Search Engine 101

This is mostly for myself, but I wanted to document somewhere the various things I've learned from Google's FAQs and general knowledge about how to handle search engines.

And so, in the spirit of Dave Letterman, here is my Top 10:

1) Make sure all domains are listed, with each and every search engine(i.e. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo).
2) Make sure all "www" hostnames are listed, with each and every search engine.
3) Make sure all sitemaps are actually conforming to the sitemaps specification. For instance, on Blogger this means having an additional parameter "orderby". See the server's robots.txt file if you have any doubts. I think this parameter has cost me dearly...damn.
4) Watch search engines go nuts with activity.
5) Keep up with tech support, if necessary(still waiting for crawl stats graphs from Google).

Here's my current list of websites on Google's Webmaster Tools site:

- slplacesdir.blogspot.com
- theturinggroup.blogspot.com
- www.slplacesdir.blogspot.com
- www.theturinggroup.blogspot.com
- https://sites.google.com:443/a/turing.com/the-turing-group/
- turing.com
- www.turing.com

That's it. I hope this is useful to someone besides myself. Either way, at least I have a list for next time... :-)

Last, but not least, unlisted icon definitions for Google's new Webmaste Tools page:

- Clock icon: Request queued, but pending. We will get to it, please wait.
- Exclaimation icon: Request processed, with warnings. Please investigate, something -is- wrong.
- Red X icon: Request failed. Please investigate, this request was completely denied.