# Website building questions **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 4, 2005, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-building-questions/315632 "2005-08-04T23:09:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![RickQ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@RickQ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickQ)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2005, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-building-questions/315632/1 "2005-08-04T23:09:53Z")
I have built a website for my wife and I just had a couple of questions and was hoping someone might be able to help me. We have tried searching under my wife’s name on Google now that the site is out there and it is not being pulled up. My wife is **brynda** on the boards so her name should not be that popular. How can I make Google and other sites find my wife’s site? Also, I run mostly IE and the site looks great in it, but when I load it in Firefox, one of the background images does not load (I have one image for the front page which loads fine and one image for the rest of the pages, which does not load). I built the website using HTML/CSS. Anyone have any suggestions on what I could check to see why it will not load the background? ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2005, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-building-questions/315632/2 "2005-08-04T23:20:49Z")
To get the site to show up on search engines, use their “submit a site” form, or get a link to your site on a site that they do index. Next time their robot hits the other site, it’ll find the link and index your site. As far as the background image, it’s impossible to say unless you tell us how to find your site, or post the source here. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2005, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-building-questions/315632/3 "2005-08-04T23:23:35Z")
To submit your site to Google, use the link below. Please note that it can take quite a long time to show up. Mine took about 2 months for example. [http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl](http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl) ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2005, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-building-questions/315632/4 "2005-08-05T01:41:30Z")
Are you using the CSS background-image property or just in the body tag? If you’re using CSS - check the syntax of the one that works against the one that doesn’t work. You may be using url(“image.jpg”) for one and url(image2.jpg) for the other. You need to ditch the quotes if that’s what you’re doing. If you’re not using CSS but rather the body tag element, be sure that you don’t have a background-image property in the BODY CSS element (if you have one…) that is empty, broken or wrong. or set at “none” Or, please give us a link to your site 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Wallenstein](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b5a626/32.png) [@Wallenstein](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallenstein)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2005, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-building-questions/315632/5 "2005-08-05T15:14:06Z")
Google also ranks pages on how many other sites link to it… ask as many people as possible to link to your site and you’ll see the rating climb. Also make sure you’ve put some useful info in the metatags in the html code… makes it easier for webcrawling software to pick you up ---
**Author:** ![RickQ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@RickQ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickQ)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2005, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-building-questions/315632/6 "2005-08-05T22:10:44Z")
Thanks for all the information. In response to a couple of questions, I am using the CSS background image property. What I don’t understand is why it works on IE but not in Firefox. I am going to try and check it in other browsers as well, to see what happens with them. ---
**Author:** ![Nanoda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Nanoda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nanoda)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2005, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-building-questions/315632/7 "2005-08-05T22:35:37Z")
Wherever you got your CSS information, make sure you followed everything there. IE is notorious for allowing egregrious misuse of syntax. (Missing includes, wrong quotation, mis-typed directory names, etc). ---
**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2005, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-building-questions/315632/8 "2005-08-06T00:26:10Z")
- - - You don’t need to do anything to “tell” Google to find your site, it happens anyway when they crawl, and “telling” them will not make it happen any faster. There’s a fairly-wide theory that they don’t even really use those submissions for actual _listing insertions_, but only as a statistical tool to try to figure out how many of the new sites per-unit-of-time their system is actually cataloging. - Also, Google is pretty-much the only search engine that matters now. - And I agree: Internet Explorer is famously mistake-tolerant; other browsers will simply skip over an erroneous tag ignoring it, where IE actually tries to figure out what the tag was supposed to do and render it that way. Test your content in FireFox, and if it works then you can be pretty-certain it will all work correctly in IE. ~ ---
**Author:** ![RyJae](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9d8465/32.png) [@RyJae](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RyJae)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2005, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-building-questions/315632/9 "2005-08-06T00:40:53Z")
> [@DougC](#): > > - Also, Google is pretty-much the only search engine that matters now. > > ~ I disagree we get 23% of our traffic from Yahoo/MSN other search engines for the same terms as those that rank high in Google. Thats a significant number for a business wanting as many eyeballs as possible on the site. Out of our sites a few of them are PR 7 or better if you want I can throw a link to your site on them, that tends to get them in the Google results a tad quicker. Nothing in exchange its something I have done for a few people’s personal websites. Now if you where a business well… ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2005, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-building-questions/315632/10 "2005-08-06T04:07:04Z")
> [@DougC](#): > > You don’t need to do anything to “tell” Google to find your site, it happens anyway when they crawl, and “telling” them will not make it happen any faster. If you don’t submit your site, then you have to have a link to it from _somewhere_ that Google already indexes. Google doesn’t just fling out random text strings as site names to see if there’s a site there. ---
**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2005, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-building-questions/315632/11 "2005-08-06T15:26:38Z")
> [@](#): > > …I disagree we get 23% of our traffic from Yahoo/MSN other search engines for the same terms as those that rank high in Google… - - - Yes but most other search engines don’t actively crawl the web. They get results from Google, and then insert their own paid listings or impose their own search logarithms upon the Google results. If your website is listed in Google, it will turn up _somewhere_ in pretty much all other search engines, and this is why. The reverse is not true. > [@](#): > > …If you don’t submit your site, then you have to have a link to it from somewhere that Google already indexes. Google doesn’t just fling out random text strings as site names to see if there’s a site there… - Nope. A page with very-distinctive text and no links at all will get indexed automatically. ~ ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2005, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-building-questions/315632/12 "2005-08-07T17:01:15Z")
> [@DougC](#): > > Nope. A page with very-distinctive text and no links at all will get indexed automatically. Try this. Register “[dougs-new-site.com](http://dougs-new-site.com)” and put up a page. Don’t link to it from anywhere. Make sure it isn’t in any directories. Don’t post to message boards with a [dougs-new-site.com](http://dougs-new-site.com) email address. Sit back and wait for Google to find it. Google finds new sites by following links from old sites that it already knows about. If none of those sites link to yours, how, exactly, do you expect Google to discover it? ---
**Author:** ![RyJae](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9d8465/32.png) [@RyJae](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RyJae)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2005, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-building-questions/315632/13 "2005-08-07T17:11:11Z")
> [@DougC](#): > > - > - > - Yes but most other search engines don’t actively crawl the web. They get results from Google, and then insert their own paid listings or impose their own search logarithms upon the Google results. If your website is listed in Google, it will turn up _somewhere_ in pretty much all other search engines, and this is why. The reverse is not true. > > - Nope. A page with very-distinctive text and no links at all will get indexed automatically. > ~ All that changed quite a while ago, while I agree some searches use Google, the big ones (Including Yahoo and MSN) have there own search engines algo’s and bots. It was big news at the time. > [@](#): > > Yahoo on Wednesday said it will drop search partner Google during the first quarter of 2004 in favor of its own technology, opening a new phase in the battle for Web search dominance. [Link](http://www.thenetcorp.com/yahoo-announcement.cfm) [Link](http://www.prweaver.com/blog/2005/01/17/84-keynote-customer-experience-study) ---
**Author:** ![rfgdxm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c0e974/32.png) [@rfgdxm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rfgdxm)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2005, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-building-questions/315632/14 "2005-08-07T17:31:27Z")
> [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > Try this. Register “[dougs-new-site.com](http://dougs-new-site.com)” and put up a page. Don’t link to it from anywhere. Make sure it isn’t in any directories. Don’t post to message boards with a [dougs-new-site.com](http://dougs-new-site.com) email address. Sit back and wait for Google to find it. > > Google finds new sites by following links from old sites that it already knows about. If none of those sites link to yours, how, exactly, do you expect Google to discover it? From the registar zone files, which Google has access to. Google knows every registered domain name on the planet. ---
**Author:** ![World\_Eater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f04885/32.png) [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2005, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-building-questions/315632/15 "2005-08-07T17:36:57Z")
Wesbsites typically take a few months to pop up on Google, mine did. ---
**Author:** ![rfgdxm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c0e974/32.png) [@rfgdxm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rfgdxm)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2005, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-building-questions/315632/16 "2005-08-07T17:44:48Z")
> [@RickQ](#): > > I have built a website for my wife and I just had a couple of questions and was hoping someone might be able to help me. > > We have tried searching under my wife’s name on Google now that the site is out there and it is not being pulled up. My wife is **brynda** on the boards so her name should not be that popular. How can I make Google and other sites find my wife’s site? > > Also, I run mostly IE and the site looks great in it, but when I load it in Firefox, one of the background images does not load (I have one image for the front page which loads fine and one image for the rest of the pages, which does not load). I built the website using HTML/CSS. Anyone have any suggestions on what I could check to see why it will not load the background? I do professional SEO work, so this question is up my alley. 🙂 “Brynda” is an extremely non-competitive search term. “Results 1 - 100 of about 20,800 for brynda.” 20,800 is rather obscure. And, it looks like nobody is optimizing any site for “Brynda”. Getting #1 on Google should be easy. Do the following: #1) Use “Brynda” in text many times on the home page. #2) Get as many sites as possible to link to her site with “Brynda” in the anchor text. I’d also recommend you register brynda.TLD as the site name. (TLD = .net, .org, etc.) I just checked and only the .com looks taken. As for your HTML woes, tellling us the URL would help a lot. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![rfgdxm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c0e974/32.png) [@rfgdxm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rfgdxm)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2005, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-building-questions/315632/17 "2005-08-07T17:55:45Z")
> [@World Eater](#): > > Wesbsites typically take a few months to pop up on Google, mine did. Nope. I could get this site in Google in a few days. It might not rank well for a few months for just “Brynda”, but would come up #1 for any more specific search. Googlebot is hungry. I’ve added pages to my sites and in a few days those pages are getting hits from searchers using Google. And these sites have only a solid PageRank of 5 for the home page. Yet Googlebot is all over my sites like sailors on a $20 whore. Typically Googlebot checks the home page several times daily, in case I added something a few hours ago and it needs to fetch it. Google has astronomical bandwidth available. And, makes constant use of it. ---
**Author:** ![RyJae](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9d8465/32.png) [@RyJae](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RyJae)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2005, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-building-questions/315632/18 "2005-08-07T18:07:41Z")
I disagree that any website can just get into the SERP’s quickly as some get sandboxed for no apparent reason though I make the assumption that it is to keep the php/other methods search term pages from totally overwhelming Google’s SERP’s. ---
**Author:** ![rfgdxm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c0e974/32.png) [@rfgdxm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rfgdxm)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2005, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-building-questions/315632/19 "2005-08-07T18:19:50Z")
> [@](#): > > I disagree we get 23% of our traffic from Yahoo/MSN other search engines for the same terms as those that rank high in Google. Thats a significant number for a business wanting as many eyeballs as possible on the site. Yep. Currently it is a 3 horse race. Unless the site is targeting a very specific nation (say, S. Korea or Japan), SEO is mostly about ranking well on Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Although [ask.com](http://ask.com) is important for certain demographics, particularly women. If your SEO can’t get your site to rank well on Yahoo, s/he ain’t worth what you are paying. (As for MSN, their algo is so whacky even I haven’t figured it out. Then again, MSN SERPs suck.) > [@](#): > > Out of our sites a few of them are PR 7 or better if you want I can throw a link to your site on them, that tends to get them in the Google results a tad quicker. Nothing in exchange its something I have done for a few people’s personal websites. Now if you where a business well… (rfgdxm nearly faints.) You have Google PR7 sites and are willing to hand out links to non-commercial sites? Does warning people about the dangers of drug abuse interest you? If so, PLEASE link to my sites. Admittedly my sites are already doing all kinds of well on the search engines, but a high PR link would help guarantee that. And, I’d be willing to toss you some anchor text rich links from pages with decent PR, and even give SEO advice for just a single link of that magnitude. PR 7+ plus links are so valuable I’ll work damn hard in exchange for one. ---
**Author:** ![RyJae](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9d8465/32.png) [@RyJae](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RyJae)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2005, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-building-questions/315632/20 "2005-08-07T18:31:53Z")
> [@rfgdxm](#): > > (rfgdxm nearly faints.) You have Google PR7 sites and are willing to hand out links to non-commercial sites? Does warning people about the dangers of drug abuse interest you? If so, PLEASE link to my sites. Admittedly my sites are already doing all kinds of well on the search engines, but a high PR link would help guarantee that. And, I’d be willing to toss you some anchor text rich links from pages with decent PR, and even give SEO advice for just a single link of that magnitude. PR 7+ plus links are so valuable I’ll work damn hard in exchange for one. I’ll clear it with the boss, he will be in on Thursday as long as its not commercial in nature we have linked with non commercial websites on a personal level many many times. Its a SEO related thing to be honest, it seems to help when you have some of those kind of links spread out (Non commercial) and off our server. Because of our business, (NOT PORN) being adult related I will not post any links but I will post my email when I go get a tossaway (From the tossaway I will give you my real one) And not to go totally off topic, but when we linked some of our higher PR to our other websites we did not see a noticable increase. I think Google is using the PR less and less with each major update. With two sites hawking the same thing, we have seen the lower PR get better results then the higher PR, seemed more wide spread since Florida a year or so back. YMMV of course. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-building-questions/315632.md?page=2)