Why does a search on WordPress rarely show my site as result?

  • keup · Member ·

    Hello.

    I am confused because today my stats show 20 referrers from WordPress which but I wonder how they got to my site as search keys taken from my site produce only very few search results on WordPress. Comparatively, search results on Google Blog Search produce much more results. I have tried obvious search keys such as artists names, but even by sorting by most recent date most names did not show up as result. Every name stated in my articles is marked as a category. Maybe I am mistaken, but is a category not supposed to produce a search result?

    Thanks for your help
    AD

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • auxclass · Member ·

    The Stats now show visits to your site as the result of a reader – so if someone has their reader set up to grab a tag and you tag your Post with that tag it will show up on their reader and they can visit your site with no search as such – just that they see a Post related to a tag they are interested in.

  • keup · Member ·

    I think I understand your answer but frankly, I am still confused.

    I was using http://en.search.wordpress.com/ on which I tried several search keys = names stated in my articles and configured as categories. When I tried the same a few months ago after I launched my site, I was much more successful maintaining proper results. Now, even sorting the results by date does not produce reasonable results. That’s why I am under the deep impression that my site is hardly searchable within the WordPress blogosphere.

    On the other hand I am surprised by the difference between ‘views today’ and ‘views of posts and pages’ per day. This happened on three days and each day the differences equal the numbers of referrers simply indicated as WordPress.com. Are these differences in figures real viewers entering from WordPress? If they are, which posts and pages did they view?

    Besides, I have noticed that both categories and tags listed at the end of my posts only lead to my own posts. Initially, this function produced results within the WordPress blogosphere.

    Just to be clear: I use personal names stated in my posts as categories, and in addition eight common terms as constant tags.

  • timethief · Member ·

    Just to be clear: I use personal names stated in my posts as categories, and in addition eight common terms as constant tags.

    That could be your problem right there. That could be perceived as tag spamming. How on earth could every post in your blog have identical content that gives rise to use of the same tags? If the post content does not contain the actual words you are using as Tags then search spiders will detect that.

  • keup · Member ·

    Well, obviously I was confused with categories and tags. I removed all tags. Search results improved immediately. Instead, I will have a try with with Zamanta t create proper tags. Thanks.

    That leaves one last aspect:
    <On the other hand I am surprised by the difference between ‘views today’ and ‘views of posts and pages’ per day. This happened on three days and each day the differences equal the numbers of referrers simply indicated as WordPress.com. Are these differences in figures real viewers entering from WordPress? If they are, which posts and pages did they view?>
    Is this statistic topic related to my previous use of tags?

  • timethief · Member ·

    @keup
    The differences between Categories (broad groupings of post topics) and Tags (more specific and reflective of detail) are expressed in this entry. There are many good tips on Category and Tag use in this thread.

    Re:WordPress.com as a referrer
    Matt (founder of WordPress) has explained the stats changes being worked on here. RSS Feed views and email subscription views are now being reflected in our stats and the rectification work is ongoing. What’s needed is our patience while the work gets done.

  • helenasdiary · Member ·

    Thank you for the link to the tip page on Categories and Tags. It was very helpful but I still have questions about tags. It seems like the recommendation is to have a relatively small group of tags that are used to identify blog entries–but not to use the same ones every day. I feel like I either end up using the same ones every day–or that I create unique ones each day and end up with something that if it was an index would be very long.

    My grandmother kept a diary from 1911 to 1914 and I post the diary entries exactly 100 years to the day after she wrote them. I also provide background information or commentary about each entry.

    http://ahundredyearsago.com/

    I think I understand categories. I use categories like Food, Education, Farming and Gardening, etc.

    But the posts are across the board depending upon the content of the diary entry. For example, yesterday the post was about the last lynching in Pennsylvania and today it is about an old magazine called The Youths Companion.

    Should the tags for yesterday be things like “lynching” and Zachariah Walker” (the name of the man who was lynched) and today something like “Youths Companion”? –but if I do this type of tagging my tag list will end up being huge.

    So recently I generally have just been using tags like: “100 years ago”, “hundred years ago”, “diary”. Now I think that’s not right either–Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated.

  • seattlesweetie · Member ·

    I’m really trying to figure out how to use tags. So let me see if I get this . . .

    “If the post content does not contain the actual words you are using as Tags then search spiders will detect that.”

    I have a humorous post, but should not use humor as a tag because I don’t use the word humor in the post itself. Instead I should use the tag “smiling puppies” because those words were used?

    Should I be putting the humorous post in a category . . . Humor?

  • timethief · Member ·

    No. Using Humor or Humour as a Category is not problematic. Using the name of a celebrity as a Tag or example to gain attention when the post isn’t focused on them is. For advice on Category and Tag use you can read this thread if you like.

  • glossedsentence · Member ·

    Hey there! I started my blog back in August, left for the month of September and have posted several things in October. I guess I don’t understand this tag system either… because I have used only a few… but none of them show up in the tags. In fact it says there are “no such tags”…

    I am using “Cross-cultural living” “Deaf Culture” “Humor” “Europe”… and “Travel” . I am clearly confused, as the first two are the most important and don’t “exist”. I haven’t looked for the others yet… the support team are off until Oct. 29, so I came here looking for answers… any suggestions?

    I went back and made sure my privacy setting was adjusted. I’m not using celebrity names to get attention, and I’m generally keeping all my writing in the same area…

    If WordPress uses your article in a “Freshly Pressed” thingee, do they tell you or do you just have to keep checking????

  • timethief · Member ·

    Perhaps these will help:
    global tags – missing posts
    wordpress.com search – missing posts

    If WordPress uses your article in a “Freshly Pressed” thingee, do they tell you or do you just have to keep checking?

    The answer is found here:

    Once you’ve been promoted, you’ll receive an email from us, and you’ll also notice your page views and comments increasing. Enjoy the ride! You deserve it! vhttp://en.support.wordpress.com/five-ways-to-get-featured-on-freshly-pressed/

  • timethief · Member ·

    Here’s that link again > http://en.support.wordpress.com/five-ways-to-get-featured-on-freshly-pressed/

  • glossedsentence · Member ·

    Wow Timethief… thanks for the quick answer. Of course, I know there’s tons of other writers out there… but I think I am following all the rules except for knowing how to use the tags…

    I have been searching for “my stuff” using the basic tags of Europe and Travel which show up on the regular tags… still couldn’t find anything written by me… and going back a few days takes quite a while! : 0

    But I will go and check out the first two suggestions and see what I come up with.

    Thanks!

  • timethief · Member ·

    You’re welcome. Also know that you can use Google search as well. Replace “keyword” in the format with a relevant keyword or keyword phrase. Note there is no space following the colon in the search format.

    keyword site:NAMEOFBLOG.wordpress.com/

  • glossedsentence · Member ·

    Good news I found a couple of them! But still the tag “cross-cultural living” does not seem to exist via the tag search that I used (which was the page with all the tags listed with the search box above). Earlier I was bumping through different pages and it was a different looking search page and it had some “cross-cultural” tags… so one page says it’s not there and one page show some things. Problem is, I don’t know how to get back to the page that showed some of the blogs that used some form of “cross-cultural….”

    Oh, and I went to your blog and read a few of the articles… very good and informative.

    I guess eventually I will get this figured out. I retagged my latest entry (which was simply a fun video I found about learning language) and tagged it “language” and then went looking for it and there it was. But couldn’t find it under the other tags. Does it just show up on the “most obvious” tag and omit the others? Just wondering.

    My other posts are from several days to weeks back, and I’m not about to go looking through the gazillions of posts to see if I can find them.

    Does the tag have to show up in the body? It wasn’t clear to me that this was an expectation. So when I am writing about my experience within Deaf Culture, I have to put that phrase in there somewhere???

    I guess I will just keep keepin’ on! Eventually I’ll get it sorted!

  • timethief · Member ·

    Note the missing “dash” in the URL and click this link >
    http://en.wordpress.com/tag/cross-cultural-living/

  • glossedsentence · Member ·

    very cool… but here’s what happens to me:

    WordPress.com

    Home
    Features
    News
    Support
    Themes
    Stats
    About Us
    Forums

    Tag: Cross Cultural Living

    Sorry, we don’t have any posts here with that tag. You may want to try one of the sites below.
    Find other items tagged with “cross cultural living”
    Technorati Delicious IceRocket

    You can explore some of our popular tags below:

    News Music Photography Life Politics Travel Poetry Art Video Fashion Events Food Sports Family Local Writing Personal Reviews Books Entertainment Blog Home Recipes Health Religion Love Videos Technology History Photos Thoughts Culture Education Conspiracy Random Inspiration Syndicated Local Movies Relationships Business

  • timethief · Member ·

    When I click this link to a global tag page titled “Blogs about: Cross Cultural Living” I find your posts on it http://en.wordpress.com/tag/cross-cultural-living/

  • glossedsentence · Member ·

    I can see it too, from the link you sent me, but when I go to the “topics” on the home page and there’s that fancy list in the box and I put in Cross-cultural living or Deaf Culture, neither of them shows up. Is this the wrong place to be asking?? Maybe that’s my problem!!

  • glossedsentence · Member ·

    ok… I went back to the “topics” and put them in with all the dashes eg. cross-cultural-living and deaf-culture and they showed up… so the dash is necessary if you have double-barrelled tags? It would seem so.

    Not exactly intuitive, but at least I figured it out. Thanks for being willing to help me… I appreciate it!

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