I'm working on a new website, and I'm not too bothered how long it takes to get listed and ranked because I'm currently designing it, and won't be launching until July/August. So I've placed a link to the new site on my signature, and it'll be interesting how long it will take Google to pick it up as my only backlink(S) For a bit of fun, how long do you think it'll take to get listed (if at all!) Answers on a postcard to .. only jokin... feel free to reply with your answer Darren p.s. it's the Dubai Vacations website!
Dear Darren, As owner of a Dubai site myself I thought I would let you know how good your site looks. I am not sure howm long it will take Google to pick up your signature as a backlink, (not that experienced yet), however, our site went "live" on December 16th and we are now placed at 225,000 on the Alexa rankings which I am sure is down to the links directory we set up. It will be interesting to see how fast your site gets listed. Good luck. Colin
Hi Darren It's apparent that Google will find your sig link almost immediately (take a look at who's online? under the quicklinks tab - Googlebot is here frequently!) On most of my sites Google spiders the linked site within a couple of days of picking up a new reference. Big G likes new content! I'm sure your site will be indexed in no time. Mick
Thanks Colin - when the site is completed I'll let you know so we can reciprocate links if you wish. I've had a quick look at your website, and it looks good, but you need to get more links pointing to you, and get that PR up, in the end it will help your serps. Even though Alexa is a good tool to measure your websites effectiveness, its very limited because it's only stats on people who have the Alexa toolbar. Arnica - cheers, that's good news! We'll then see if there is such a thing has a 'sandbox' and see how long it gets me into the serps
Darren I don't think (hope I'm not wrong) your site will be sandboxed for 'Vacations in Dubai'. Google returns: 73,500 pages in the SERPs 68 entries in the 'allinanchor' results With stemming applied i.e. 'vacation in Dubai' the results increase a little. 180,000 pages in the SERPs 150 in 'allinanchor' I have many sites that have gone straight into the SERPs (no sandboxing) with much higher 'competition'. Indeed this threshold level is hopefully what will materialise from this thread. Best of luck and let us know what happens. Mick
Thanks for that info Mick! What is going to get tricky is when you are optimising for hotels, which is a complete minefield because there are so many websites. I have to spend some time on the optimisation on the website when it's completed, but I would reckon that some keywords like Vacations in Dubai would be easy to crack, but Hotels in Dubai, or Dubai Hotels is going to be a challenege Luckily this is just a sideline to my main business so I won't loose sleep too much Will keep you updated Darren
I'd try to apply to dmoz, it might take a while but that will be a nice steady backlink (plus the a backlink from the directories that copy the dmoz data).
DMOZ sucks now... to check on your site, you now have to wait 6 months (NOT 1) just to check status. I have one site in for 3 months and still not listed in DMOZ...... DMOZ is actually becoming less important now anyway, and just serves as a good backlink.
I'm pretty sure you can check once after a month, but after that, not again until 6 months have passed.. I could be wrong there though.
I think it has changed to six months, i have seen a number of people posting and getting told that they now have to wait six months... but eh, what can you expect... I could be wrong but i did get the warning myself... But i don't really care because it's like i said, their "sphere of influence" has pretty much worn off. It's because of this great wait that is making this directory more of a pain. Now that the major engines don't rely heavily on DMOZ, i think that fact will ceil their fate as just another directory. So now they can take all the time they want, becoming less useful every passing day.
Just a reminder, the Google directory is taken directly from DMOZ and so are many others. If you consider that as not important... then ok I agree with you.
There was a pretty in depth discussion about the value of a DMOZ link in this thread: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=95
that's certainly not typical. we get ~10,000 uniques a day, and less than 1 hit a day directly from dmoz.
Just incase anyone's interested, it took me 15 days to get into Google with forum links from digitalpoint and Aardvark Travel, no sandpit, or sandbox.. so far! Ranking wise it sucks, but I'm not too worried about that at the moment