I received this (awesome) letter from Google today and thought it was cool enough to share:
Dear Business Owner,Congratulations! You’re a Favorite Place on Google. Between July 1and September 30, Google users found
your PDX Freelancers – Website Designers in Portland business listing ****** times, and requested driving
directions or other information about your business **** times.
Because you’re so popular, we’re enclosing a window decal that shows customers you’re a “Favorite Place
on Google.” The sticker includes a special bar code that potential customers may scan with cameras on their
phones. Then they can see your business listing on Google, read and write reviews, and add you as a favorite
right there. We encourage you to put up this decal so potential customers know that you’re a Favorite Place
on Google.
With the holiday shopping season here, we encourage you to update your free Google listing right away. It’s
easy to check if your hours, address, and business description are correct. We also recommend you add
photos, videos, and even coupons to help your business stand out. All of this is free. You’ll notice the results
every time someone says, “We found you on Google.”
Congratulations on your popularity on Google. We look forward to providing you with more and better ways
to grow your business.
Sincerely,
Michaela Prescott
The Google Local Business Team
There are three commonly supported methods for instructing/requesting internet indexing spiders/bots/robots what to scan and what to skip. Each of these methods are complimentary in usefulness to each other, but none are not equal in effect.
- robots.txt
- Robots Meta Tag
- .htacess and mod_rewrite
Summary:
To really protect and enforce rules for any specific user agent that is visiting your website you will have to constantly analyze website traffic analytics, bandwidth reports and visiting IP addresses and geographic locations, known pubilc or private proxy servers, and the specific methods and tactics of EVERY unwanted program and visitor and be able to implement new means to thwart their new methods on a regular basis.
Use an embedded meta tag on a specific page to instruct search engine spiders and robots what to index and disallow:
- Pages including “noindex, nofollow” indicate that they are NOT to be index, NOT to be included in listings, and NOT to be scanned for reciprocal links.
- Pages including “index, nofollow” indicate that they are to be indexed and listed, but not scanned for reciprocal links.
- Pages including “index, follow” indicate that they are to be fully index and scanned for all reciprocal links and included in all applicable listings.
DO NOT index, DO NOT include in listings, and DO NOT follow reciprocal links
<input name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" />
Index, include in listings, but DO NOT follow reciprocal links
<input name="robots" content="index, nofollow" />
Index, include in listings, and follow reciprocal links
<input name="robots" content="index, follow" />
Also see:
- Robots.txt
- .htacess and mod_rewrite
Robots.txt is a plain text file that is implemented in the root directory of a URI as a configuration file used by some search engine spiders and internet robots/bot programs to help direct them to what you want to be indexed and what you don’t. Although many robots will read and follow your instructions in the “/robots.txt” file, many ‘less compliant’ programs may actually ignore this file completely.
Here are a few examples of robots.txt file (plain text):
Ask all search engines to NOT index or follow links on the entire website:
#asks all search engines to NOT index and NOT follow any pages or links on the entire website
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
Allows all search engines to index and follow links on the entire website by Disallowing nothing:
#allows search engines to index and follow all pages and links on the entire website by Disallowing nothing
User-agent: *
Disallow:
Disallows specific folders and files from indexing and following:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /uploads/ # since this folder may contain secure, private, cached or temporary files, we should disallow this entire folder from being indexed.
Disallow: /tmp/ # since this folder may contain cached or temporary files, we should disallow this entire folder from being indexed
Disallow: /page.php
Also see:
- Robots Meta Tag
- .htacess and mod_rewrite
Posted by Gary Hepting | Posted in Technology Advice | Posted on 14-09-2009-05-2008
First, simply Add your URL.
Then create a Sitemap using a free online sitemap generator, such as XML-Sitemaps.com and Add a Sitemap on Google
List Your Local Business on Google Maps and Google Local
