A Sneaky Way to Get Indexed in Google
Okay, it’s not really sneaky, but it is something I’m sure other Webmasters have overlooked as I did. We are currently working on a site for a local business owner. It consists of 5 pages, and only one page has actual content on it right now. We also set it up with a CMS to allow for future updates. We bought the domain on Sept. 5th and began uploading the initial content/CMS software, template, etc.
On Sept. 18th we saw the first hit to the site through Google. It was a search for the business’ name, and Analytics said it was a new visit. This was very odd to us, as the site was still under construction and Google and Yahoo were both reporting 0 inbound links. I didn’t worry about it too much and decided to give it some time. But now, 2 weeks later, they’ve have 12 different searchers hit their site. Many are for some variation of the business name, but 1 of them was for one of their top (local) keywords. They’re ranked on the first page (#7) for this keyword - with zero inbound links!
Now I had to investigate; why are they cached (and ranked) already? Yahoo Linkdomain didn’t show anything, and they aren’t cached in Yahoo anyways. Google Webmaster Tools also showed no inbound links, but the entire site was cached with out any errors. I started searching online for a reason, and realized that the domain could have been previously registered and cached in Google long ago. After checking archive.org, I decided this probably wasn’t the case.
Finally, I came across this article and had an “oh, yeah!” moment.
“When you use Google toolbar with PageRank enabled, the toolbar automatically sends and records the page’s URL you visited in Google’s database. If a page URL is not found in Google’s database, Googlebot - the robot of Google, will visit this page later to index it.”
I have the Google PageRank Tool bar installed. Which would explain why the site is cached in Google and not Yahoo.
One thing was still bothering me. Why did this site get cached so fast? There is one other site we just completed not long ago that is also only 5 pages. It took almost a month for the site to be cached in Google, and it had about 2-5 links pointing to it. The only difference is that it was not built with a CMS. Another factor I considered is the fact that the first site I talked about was receiving searches for the business name and domain name, while the second site was not. I’m sure there is a logical explanation. What do you think?
