Why did I do it??? Why did I press the validate button???? My ads are set up right. Everything has been going well for a few weeks. (Except my weight has gone from 1,300 to 1,600 to 215.) Then I (stupidly) pressed the "validate" button to see if my weight might have gone up for a change. Now it tells me it doesn't validate and that there are no ads on my site. Except, if you go there, you can see them. (www.japanese-name-translation.com) Even wierder, it tells me that the error is that it can't find them on /blank.html or /top.html - pages that do not exist in my site. Now, I am wondering if this is because Google spidered pages like this ages ago and hasn't bothered to come back an respider my site (or show it in the index) since. I found that if I put in the specific address of the homepage (/index.html), it validates but, of course, gives me zero weight because Google isn't showing this page in their index yet. What can I do? The ads are on my site, just as they have been all along, but I now can't validate. Or I can validate by entering a single page address, but then have no weight.... Help!!! (Yet another punishment for being in the sandbox!)
You need to remove pages from Google index that do not exist. Let me look for URL. Ads must be on every page in your site. Validation uses Google index so if Google has a non-existant page indexed site won't validate. Shannon http://www.google.com/remove.html
If I do site:www.japanese-name-translation I get - /blank.html .com site/tools.swf /site/katakana/katakana.swf /top.html Both /top.html and /blank.html no longer exist. How do I get these pages removed from G? Don't I just have to wait until they respider and actually show me in the index?
You can attempt to remove pages that do not exist from Google using URL above. I personally do not know if you can run co-op on swf pages or not. You need to talk to someone more knowledgeable than I. Hang on for few minutes and someone will come by to help. Shannon
Thanks for getting back so quickly. I didn't see the remove URL before. Thanks for pointing it out again. I am guessing it will take them ages to get round to it. After all, what do they care about my site - they have dumped in the sandbox, after all? I am not using the coop ads on the swf pages. Those pages I listed are the ones that G is showing if I do a site: search. My site has about 100 html pages which are all running the ads. A human can see this by going to my URL (figure it out from the post above coz it won't let me post the full one yeat as I don't have enough posts ) But the auto validate can't. What I don't get is why it worked before, but now doesn't. I am wondering if the reason is that there has been some fluctuation in the datacenters / changes to the index. Thanks for your help, Shannon. If anyone else has any ideas, I would appreciate it.
As I understand it the valication process picks a random page from Google and checks for ads on that page. If you had non-existant pages in index, it was only a matter of time until site would have failed validation. I have never had page removed from Google but did read a post where someone said it took Google only about 24 hours to remove one of their pages after they made request to remove. Good luck. Shannon
If it picks a random page, then it should eventually pick the basic .com page. However, in the ten or so times I tried, it never did. Apart from the .com page, and the two dead pages, the only other page in site: are the swf ones that (of course) do not have the ads on them. So it seems like even if I removed these dead pages from Google's index, I will still not be able to validate becos it ignores the basic .com listing and the swf ones won't work. I am working on getting these two pages removed, but I am wondering if there is any way my site could be manually validated? (I am displaying member's ads after all.)
My attempts to ask G to remove these specific pages fails. This link that G tells me to click does not work: services.google.com/urlconsole/controller Annoying!!!!
Sorry to have given you bad advice. I just read that link was not working here http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=9178. Shannon
Don't worry about it, Shannon. I'm not mad. Well, not at you. (But G's stock is dropping rapidly with me.) I notice in that thread that another guy has had a similar experience. However, the difference between his situation and mine seems to be that he had some dead pages in Google and lots of live ones, whereas I have 2 dead ones and 2 swf pages. Since the last cache G shows for my site is Dec 2004 and I am in the quicksandbox, I can't expect this to change any time soon. So, it looks like I am going to be unable to validate and yet still be displaying members' links on my site. I don't mind giving other members a freebie (this is a free tool, after all) but I am wondering when I am ever going to get my links onto other members' sites in these circumstances. Sorry to bother you, Shawn, but what should I do?
I just went in and checked the removal tool in Google and I can't get to the console controller tool either. It worked great Monday or Tuesday. I had them remove an entire directory of dynamic product pages. They got it done in less then 24 hours. Sorry if I'm the one that broke it. Just joking...I don't think it was me. At least I hope not.
I"m sure it wasn't you, Lou. No one seems to have an alternative solution for this problem. If this is just the way the ad network is set up ,then I guess I just have to ride it out if G is not going to cooperate. Is there no way my site could be validated manually, though? If anyone has any ideas on how to solve this I would really appreciate it.
I really appreciate the suggestions so far, but this problem is still not solved. Here it is in a nutshell: 1) The ads are displaying on my site correctly as they have for a month or so. 2) Google site: search for my site shows two html pages that no longer exist and 2 swf pages that obviously do not have the ads on. 3) When I try to validate, the ad coop server picks one of the html pages from Google, tries to find them and then tells me validation failed when it can't find these non-existent pages. 4) Shannon told me to try having these "dead" pages removed from Google, but their removal link is broken, so I can't. Unless there are any suggestions about a technical fix or unless someone at digitalpoint validates my site manually, it looks like I am going to have to ride this out and just wait for Google to refresh their database. I would rather not wait for this as G has this site in the sandbox, so there is no knowing how long it will take before these "dead" pages are removed and the real pages are shown. I am not very technical, so I am hoping that someone with more technical ability than I have might have a suggestion about how to solve this.
Thanks Shannon. I will try it. Although with those two "dead" html pages removed, all I will have left showing in G for site: will be two swf pages, so I still probably will not be able to validate. I would still appreciate your help, Shawn
I got to the "Delete" page in Google and input the two "dead" html links..... And G reported an internal server error since it could not determine whether these records exist or not.... So I am stuck. G won't let me delete the dead pages and even if I do I won't be able to validate when all that will be left are swf pages. Being in the sandbox means that my data in the Google index is unlikely to be refreshed in the near future. In the meantime the ads are still displaying perfectly on my site, but I am getting no credit for it . I know it is not the coop's fault, but is there any work around?
Solved: I had a brainfart (as my wife would say - ha ha !) - If G thinks there is a page top.html but then the validator can't find it when it looks for it, why not just make a copy of my index.html and call it top.html? Obvious, I know, but I didn't see it for ages. Of course, my weight is still really low, but there you go - that's the quicksandbox for ya.