How to get indexed better from Yahoo & MSN?

[BigMumu]

Hi! :)

I used some tool to see the pages of my site indexed by ggl, y! & msn & found that ggl indexed many more pages, I think ggl sitemap helps & wonder if there was a way to get better indexation from msn & y!

I made a page with a sitemap, but I doubt that would help: Video Tutorials Spot Sitemap (http://videotutorialspot.info/video-tutorials-spot-sitemap/)

Thanks for your time! :)

[fuzzy]

In my experience, MSN was first to index my site, followed by Y!, and finally big G came lumbering along. Best thing I can say is to make sure you have adequate links to your pages from other parts of your site.

[donecweb]

My experience and recommendations match Marks and also think the use of a site map that is not associated with any search engine will do the best for all search engines.

[BigMumu]

In my experience, MSN was first to index my site, followed by Y!, and finally big G came lumbering along. Best thing I can say is to make sure you have adequate links to your pages from other parts of your site.
Well, if you check the main page there are several ways to get to pages: from categories, from the links in the calendar (sorts posts by date), from static pages containing lists of posts under some categories & now also from the sitemap I added ... I'm afraid there's an overdose of links, would that penalize me with msn & yahoo? I mean if their bots follow different links & find the same pages, will that be taken as duplicate content for instance or something?

[webado]

What does same page mean to you? same content? or same url?

Duplicate content is if 2 or more different url's show the same content.

Finding the same url by different paths does not indicate duplicate content.

Different url's are just that: the url starting from http:// rigth up uintil the end of any query string being different from another one.

2 urls like: http://example.com/index.php?a=1&b=2 and http://example.com/index.php?b=2&a=1 are different even though you cna argue they are equivalent.

Thats' why it's important to ensure all dynamiclaly generated url's follwo the same exact pattern. Otherwise search engine robots will consider the url's different and so there will be duplicate content just because fo that.

Note that in Google there is no duplicate content penalty as such one a site just because of several different url's showing the same content.

But what you have is search engines deciding only one (sometimes none) of the url's that show the same content will be considered worthy for inclusion in the index, not all of them. Some duplicates that might have been included previously may end up supplemental. The PR will be diluted for all of them if there are links to several such urls, which are variations of the same one.

In any case having an overabundance of urls all for the same content page tends to inflate the index, adding deadwood.

Duplicate content penalties are more likely to be associated with different sites exhibiting duplicate content, and this includes content from 2 or more domains parked on top of each other.

[BigMumu]

Thanks for detailed reply :)

In fact I meant by same page same URL & I think all my posts have a single URL each.

Back to topic, when Google sends me 100 visitors, MSN sends about 10 & I didn't see any visit from Yahoo yet, 1st I thought it was just a matter of rankings, but according to Web CEO software, it's also because Y! & MSN indexed about 20% only of the number of pages that Google indexed. That's why I was wondering if there was a way to get more pages indexed ..

I doupt Yahoo would send me any traffic anyways, I think it favors old domains, mine is only from April.

[webado]

Yahoo uses the same xml sitemap format Google does, and a few other search engines too.

You can create an xml sitemap (see Google Webaster Tools) and add this to the bottom of you robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

(example.com should be your own domain)

Then the other search engines that recognize xml sitemaps will make us of it too.

Yahoo also has a service similar to Google Webmaster Tools allowing you to submit and follow the progress of your site.

No idea about MSN.

[BigMumu]

I didn't know Yahoo uses the sitemap.xml file ... I have installed a plugin which auto create & update the sitemap, I also regisered with Y! "Webmaster Tools" but didn't see in it a feature to submit the sitemap like with Google, instead I could submit rss :confused:

Oh! I guess I have to edit robots.txt .. thanks for info!!

[webado]

The original yahoo sitemap is to be called urlist.txt and is a regular text file with one full url per line. You can submit that to Yahoo.

You will need a special verificaiton html file to be also uplaoded to your site root.

But it will also quietly use the xml sitemap indicated in robots.txt - or so I'm told. You may want to use this as well since you cna specify lastmod and frequency and priority.

[BigMumu]

I verified my sites with Yahoo but I hear from you about the urlist.txt file, I need to see if I can find a tool to generate it .. anyways I just checked my stats & found two visits from Yahoo, the 1st ever I notice :D wonder if it has something to do with all the things I've done lately ...

[webado]

It's just an ordinary listing of all url's.

But if that's too hard to do manually, then you can downlaod and use the progam from http://gsitecrawler.com which can make for you all the different kinds of sitemaps including urlist.txt .


Or an online tool like http://www.sitemapdoc.com/ which will make a text sitemap, and all you need to do is coy the contents and save it as urlist.txt . For sites not over 500 pages.

[BigMumu]

Yes it's a bit hard adding 1k URLs manually :D

Thanks for those tools!!

[faze3]

Or try:
http://www.automapit.com
which will make all the different files for you, keep them updated AND submit them to the search engines on a regular basis!!! I don't actually use a site map but I used the above on my daughter's site and it seems to work well.
Alan.

[BigMumu]

Thanks Alan! :)

BtW, I wrote today a post on my blog & listed SEO friendly WP plugins & some tips including the ones I got from chrisooc, you might check it below & tell me what you think:

SEO Plugins for WordPress Blogs (http://videotutorialspot.info/2007/07/website-development/seo-search-engines-optimization-plugins-for-wordpress-blogs/)