My buddies over the Whistle Stop Coffee shop have a new website and this is a post to help them get indexed more quickly at Google. It’s a work in progress for them. Small business sites can take some time to get indexed partly because Google, IMHO, is not doing a very good job with the indexing of very fresh content. This is partly because spammers are overwhelming the internet with fake websites and junky content which mean Google waits for incoming links and other signs of authenticity before indexing new stuff.
However, for businesses like the Whistle Stop, it can some time to get incoming links. Hopefully this post will get them juiced up a bit since Google indexes this blog often and will follow the links out and “find” the new site.
Also important is to “claim” your business via Google’s small business service called “Google Local”. Instructions are here
It’s also a good idea, though a bit of a hassle, to create a sitemap for new websites – a list of pages that should be indexed. This can be done online at now cost via search for “free sitemap” services and then submit to Google at no charge via the webmaster console.
When I click on Whistle Stop the only thing I get is a godaddy advertisement.
Move the slider in your browser window to see the Whistle Stop page which is apparently a work in progress of some sort or a browser error.
got it, thanks foolsgold.
He used MS Publisher and it inserts a bunch of junky code that now appears to be messing up the page.
Why don’t people return to the days of no junky code, no annoying animated banner ads, no frustrating popup windows, no browser-crashing Java applets, no confusing navigation systems.
Just a simple set of pages that tells where the coffee shop is located, what is available there and what the prices are.
Ahhhh, those were the days FG!
Your question is excellent and I have no good answer. Craigslist remains one of the most info rich, functional sites because it dispenses with the extra stuff. However almost everybody building sites wants a “look” that is fancy – the idea is that biz is more likely to flow from that than otherwise.