...it appears Google is bombarding Netsuite sites with Google Web Accelerator prefetch traffic ("lookahead" pages that shoppers may never even see), and seems to be doing so from the same IP addresses it uses for site verification. ... Please rest assured your sites are still being spidered and in fact are being spidered…

We are getting: "We were unable to verify your file due to a server timeout." for either the meta tag or file method.

the website tag might be <HEADER> that has this html: <!-- begin header --> <table id="header" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <NLPAGETABS> </tr> </table> <!-- end header --> or an include file <%=include('/header.html')%> that has the same html. I see no reason why the HTML generated by <NLPAGETABS> would not be…

Kerrie, I do not have multiple sites so I cannot say for sure. There are three things to consider: 1) Since both sites must share the same robots.txt, you cannot specifiy "Sitemap:" in robots.txt. This would confuse google 2) You will need to name the files differently: site01map.xml site02map.xml 3) The webmaster…

Would it be possible to remove the code which was implemented to create the 503 error? When the code has been proven, then it could be reimplemented? Repeated 503 server errors have a negative impact on SEO.

1) How is the spider being determined? (ie Any spider that disobeys the rule will receive a "503 - Server Busy" error if they start to request pages quickly enough to potentially impact the server (several pages over a few seconds time) 2) Would someone post a list of user agents which are being tested? 3) When the spider…

All -- Thank you for pointing this out. With the Christmas season over, I have been a bit lazy. I noticed yesterday that our rankings have dropped. I started researching this morning. We are receiving the same error. We have been on Google Webmaster tools since it was the called Google Sitemaps. We are getting "We were…

...include files rather than custom tags for SEO...NetSuite stores that use custom tags heavily (including for their logo and tabs.header)... Would you have an example you could send on this? I am not sure I am following.

We only have one site right now but our robots.txt file works. It is located in: Documents -> File Cabinet -> Live Hosting Files "Live Hosting Files" is considered the "root" of your web site. This is ours: http://www.christmastreeforme.com/robots.txt If you do not get it to work, send me a private message with your email…

So you are saying that the robots.txt file located in: Documents -> File Cabinet -> Live Hosting Files is used for all 3 sites?

As a follow up -- I was very curious, I tired getting FireFox to emulate the gsa-crawler. From what I can see, I am emulating properly. The http traffic I see back is different that what you posted below. My test did load the pages so I do not think #1 or #2 help.

Greg - good point ",noarchive " may be what I am missing.

Phil, The setting is: Setup | Web Site | Setup Tab | Descriptive URLs I cannot stress the importance of properly planning to switch from: 1) /tab_name/category_name/item_name to 2) /item_name If you switch this setting from 1 to 2 without proper planning, the search engine's index for your site will be adversely impacted.…

Phil, You are correct, this is an issue. There is a setting which will eliminate the category from the URL. HOWEVER - the issue is that you will have to create a MASSIVE redirect list to point all of the old url's to the correct new url. NetSuite does not have an import tool for this so you have to use a keyboard macro. I…

Promotional URL's were tested by using the FireFox add-on "Live HTTP Headers" and confirmed with Ethereal. Are we killing ourselves with the search engines using promotional URSs? To be honest, I do not know the exact impact. In discussions with a couple of SEO consultants, they state that at best you are not getting any…

As an update, I worked with support today to document this issue properly. There is actually 3 - 301 redirects which occur for a promotional URL. In hind sight, it was not a good idea to use promotional URL's in our press release's for 2007.

dtaylor65, Were you able to resolve this one? I do not have a GSA but am very curious. You have probably either resolved this or tested using the following: 1) NetSuite may be testing the IP address for GoogleBot, Slurp, etc and denying your GSA because it is not using that IP address. (I hope Netsuite is testing the IP)…

Paul, Sorry, I just saw this post. When you say the pages have been dropped, what are you basing this on: Were you looking at Google Webmaster Tools or something like site:mysite.com? Do you have a new affiliate program? Did you change anything on your URL structure such as updating the SEO URL? Was there any other change…

Paul, I just double checked at it appears the xml is still malformed. I do not know what impact this has. It would not surprise me that Google would be bright enough to figure it out while Yahoo and Ask.com would choke on it.

We converted on August 22nd 2007. For our top 5 money phrases, we have retained our general position. We have moved up or down 1-2 slots but it would be hard to say the upward or downward movement is due to the move to NetSuite from OSCommerce. It probably has more to do with our competitors being pretty good at SEO. They…

Paul, Didn't finish my thought, had to get my kids ready for school. :) You said this occurred around the time of v2007.1. In a perfect world, this could be a good thing. If issue 126603 has been properly implemented by NetSuite, it could be the reason for the reduction in URL's. If this is the reason, it is a good thing…

Margie, Do you have a Google Webmaster Tools account? If you do not, this would be the first thing I would recommend you do. http://www.google.com/webmasters/ Then select: "Improve traffic with Webmaster Tools" - it will walk you through a fairly straightforward setup process. This will allow you to see what Google thinks…

Kyle, Thanks for the input. Brian Kyle is right, it is way overwhelming. That said it is SIMPLE but tedious and takes a long time. Go to http://www.seoresearchlabs.com/ Download Dan's book: http://www.seoresearchlabs.com/seo-book.php I met Dan at Search Engine Strategies in New York. He did a presentation on how to…

Paul, Obviously this is not good, it is a nightmare. If you think of anyway I can help, let me know. These are things I can think of: 1) If you want to let me know when you have the new sitemap up, I would like to take a peak at it. 2) Do you have an old sitemap.xml file from 30 days ago or so? I would like to look at the…

Paul, Three things: 1) When I try to look at www.lampspecs.co.uk/sitemap.xml, I get a error message that the xml is malformed. From looking at it for 2 minutes, it looks like this file is missing the opening <urlset>. When I add this, Internet Explorer and Stylus Studio 2007 say it is ok. This lack of the opening <urlset>…

Paul, v2007.1 is supposed to auto redirect the jsessionids. I am waiting a couple of weeks to see if this does happen. There are a couple of uses for the Yahoo tool. Last I looked, you could specify 3 parameters to strip. I would guess they would be: 1) jsessionid Maybe: 2) chrole and 3) cjsid However, I have not heard…

*** Bump *** I thought this type of unfriendly URL was going away with v2007.1

Single hyper link versus double hyperlink. This is a medium level SEO / usability thing that I do not recall being discussed in the user group. (maybe my memory is failing) When you are displaying an image and text to link to a different page, it is preferable to have a single link instead of two links. The reason is two…

... This is still not search engine friendly. Is there something else I need to do to get rid of the "?sc=tabnumber&Catagory=categorynumber" I believe NetSuite is testing the user agent. If the user agent is GoogleBot, then the "?sc=tabnumber&Catagory=categorynumber" is not presented. I have not tested this in 6 months or…

Would someone from NetSuite please take a look at this? If the first redirect was a 302 and the 2nd a 301 it would not be so bad. Multiple 301's make the spiders think they are in a spider trap. This is not good.