So I've owned this domain since June 15th and there's been a site up since July. It didn't actually go live until September 1st but there was a site there prior to that. It's been indexed by MSN and Yahoo but not Google. The Google bot crawls my site all the time but even if I search Google by the domain name itself, my site won't come up in the search results. After 4 months, I don't understand that. Is there something I'm doing wrong that Google doesn’t like? Or is it perfectly normal to take this long?
You are in the sandbox. As time progresses your site will be crawled and indexed more deeply. And once you are released from the sandbox, your SERPS should go up. In my experience, the sandbox lasts around 6-7 months.
Thanks Bilz. I've read about the sandbox before but it just seems like it's been so long. I have a few other sites that didn't seem to take as long. Maybe it's just because I'm paying a lot closer attention to this one that it seems longer. Thanks again.
Your site might also have been previously banned by Google. I started my site in June. I did everything by the numbers like sitemaps, robots.txt fie, etc, etc. Google would crawl my site, but would never index it. I tried everything that I could get my hands on to get indexed. Finally, about a month ago, I gave up and sent in a reinclusion request from the Webmaster Tools section, under the Tools menu. I explained that the site has had new ownership since June, and if they would please check to see if the site was previously banned. If so, please review the site so it can be unbanned. I was indexed 2 days later. Submit a reinclusion request as it can't hurt, and who knows what the previous owners did to the site. The sandbox effect doesn't happen until you actually are showing up in the rankings. You have to be indexed first before being sandboxed, which is what I'm going through now. Good luck!
I experimented with two sites and they both took around two months to be indexed. Once you get indexed you will notice changes in the number of indexed pages from day to day, as the different data centers from google pickup your pages. I also think there's something about this changes in the number of indexes pages that has to do with google algorithm. try the tools at www.iwebtool.com those are great to keep track of your progress. good luck
Firegirl you're awesome. I tried what you suggested on Saturday and sure enough this morning (2 days later) I'm not only listed in Google, I'm also indexed as well. Thank you so much for that suggestion.
Hey, no problem. I remember how incredibly frustrated I was when I had my site up for over 4 months and they would not index me. I am so glad that my suggestion was able to help you out as well. Good luck!