there are a few other pages that arent being indexed but they are
deepurls, they arent really a concern right now, all i need is to get
the english homepage indexed....
I did alot of things to promote this url, there are many links
( internal and external) that are pointing to food-intolerance.ca/en/,
also the url is being indexed and appears in MSN and Yahoo searches
without problems.
I am desperate for a solution... it has been more than 3months and /
en/ is nowhere to be found... I have a sitemap, I have used google
webmaster tools aswell... Why is that page not being indexed ? I NEED
to get it indexed ASAP ... I have indexed many websites in my life
without any problem before, I am working for the owners of the site
and have been telling them that getting indexed takes time but they
are getting impatient... please help...
Try a google search for cache:food-intolerance.ca/en/
It shows the version with the /en/ because they are the same and the
longer version has been filtered out. If you want the different URLs
both indexed and showing they will have to show different content as
Google works to filter out the less important and show the best URL if
there are duplicates, in this case they have figured that food-
intolerance.ca/ is better than food-intolerance.ca/en/
> there are a few other pages that arent being indexed but they are
> deepurls, they arent really a concern right now, all i need is to get
> the english homepage indexed....
> I did alot of things to promote this url, there are many links
> ( internal and external) that are pointing to food-intolerance.ca/en/,
> also the url is being indexed and appears in MSN and Yahoo searches
> without problems.
> I am desperate for a solution... it has been more than 3months and /
> en/ is nowhere to be found... I have a sitemap, I have used google
> webmaster tools aswell... Why is that page not being indexed ? I NEED
> to get it indexed ASAP ... I have indexed many websites in my life
> without any problem before, I am working for the owners of the site
> and have been telling them that getting indexed takes time but they
> are getting impatient... please help...
Hi,
thanks for the answer JLH... i understand what you said but the thing
is that food-intolerance.ca isnt supposed to have content... Let me
explain...
When you go to food-intolerance.ca you are supposed to be
automatically redirected to either the /en/ or /fr/, this is done by a
wordpress script called gengo, gengo detects the language of the
browser and then redirect you to the appropriate place...
Also whenever we link to our site, we NEVER use the shorter version
( food-intolerance.ca ), NEVER... , we always use the /en/ or /fr/
url...
So basically there shouldnt be anything indexed for food-
intolerance.ca ...
When I do a search in google for "food intolerance" my site is NOT
indexed in the 20 first pages... but on MSN live and Yahoo , Im in the
1st page ( top 5 positions ) ...
I am pretty sure that there is a problem in the way that google is
indexing my site... What can I do ?
> Try a google search for cache:food-intolerance.ca/en/
> It shows the version with the /en/ because they are the same and the
> longer version has been filtered out. If you want the different URLs
> both indexed and showing they will have to show different content as
> Google works to filter out the less important and show the best URL if
> there are duplicates, in this case they have figured that food-
> intolerance.ca/ is better than food-intolerance.ca/en/
> > there are a few other pages that arent being indexed but they are
> > deepurls, they arent really a concern right now, all i need is to get
> > the english homepage indexed....
> > I did alot of things to promote this url, there are many links
> > ( internal and external) that are pointing to food-intolerance.ca/en/,
> > also the url is being indexed and appears in MSN and Yahoo searches
> > without problems.
> > I am desperate for a solution... it has been more than 3months and /
> > en/ is nowhere to be found... I have a sitemap, I have used google
> > webmaster tools aswell... Why is that page not being indexed ? I NEED
> > to get it indexed ASAP ... I have indexed many websites in my life
> > without any problem before, I am working for the owners of the site
> > and have been telling them that getting indexed takes time but they
> > are getting impatient... please help...
> I am not sure but i think Google prefers such redirects to be based on
> IP geo-location rather than on browser language settings. Unsure if
> its totally relevant but Mailes article on this link may help...http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-google-defines...
That being the case I'd dump the /en/ thing all together and 301
redirect it to the normal home page, you can have your lanquage
preference shenanigans for french going to the /fr/ page. By picking
the shortest URL Google has made a system that probably works for 98%
of the sites, your's just isn't one of them.
I really don't see what the difference is, since both show the same
content, you are not going to get both to show up in Google, pick one,
dump the other.Maybe those other search engines will show multiple
copies of the same content but theres a reason they have a dwindling
share of the market and its not because they are better.
> geo location isnt good because here in quebec, we have both, french
> and english people... so it cant be based on location...
> On Jun 6, 7:56 pm, jeff hall wrote:
> > I am not sure but i think Google prefers such redirects to be based on
> > IP geo-location rather than on browser language settings. Unsure if
> > its totally relevant but Mailes article on this link may help...http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-google-defines...
Give a choice up front. Forget about redirecting, that's a mess. Make
a small bilingual page to be an overall homepage, with links to the
English and the French full length homepages.
Just because I'm browsing using my employer's PC with the language set
to FR, doesn't mean I want to see just the French version of the site.
Maybe I want to see the English one. Or maybe both.
I assume you have a default language set to English, bacause most
robots have no language setting. Your homepage got cached with the
English version.
> geo location isnt good because here in quebec, we have both, french
> and english people... so it cant be based on location...
> On Jun 6, 7:56 pm, jeff hall wrote:
> > I am not sure but i think Google prefers such redirects to be based on
> > IP geo-location rather than on browser language settings. Unsure if
> > its totally relevant but Mailes article on this link may help...http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-google-defines... Hide quoted text -
> I assume you have a default language set to English, bacause most
> robots have no language setting. Your homepage got cached with the
> English version.
A lot of mobile browsers don't have a language setting either. I
concur with your bilingual page suggestion.
Lots of countries have the same problem, with multiple official
languages. Belgium and Switzerland, for example.
And here in the UK we're always being pestered by the bleedin' Welsh.
So the solution is to repleace the current homepage index, create a
splash page at food-intolerance.ca that gives the user the choice of
language ?
once he choose he is then sent to either /fr/ or /en/ ... If I do
this, food-intolerance.ca/en/ will become the page that come up in
result when people type "food intolerance"
Since this splash page is not important, ( i would prefer not having
to make people chose a language before they can see the content of the
homepage ), can i make it very simple, only 2 buttons nothing else,
french or english...
or should i make a design with some content in french about 150 words,
and another column in english 150 words also...
> > I assume you have a default language set to English, bacause most
> > robots have no language setting. Your homepage got cached with the
> > English version.
> A lot of mobile browsers don't have a language setting either. I
> concur with your bilingual page suggestion.
> Lots of countries have the same problem, with multiple official
> languages. Belgium and Switzerland, for example.
> And here in the UK we're always being pestered by the bleedin' Welsh.
Think about it...
Do you really want the first thing to be hit by bots/users is a
question as to what language?
If you go for the typical splash page, then thats all the bots will
see, right?
Why not have your 'prefered language' as the defualt...
then make it quite clear that users can change language options?
The problem is that the redirection is handled by a wordpress plugin
(gengo), which checks the browser language and then send the user to
the right language...
Im not a programmer so i dont want to mess with the code too much...
beside this system works pretty well, its just that google doesnt like
it, other search engines still rank me in the top 5 results for my
keywords...
I though of something else however... could i put food-intolerance.ca
in a robots.txt so that google will not index that page ? or is it too
late since it was already crawled and cached, it will still be there ?
I already have a robots.txt file that disallow robots from going into
specific folders ( wordpress admin/plugins feeds etc )
Can I add a command for googlebot only ? would this work :
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: food-intolerance.ca
Will this block Googlebot from crawling all pages under a particular
my root directory ( food-intolerance.ca/ ) thus removing all my site's
pages/content from the index ?
> Think about it...
> Do you really want the first thing to be hit by bots/users is a
> question as to what language?
> If you go for the typical splash page, then thats all the bots will
> see, right?
> Why not have your 'prefered language' as the defualt...
> then make it quite clear that users can change language options?
I think you're fairly close to a solution :). The main problem is that
the root URL is being indexed instead of the language-level URL. This
seems to be because your root URL is 302 redirecting to the language
version. In general, a redirect from root to a detail page should be a
302 redirect -- that is, if you want to keep your root URL indexed. In
this case, however, you would only want the language URL indexed, not
the root URL. To achieve that, your redirect should be a 301 redirect.
From a quick glance, this might be something that is easily changed
(though if you change it yourself, you will have to make sure to
change it in future versions as well -- server side software like
WordPress should always be kept at the newest version).
An alternative to a 301 redirect would be to use a generic root page
that allows the user to choose between the different languages. If you
do this, I would suggest adding enough content so that a user will be
able to understand what your site is about in both languages.
Additionally, I would not recommend using the robots.txt to block
crawling of that page -- it would be better to just use the "noindex"
robots meta tag value (which would still allow us to find the links to
your language versions).
Both methods have advantages and disadvantages, although I think that
with regards to crawling, indexing and ranking they should be similar
enough so that you can choose either one.
> Think about it...
> Do you really want the first thing to be hit by bots/users is a
> question as to what language?
> If you go for the typical splash page, then thats all the bots will
> see, right?
> Why not have your 'prefered language' as the defualt...
> then make it quite clear that users can change language options?
Well again in Quebec the only official language is French, and English
is kind of tolerated as courtesy. So it woudl have to a French
homepage and default language with an option for English. Far better
to have a bilingual homepage with an intro in French and an intro in
English.
When I redo my bilingual sites this is what I will do, having so far
built 2 sites, one with English as defualt language and Frech as an
option, and another one the exact opposite, French as defautl and
English as an option. Neither is ideal.
The robots.txt only has directives concerning the uri (or a prefix of
the uri) not the url, this means the domain part does not appear at
all. It would be invalid and useless putting in the domain part.
> The problem is that the redirection is handled by a wordpress plugin
> (gengo), which checks the browser language and then send the user to
> the right language...
> Im not a programmer so i dont want to mess with the code too much...
> beside this system works pretty well, its just that google doesnt like
> it, other search engines still rank me in the top 5 results for my
> keywords...
> I though of something else however... could i put food-intolerance.ca
> in a robots.txt so that google will not index that page ? or is it too
> late since it was already crawled and cached, it will still be there ?
> I already have a robots.txt file that disallow robots from going into
> specific folders ( wordpress admin/plugins feeds etc )
> Can I add a command for googlebot only ? would this work :
> User-agent: Googlebot
> Disallow: food-intolerance.ca
> Will this block Googlebot from crawling all pages under a particular
> my root directory ( food-intolerance.ca/ ) thus removing all my site's
> pages/content from the index ?
> On Jun 8, 9:44 am, Autocrat wrote:
> > No Splash Page!
> > Think about it...
> > Do you really want the first thing to be hit by bots/users is a
> > question as to what language?
> > If you go for the typical splash page, then thats all the bots will
> > see, right?
> > Why not have your 'prefered language' as the defualt...
> > then make it quite clear that users can change language options?- Hide quoted text -
Hi JohnMu,
thanks for your help, I tried looking into some of my wordpress files
and gengo plugin files and couldnt find the redirect instruction. I
would rather not use a splash page, so I was thinking instead of
this :
Use .htaccess to redirect all traffic going to food-intolerance.ca to
food-intolerance.ca/en/
Is this a valid solution ?
- Cons of this solution : french people who type the url directly
would be directed to the english version and would have to click to
switch language. ( however if a french person does a search in
google , he will still find food-intolerance.ca/fr/ in the results )
This is what my current .htaccess file has in it :
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
> I think you're fairly close to a solution :). The main problem is that
> the root URL is being indexed instead of the language-level URL. This
> seems to be because your root URL is 302 redirecting to the language
> version. In general, a redirect from root to a detail page should be a
> 302 redirect -- that is, if you want to keep your root URL indexed. In
> this case, however, you would only want the language URL indexed, not
> the root URL. To achieve that, your redirect should be a 301 redirect.
> From a quick glance, this might be something that is easily changed
> (though if you change it yourself, you will have to make sure to
> change it in future versions as well -- server side software like
> WordPress should always be kept at the newest version).
> An alternative to a 301 redirect would be to use a generic root page
> that allows the user to choose between the different languages. If you
> do this, I would suggest adding enough content so that a user will be
> able to understand what your site is about in both languages.
> Additionally, I would not recommend using the robots.txt to block
> crawling of that page -- it would be better to just use the "noindex"
> robots meta tag value (which would still allow us to find the links to
> your language versions).
> Both methods have advantages and disadvantages, although I think that
> with regards to crawling, indexing and ranking they should be similar
> enough so that you can choose either one.
Call me weird, I don't think it's much good though, I personally much
prefer a bilingual homepage with an intro to the site in both
languages and links to each language's homepage in its respective
directory. Cleaner, more user friendly.
> Hi JohnMu,
> thanks for your help, I tried looking into some of my wordpress files
> and gengo plugin files and couldnt find the redirect instruction. I
> would rather not use a splash page, so I was thinking instead of
> this :
> Use .htaccess to redirect all traffic going to food-intolerance.ca to
> food-intolerance.ca/en/
> Is this a valid solution ?
> - Cons of this solution : french people who type the url directly
> would be directed to the english version and would have to click to
> switch language. ( however if a french person does a search in
> google , he will still find food-intolerance.ca/fr/ in the results )
> This is what my current .htaccess file has in it :
> # BEGIN WordPress
> <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
> RewriteEngine On
> RewriteBase /
> RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
> RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
> RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
> </IfModule>
> > I think you're fairly close to a solution :). The main problem is that
> > the root URL is being indexed instead of the language-level URL. This
> > seems to be because your root URL is 302 redirecting to the language
> > version. In general, a redirect from root to a detail page should be a
> > 302 redirect -- that is, if you want to keep your root URL indexed. In
> > this case, however, you would only want the language URL indexed, not
> > the root URL. To achieve that, your redirect should be a 301 redirect.
> > From a quick glance, this might be something that is easily changed
> > (though if you change it yourself, you will have to make sure to
> > change it in future versions as well -- server side software like
> > WordPress should always be kept at the newest version).
> > An alternative to a 301 redirect would be to use a generic root page
> > that allows the user to choose between the different languages. If you
> > do this, I would suggest adding enough content so that a user will be
> > able to understand what your site is about in both languages.
> > Additionally, I would not recommend using the robots.txt to block
> > crawling of that page -- it would be better to just use the "noindex"
> > robots meta tag value (which would still allow us to find the links to
> > your language versions).
> > Both methods have advantages and disadvantages, although I think that
> > with regards to crawling, indexing and ranking they should be similar
> > enough so that you can choose either one.
> Call me weird, I don't think it's much good though, I personally much
> prefer a bilingual homepage with an intro to the site in both
> languages and links to each language's homepage in its respective
> directory. Cleaner, more user friendly.
> On Jun 16, 1:29 pm, LouKad wrote:
> > Hi JohnMu,
> > thanks for your help, I tried looking into some of my wordpress files
> > and gengo plugin files and couldnt find the redirect instruction. I
> > would rather not use a splash page, so I was thinking instead of
> > this :
> > Use .htaccess to redirect all traffic going to food-intolerance.ca to
> > food-intolerance.ca/en/
> > Is this a valid solution ?
> > - Cons of this solution : french people who type the url directly
> > would be directed to the english version and would have to click to
> > switch language. ( however if a french person does a search in
> > google , he will still find food-intolerance.ca/fr/ in the results )
> > This is what my current .htaccess file has in it :
> > # BEGIN WordPress
> > <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
> > RewriteEngine On
> > RewriteBase /
> > RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
> > RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
> > RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
> > </IfModule>
> > > I think you're fairly close to a solution :). The main problem is that
> > > the root URL is being indexed instead of the language-level URL. This
> > > seems to be because your root URL is 302 redirecting to the language
> > > version. In general, a redirect from root to a detail page should be a
> > > 302 redirect -- that is, if you want to keep your root URL indexed. In
> > > this case, however, you would only want the language URL indexed, not
> > > the root URL. To achieve that, your redirect should be a 301 redirect.
> > > From a quick glance, this might be something that is easily changed
> > > (though if you change it yourself, you will have to make sure to
> > > change it in future versions as well -- server side software like
> > > WordPress should always be kept at the newest version).
> > > An alternative to a 301 redirect would be to use a generic root page
> > > that allows the user to choose between the different languages. If you
> > > do this, I would suggest adding enough content so that a user will be
> > > able to understand what your site is about in both languages.
> > > Additionally, I would not recommend using the robots.txt to block
> > > crawling of that page -- it would be better to just use the "noindex"
> > > robots meta tag value (which would still allow us to find the links to
> > > your language versions).
> > > Both methods have advantages and disadvantages, although I think that
> > > with regards to crawling, indexing and ranking they should be similar
> > > enough so that you can choose either one.
> > > Hope it helps!
> > > John- Hide quoted text -
> > Call me weird, I don't think it's much good though, I personally much
> > prefer a bilingual homepage with an intro to the site in both
> > languages and links to each language's homepage in its respective
> > directory. Cleaner, more user friendly.
> > On Jun 16, 1:29 pm, LouKad wrote:
> > > Hi JohnMu,
> > > thanks for your help, I tried looking into some of my wordpress files
> > > and gengo plugin files and couldnt find the redirect instruction. I
> > > would rather not use a splash page, so I was thinking instead of
> > > this :
> > > Use .htaccess to redirect all traffic going to food-intolerance.ca to
> > > food-intolerance.ca/en/
> > > Is this a valid solution ?
> > > - Cons of this solution : french people who type the url directly
> > > would be directed to the english version and would have to click to
> > > switch language. ( however if a french person does a search in
> > > google , he will still find food-intolerance.ca/fr/ in the results )
> > > > I think you're fairly close to a solution :). The main problem is that
> > > > the root URL is being indexed instead of the language-level URL. This
> > > > seems to be because your root URL is 302 redirecting to the language
> > > > version. In general, a redirect from root to a detail page should be a
> > > > 302 redirect -- that is, if you want to keep your root URL indexed. In
> > > > this case, however, you would only want the language URL indexed, not
> > > > the root URL. To achieve that, your redirect should be a 301 redirect.
> > > > From a quick glance, this might be something that is easily changed
> > > > (though if you change it yourself, you will have to make sure to
> > > > change it in future versions as well -- server side software like
> > > > WordPress should always be kept at the newest version).
> > > > An alternative to a 301 redirect would be to use a generic root page
> > > > that allows the user to choose between the different languages. If you
> > > > do this, I would suggest adding enough content so that a user will be
> > > > able to understand what your site is about in both languages.
> > > > Additionally, I would not recommend using the robots.txt to block
> > > > crawling of that page -- it would be better to just use the "noindex"
> > > > robots meta tag value (which would still allow us to find the links to
> > > > your language versions).
> > > > Both methods have advantages and disadvantages, although I think that
> > > > with regards to crawling, indexing and ranking they should be similar
> > > > enough so that you can choose either one.
> > > > Hope it helps!
> > > > John- Hide quoted text -
I don't like the redirect because it makes assumptions. It assumes the
user will be happy to get redirected to what you think his language
preference is or to what you decided the default language should be.
It's quite irritating, Quebec language laws notwithstanding ;)
> > Call me weird, I don't think it's much good though, I personally much
> > prefer a bilingual homepage with an intro to the site in both
> > languages and links to each language's homepage in its respective
> > directory. Cleaner, more user friendly.
> > On Jun 16, 1:29 pm, LouKad wrote:
> > > Hi JohnMu,
> > > thanks for your help, I tried looking into some of my wordpress files
> > > and gengo plugin files and couldnt find the redirect instruction. I
> > > would rather not use a splash page, so I was thinking instead of
> > > this :
> > > Use .htaccess to redirect all traffic going to food-intolerance.ca to
> > > food-intolerance.ca/en/
> > > Is this a valid solution ?
> > > - Cons of this solution : french people who type the url directly
> > > would be directed to the english version and would have to click to
> > > switch language. ( however if a french person does a search in
> > > google , he will still find food-intolerance.ca/fr/ in the results )
> > > > I think you're fairly close to a solution :). The main problem is that
> > > > the root URL is being indexed instead of the language-level URL. This
> > > > seems to be because your root URL is 302 redirecting to the language
> > > > version. In general, a redirect from root to a detail page should be a
> > > > 302 redirect -- that is, if you want to keep your root URL indexed. In
> > > > this case, however, you would only want the language URL indexed, not
> > > > the root URL. To achieve that, your redirect should be a 301 redirect.
> > > > From a quick glance, this might be something that is easily changed
> > > > (though if you change it yourself, you will have to make sure to
> > > > change it in future versions as well -- server side software like
> > > > WordPress should always be kept at the newest version).
> > > > An alternative to a 301 redirect would be to use a generic root page
> > > > that allows the user to choose between the different languages. If you
> > > > do this, I would suggest adding enough content so that a user will be
> > > > able to understand what your site is about in both languages.
> > > > Additionally, I would not recommend using the robots.txt to block
> > > > crawling of that page -- it would be better to just use the "noindex"
> > > > robots meta tag value (which would still allow us to find the links to
> > > > your language versions).
> > > > Both methods have advantages and disadvantages, although I think that
> > > > with regards to crawling, indexing and ranking they should be similar
> > > > enough so that you can choose either one.
> > > > Hope it helps!
> > > > John- Hide quoted text -
