Google listings are very odd for my store

[Guest]

Why do I have many listings in google that look like this?

 

www.whalesale.com/product_info.php?products_id=27

Similar pages

 

What is going wrong?

 

store is whalesale

[♥Vger]

Nothing is going 'wrong' precisely. If you use a default install of osCommerce, with this type of product listing on your site, then Google picks the product_id up when it spiders your site - so do all other spiders.

 

Vger

[Guest]

Nothing is going 'wrong' precisely.  If you use a default install of osCommerce, with this type of product listing on your site, then Google picks the product_id up when it spiders your site - so do all other spiders.

 

Vger

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I am not worried about the product ID though the lack of my title and description concerns me. I have the headertag controller installed

[Jack_mcs]

Google doesn't use the meta tags so the description is taken from your page. It is recommended to have at least 500 words of relevant text on the page. You have far less than that. Beef up the text and you will eventually see the description on google change.

 

Jack

[AfterDark]

I personally think 500 words is a bit exagerated - SE's like 25 word descriptions last time i checked. I have 400+ items and 75% of them are top 10 on google and yahoo - the rest are top 20. All since November 1.

 

None have huge meta or text descriptions.

 

But then what do I know... I only got 3.5 million hits since November 9th. :(

 

Maybe I should try paid advertising.

[Jack_mcs]

Stating what your particular page does really has no effect as far as proper SEO techniqes are concerned. If it works for you, then you should keep doing what you are doing. If it doesn't, as in the case of the op, then it should be changed. I can't speak for your page position since I don't know the site. I suspect there are other factors giving you the higher position and you are making a mistake in reasoning.

 

Google ranks by comparing what's on your page as comared to someone else's page. One of the comparisons is done on keyword density. If you have more, properly worded, text, your relevancy for that page goes up. There's really no debating that point - it is well established in terms of SEO.

 

Jack

[♥Vger]

Google ranks by comparing what's on your page as comared to someone else's page

 

Not the last time I looked. You get ranked on the relevancy of your keywords to what is actually on your page. That's why it is so necessary to do meta tags for each and every page, and to update them as page content changes.

 

The number of links into your site from others is also important to Google.

 

Vger

[Jack_mcs]

I may not have been clear as to what I was saying. What you say about the keywords on your site is true although not the whole story. If you I sell the same product and get indexed by google, one of us will be indexed higher than the other. That is decided by comparing the relevant content of the sites, all else bein equal. Also, meta tags are not used by google, which is the SE asked about by the op.

 

Jack

[Guest]

although not the whole story

 

This is the key here. Some people say meta tags are dead. Some say backlinking is waining. Some say this; that. Etc., etc.

 

ALL of these - combined - are important.

It is the complete combination of all of these elements that helps the site ranking the most.

Example - A Flash only site will not have much "static text" content that the SE can read.

Example - An over-bloated keyword-spamming text only site may not rate highly.

Example - A site with few pages (less content) may not rank as high as others for the same product or keywords.

 

 

 

I personally think 500 words is a bit exagerated

Agreed. There is no need for extremely long product descriptions when there is a relevant title tag, keywords, etc. in place.

 

 

Google doesn't use the meta tags

Untrue. Meta tags are still taken into account - much less than "back in the day" - you just don't see them displayed in the search results page. This does not mean they are not part of the algarythm used to calculate your rating.

 

Google ranks by comparing what's on your page as comared to someone else's page.

You get ranked on the relevancy of your keywords to what is actually on your page.

Again, all part of the "Big Picture".

ALL of these things (and more) have to be addressed.

[Jack_mcs]

This is the key here. Some people say meta tags are dead. Some say backlinking is waining. Some say this; that. Etc., etc.

 

ALL of these - combined - are important.

I don't recall anyone saying different. This is, of course, obvious.

Agreed. There is no need for extremely long product descriptions when there is a relevant title tag, keywords, etc. in place.

Don't take what I said out of context. If your products are not getting listed, which is the original problem, then content needs to be looked at. I stand by what I said - two sites being equal, the one with more context will be listed higher.

Untrue. Meta tags are still taken into account - much less than "back in the day" - you just don't see them displayed in the search results page. This does not mean they are not part of the algarythm used to calculate your rating.

As I'm sure you are aware, this is all just guessing for the most part. Google has steadfastely refused to release their search algorithms, so no one can say for sure just what they use. However, I think you would be hard pressed to show an instance where google uses them. That doesn't mean that you should not use them - I do. But again, don't forget the point of this thread. The op is trying to optimize for google. Concentrating more on meta tags than on other parts of the page when you are optimizing for google is just a waste of time. Of course, none of this takes that much time so there is no reason that it cannot all be done. At this point we're just arguing details.

 

Jack

[Guest]

so is there anyone with an idea as to why I have such listings in google?

The listing on google reads

 

www.whalesale.com/product_info.php?products_id=26

Similar pages

 

There is no title or description.

 

Here is the header for one of the pages which is listed in such a way.

 

<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html dir="LTR" lang="en">
<head>
<title>AquaClear power head 301 - Aquarium Supply Whalesale</title>
<base href="http://www.whalesale.com/">
<meta name="description" content="AquaClear power head 301">
<meta name="keywords" content="AquaClear, power head, power head, AquaClear power head, AquaClear power head, 301, power head 301, power head 301, AquaClear power head 301, AquaClear power hear 301, Aquarium Supply Whalesale">
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="templates/Original/stylesheet.css">
<script language="javascript"><!--
function popupWindow(url) {
?window.open(url,'popupWindow','toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,scrollbars=no,res
izable=yes,copyhistory=no,width=100,height=100,screenX=150,screenY=150,top=150,le
ft=150')
}
//--></script>
</head>

 

here is the text on the page

 

AquaClear power head 301

Output with air: 142 U.S. gal / hour (537 L / hour).

Output without air: 174 U.S. gal / hour (658 L / hour).

 

Recommended aquarium size.

1 Power head 113 L / 30 U.S. gal 2 Power heads 227 L / 60 U.S. gal

 

 

Power that moves you.

Adding a power head to an under gravel system increases water flow through a gravel substrate and improves its filtering efficiency.

It also oxygenates water and, in the process, provides needed oxygen to colonies of beneficial bacteria in the gravel which optimizes their biological filtration capabilities.

 

Easily fitted to most under gravel systems.

power head comes equipped with a tapered riser stem adapter which accepts .5" to 1.125" tubing.

Rim clamp firmly holds it in place atop the riser stem and an optional suction cup bracket which allows the unit to hang from an aquarium wall instead of the rim.

 

UL available

 

This product listing has not changed since around April of this year.

 

Here is a link to that page

AquaClear power head 301

 

I really need some advice as to how to get this straightened out.

[Jack_mcs]

You may be seeing an old listing. You have 767 pages listed and most are listed as

Aquarium Supply Whalesale. Aquarium Supply Whalesale is your

online source for your aquarium supply needs. ...

www.whalesale.com/product_ info.php?products_id=144!!b_id=17 - 29k - Cached - Similar pages

Eventually google will get around to updating the description for all of your pages. Sometimes it just takes a while.

 

Jack

[Guest]

Ok that answers my question. Thank you.