New Web Page Not Indexed

[TomKing]

Quick question with probably a straightforward answer...

We created a new page on our site 4 days ago, it was in fact a mini-site page though I don't think that makes a difference...

To date, the page is not indexed and when I use 'Fetch as Google' in WT I get a 'Not Found' fetch status...

I have also used the'Submit URL' in WT which seemed to work ok...

We have even resorted to 'pinging' using Pinglar and Ping-O-Matic though we have done this cautiously!

I know social media is probably the answer but we have been trying to hold back on that tactic as the page relates to a product that hasn't quite launched yet and we do not want to cause any issues with the vendor!

That said, I think we might have to look at sharing the page socially unless anyone has any other ideas?

Many thanks

Andy

[DougRoberts]

Andy, it's tough to say without looking at the url/page in question. Can you tell us what the page is? If you're not happy to do so in public, then feel free to send me a private message with the URL and I'll take a look.

Have you tried something like http://web-sniffer.net/ to check the page and the response code that's being returned?

[TomKing]

Thanks Doug, sending PM...

[Asjad]

Go here : https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url?pli=1

Submit your URL and it will get Indexed within few Seconds

[GPainter]

Have you looked into your robots or made sure its not no indexed as fetch as Google should work it it cant access the page then it may be a deeper issue. It's not behind any thing that may prevent robots crawling it.  You can also try screaming frog to see if a crawler can in fact crawl the page.

Once you know that bots can crawl the page then you can work out why from there.

[DougRoberts]

Thanks Andy, I got the PM. Looking at the URL, I would suggest that your problems are likely to be the result of the & character being used in the URL.

From: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1738.html

"...only alphanumerics, the special characters "$-_.+!*'(),", and reserved characters used for their reserved purposes may be used unencoded within a URL."

The & is one such reserved character and has a special meaning in URLs. You'll see it being used to separate URL parameters.

Hope this helps!

[TomKing]

Screaming Frog cannot crawl the page - 404 Not Found so I guess I need to look into this a little deeper...

Thanks for your responses!

[TomKing]

Thanks Doug, we had a suspicion it might the the & which is a bit of a problem considering who the vendor is!

[DougRoberts]

Yep, I guess they probably wish they could change it! Have a look at their corporate website and you'll see that they just drop the ampersand from their domain name.