Now we are not only faced with a redirect to /index.do but this has now become /index.do/?lc=en or ?lc=de or whichever language we are able to add in site setup. what is going on now and how are we supposed to work with constantly changing index page redirects? Google especially does not follow these redirects.

? stops search engines from following anything after the ? So we lose any signups from sites. Explains why my site hits are not converting into members!

Edited

I had this problem once before and got kicked out of the programme when I reported it. I hope WDP will sort this out.

Hi Stephen,

Can I ask that when you raise an issue you give specific exmaples on one of your sites, its is much quicker for us to debug as often errors can be localised to individual sites. Where it is system wide we still need to see examples to determine where the error is occuring.

This issue is something which we are looking into, sadly there is no simple fix for it because it's to do with how the site generation works and the DNS handling set up on our servers.

There are work arounds and it is possible to have the default set to "www" or without "www" so you can be consistent in your link building.

ALL search engines that I know of follow ALL links, including those with "?" in the URL, Search engines simply spider all links except those where "nofollow" is set, or where there are rules set in robots.txt. It is certianly not an issue which would cause sites not to convert.

Many of our sites rank highly in search engines so it is not a critical problem, but definitely one we can improve on and have every intention of doing so in the future.

Could I also ask you try not vent your frustrations with threatening requests. We want to keep this forum professional and whether you are addressing staff or other partners please do not to use derogatory language - everyone works very hard and always does their best to help.

Also I would like to make it clear that noone ever gets kicked off for reporting problems! We want to create a system everyone likes using and works as well as possible for our partners - we need your feed back to do this.

Thanks Tim.

My apologies. Post is edited accordingly.

Concerning the ? in a url. When I submit affiliate sites to se's only the part before the ? is confirmed by the se as listed. Thats why I say this.

Thanks,

Which search engines have you been submitting to? When you submit to a search engine they should just need one link, their spiders will then work their way through your site using whatever links are there.

Providing you are doing link exchanges with other sites all the major search engines will find you. I dont actually bother submitting, only to directories. There are various things you can do with google sitemaps etc to notify google of changes to your site, and try to "encourage" it to be spidered more regularly.

I'd recommend you do a bit of research on sitemaps if you do not know anything about them.

The wdp sitemaps dont work when will they be fixed?

cheers
SJ.

Hi SJ,

http://www.blackasianlove.com/sitemap.xml? Is that not working?

As it is for me?

Yes,now why isnt it working for me?
All I see is a mess?

peace
SJ.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
- <urlset xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84">
- <url>
<loc>http://blackasianlove.com/static/about_us/terms.do</loc>
<lastmod>2006-01-11</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>1.0</priority>
</url>
- <url>
<loc>http://blackasianlove.com/static/about_us/about_us.do</loc>
<lastmod>2005-12-29</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>1.0</priority>
</url>
- <url>

Stuff like that?

Yes and when I look at other peoples sites,its all neat and stuff.

peace,
SJ.

Nah

Well im looking at your sitemap and it shows the above code... and thats perfect

Look at mine http://www.hiyasex.com/sitemap.xml

and look at yours, should be simular... http://www.blackasianlove.com/sitemap.xml

Tim.

For reference, this was posted today by Danny Sullivan.

QUOTE

Also, avoid symbols in your URLs, especially the ? symbol. Search engines tend to choke on it.

I hope this and other info on the site are useful.



On this webpage

Cheers

Steve

Hiya,I thought they should look something like this.

Sitemap

Maybe Im just a div.

peace,
SJ.

Nah

Thats a website sitemap...

XML Sitemap is a Google Sitemap for the search engines.

Cheers for the link, looks useful. - Ill have a read!

Oh I see!