Why does my article on a hot topic not get picked up by google?

  • clydewinter · Member ·

    There is a proposal to surge the War on Drugs in the Cedarburg School District by implementing random drug testing of high school students. News reports on the subject are fluff and parrot advocates’ spin.

    I wrote the first of a proposed series of articles in our local newspaper (Ozaukee News Graphic) and it has been well received. Fifty site visits the first day. But when I google the subject itself, my weblog does not come up at all, with one exception. Under “War on Drugs Cedarburg High School” there is a link to my weblog, but the link provided by Google is <clydewinte.wordpress.com/feed/> and clicking on it just gives gibberish, not the column itself.

    I’d like my weblog article to be presented to people interested in a topic when they google the topic. Can you suggest where I can learn how to do that?

  • cornell · Member ·

    How old is the article?

    New articles can take up to a couple of WEEKS to get picked up by Google. There are lots of other factors involved with Google listings, most of which are outside the realms of this forum.

    If you search for SEO or search engine optimisation there are literally hundres of thousands of sites and blogs dedicated to this one subject.

  • clydewinter · Member ·

    Thanks, Cornell, for taking the time and trying to help. Altho the ESSAY I wrote and posted on the drug testing policy proposed for Cedarburg high school is NOT retrieved by google when I use key words a typical inquirer might use (and which are in the title and the essay) there are two things related to my blog which ARE retrieved. One is a “feed” which is basically gibberish that nobody would try to read. The other thing, ironically, is my question on this forum, and your reply to me! That stuff didn’t take a couple of weeks to be picked out by google. Why should my posted and published essay (more germane to the issue than ANYTHING else that google listed) be overlooked by google, when the feed from a post gets picked up, and my question and your reply to the wordpress forum gets picked up by google? The Cedarburg School Board election will be over in a couple weeks.

  • raincoaster · Member ·

    Fifty hits is nothing to Google. This thread has had several times that today, I’m betting.

    Are you registered at Google Blogs? Are you registered at Technorati? Does your blog have links from other blogs going to it? That’s the KEY thing that boosts your Google juice; other blogs pointing to you and saying “This is worth checking out.”

    Another factor is frequency of posting. You post very seldom, and that’s going to push you down the Google rankings. Basically, to rank with Google you need to show ongoing committment to the Internet by continuously posting.

    As well, don’t forget there are other search engines. Check how you fare on MSN, Yahoo, AOL, etc. I have gotten a hundred or so hits through AOL searches today alone.

    Also, feeds are not gibberish. Feeds are very, very important. If Google is picking up your feed, that counts. People who read blogs through feeds tend to be more sophisticated, affluent, and powerful. Google picking up your feed is a GOOD thing.

  • drmike · Member ·

    Google seems to pick up on feeds quite often. I think it’s because the link to the feed is pretty much on every single page.

    That’s a good place to be putting ‘noindex, nofollow’ in my opinion.

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