Google refuses to index our domain. Any suggestions?

[NetvantageMarketing]

A very similar question was asked previously.  (http://www.seomoz.org/q/why-google-did-not-index-our-domain)  We've done everything in that post (and comments) and then some.

The domain is http://www.miwaterstewardship.org/ and, so far, we have:

• put "User-agent: *  Allow: /" in the robots.txt  (We recently removed the "allow" line and included a Sitemap: directive instead.)
• built a few hundred links from various pages including multiple links from .gov domains
• properly set up everything in Webmaster Tools
• submitted site maps (multiple times)
• checked the "fetch as googlebot" display in Webmaster Tools (everything looks fine)
• submitted a "request re-consideration" note to Google asking why we're not being indexed

Webmaster Tools tells us that it's crawling the site normally and is indexing everything correctly.  Yahoo! and Bing have both indexed the site with no problems and are returning results.  Additionally, many of the pages on the site have PR0 which is unusual for a non-indexed site.  Typically we've seen those sites have no PR at all.

If anyone has any ideas about what we could do I'm all ears.  We've been working on this for about a month and cannot figure this thing out.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

[RyanKent]

Fix your robots.txt. It is not set up as you suggested.

http://www.miwaterstewardship.org/robots.txt

User-agent: *
Sitemap: http://www.miwaterstewardship.org/SiteMap.aspx

I am unsure of what action a search engine would take upon 
encountering your code, but based on your post it seems that 
it blocks all agents.

The correct code would be:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

Sitemap: http://www.miwaterstewardship.org/SiteMap.aspx

For more information about robots.txt you can take a look at:
[http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html](http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html)

[EGOL]

Ryan, you have been giving some really valuable answers.  Nice.  Keep up the great work!

[NetvantageMarketing]

Thanks, Ryan.  I noticed this as well but figured I'd leave it alone since Webmaster Tools was telling me "all is well" with the robots.txt file.  I'll add the code like you suggest and we'll see what happens.

Thanks again.

[RyanKent]

Thank you EGOL. I consider myself a student of SEO, definitely not a master.

The Q&A forums here have given me a great opportunity to learn about SEO. I have been spending all my time this past month un-learning all the bad information I gathered from the internet, and learning SEO the right way.

The Matt Cutts videos, SEOmoz webinars, blogs and pro Q&A have all been immensely helpful. Those resources, along with the replies you and other mozzers offer have provided me an incredibly rich learning experience.

Thanks for noticing.

[getbigyadig]

I agree with Ryan, your backlinks look great, website is structured well and has a great looking design. No signs of you breaking any of googles TOS.

[NetvantageMarketing]

Well...we're still in the virtual doghouse so-to-speak...

I made the changes that Ryan suggested on Friday.  Webmaster Tools reports that the GoogleBot crawled the site on Saturday and that everything is OK in its eyes.  Google responded to our reconsideration request over the weekend and stated very specifically that no actions were taken by the Google Spam team which would affect the rankings of our site or domain.

Still, if you search info:miwaterstewardship.org in The Ol' Goog, it continues to report that the site does not exist in the Google database.

Are there any other ideas of what we might be able to try?

This is a Dot Net Nuke site.  Is there a DNN setting somewhere which might indicate to Google that it should not report our domain in search results?

Thanks for the looks and the help.

[RyanKent]

I was able to verify your robots.txt file is correctly set up. Did you make the changes before Google crawled the site on Saturday? You are correct that your site is not in the index. I would guess the robots.txt file was not modified until after the crawl. If it was adjusted pre-crawl, below are the next steps you can take.

Let's take a fresh look at your site:

• you have a valid robots.txt file

• your home page has a valid "index, follow" tag (not necessary, but it doesn't hurt either)

• you have checked WMT and confirmed your site was crawled

In WMT, Site Configuration > Sitempas there is a "URLs submitted" field and a "URLs in web index field". What are those numbers please?

• It's a bit far reaching but while you are there please go over to your Settings tab in WMT. Geographic Target should not be checked, or if it is then Target Users in US should be selected. Preferred domain should be "www.miwaterstewardship.org" and I would recommend "Let Google determine my crawl rate" option unless you have a specific reason for doing otherwise.

[NetvantageMarketing]

Thanks for the suggestions, Ryan.  All of the previous changes were made before Google did it's last crawl.  Here's the other info...

URLs Submitted = 78 / URLs in Web Index = 75 / The sitemap status is green check mark and it was downloaded today--June 14.

Geographic target has not been selected.  Google has always been able to determine the crawl rate.  I just changed the preferred domain to www.miwaterstewardship.org.  That's the only change made recently.

This is another piece that baffles me.  Check out the crawl stats for the site here: http://netvantagemarketing.com/temp/miws-crawl-stats.png

The bot is crawling an average of 63 pages per day and there's crawling activity since the middle of March.  STILL, though...the domain absolutely will not appear in the index.

We're working with the client right now to see if we can get the site changed to a new IP address.  The thought is that perhaps Google has somehow historically blocked the IP that it lives on now and changing to a new IP might get us out of jail. SUPER long shot...but those are the kinds of things we're trying now.

Thanks again for the help.

[RyanKent]

Looking at the site I can confirm the following:

• the home page is tagged index follow

• the status code for the home page is 200, an OK response

• the robots.txt file is valid and clear

• your crawl reports look fine to me

• you stated your sitemap is received and 73 of 75 pages are indexed

• your site is clearly not in Google's index as a site:miwaterstewardship.org search shows nothing.

• I looked at your sitemap. I am not familiar with .aspx sitemaps but it does contain valid html links which apparently is enough for Google to utilize

• you stated your site is not under penalty, as per Google

The possibilities are:

• one of the pieces of information we are depending on is incorrect

• we are overlooking a key piece of information

• our understanding of SEO in this case is not complete

• there is an issue with Google which is preventing your site from being indexed.

At this point I would suggest using your 1 PRO question on this issue, and reference this Q&A thread. While I don't believe we missed anything we should get the team to look at this issue and rule out every last possibility.

[NetvantageMarketing]

You make excellent points.  I'll escalate this to "the pros" and see if they're able to bring their guru powers to bear on the trouble.

Thanks again Ryan for all your advice.  It is greatly appreciated.