Googlebot Won’t Go Home

Googlebot Won’t Go Home

by: Tony Dean

I have กGooglebotก crawl my site every day like a dispossessed spirit that can’t leave.

It was not always like this, I would go for a month or more before he came to my site and then would only crawl a few pages and leave again.

This has been going on now for two months or more, Iกve been watching the stats on my server everyday seeing just where he goes. He will crawl a few pages one day, and the next some other pages, and then finally leave until the morrow. After just three or four weeks, I noticed I got an infestation of lesser bots calling as well, some I have never heard of before, they seem to follow กGooglebotก as though he is the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

What caused this infestation of bots?

Well, I got interested in rss feeds, I thought กWhat a good tool for drawing traffic to my site.ก

So I studied up on rss feeds until I understood what was involved. Now I am no ‘techieก, and the most programming I do is html in กNotepadก, making my own web pages.

Rss feeds use a similar language called xml, so it was easy to understand for me, and I was able to quickly make up an rss feed page in กNotepadก, placed it on my server, downloaded a กfeed readerก software, opened it up, placed the address of my feed in the กfeed readerก, and up came my rss feed in the reader. It was so easy I wrote an ebook to tell everyone how to do it, itกs called ‘really Simple RSSก.

There are many rss directories and syndication services that I submitted the address of my rss feed to, so other people can look at the feed in their กfeed readerก and see what articles I am posting.

Some of the กsubscribersก to the feed actually come and visit my site to see what itกs all about, which happened almost straight away after I submitted my feed.

In less than 36 hours, กGooglebotก found my feed!

In a little over two days later Yahooกs กSlurpก bot found my feed, and from there on they have both been crawling my site with the lesser bots every single day.

They crawl everything, they crawl all my pdf ebooks, they look at a few pages in กWebmasters Cornerก, they even look at my กBonus Reportsก, and even descend the staircase into my กSecret Vaultก!

When will they go home and stop prying into my little secrets?

I know I encourage them like leaving cheese for a mouse, by putting more pdf files, software and ebooks on my site every day, so I suppose the poor bots can’t ever keep up!

I found out that like mice like cheese, that กGooglebotก likes my pdf files, he has been fitted with digital spectacles so he is now able to actually read keyword rich pdf files all the way through to the end! So he likes pdf files.

So I have obliged him!

I put 85 pdf files up on my server one night just to keep him happily reading! I have put many more up on the server since, and will continue to create more pdf files of classic authors for free download, just to keep him calling with his กfriendsก.

Isn’t this a laugh?

Itกs like taking in a stray dog, feeding him, housing him, and the dog loosing the ability to wander off again and finding you have got a lodger for life.

My siteกs ranking has risen considerably both in Yahoo and Google, but for some reason that escapes me for the time being, my ranking rose more quickly in Yahoo and they rank it much higher than Google. I may well find the reason for this before long and put it in another article.

So if you are a web site owner struggling to get noticed by the web bots, don’t put it off much longer, put up an rss feed with articles about your products or service and not only will กGooglebotก call with his กfriendsก, but actual live people will call too.

About The Author

Tony Dean runs a web site selling ebooks and software at: http://www.ebooksales.com

Subscribe to his ezine just send a blank email to: [email protected]

This article was posted on October 21, 2004

by Tony Dean