This post examines when and how Google and Microsoft index a new WordPress website. Publishing a new website is exciting. WordPress and a web host is all it takes to take a website live. This website, fedorum.com started a few months ago when I was looking for the Fedora forum. Unlike Manjaro or EndeavourOS, Fedora didn’t seem to have a support forum with current posts.
The more a thought abut it, the more it made sense to create a website that provides information about Fedora Linux for those who are moving away from Windows. WordPress is very popular and the recipe for success is publishing posts on a consistent basis. The rest is simply waiting for visitors to come and interact. For that to happen, major search engines index a website and then serve the URLs to those who search for a specific topic.
There are many search engines but to demonstrate, I will focus on the two most used ones.
- Bing
It all begins with a domain name
Many places such as GoDaddy sell domain names. Most names we think of are already registered and must be purchased if so desired. On the other hand, if a domain name has not been claimed or has expired, it can be instantly registered.
About three months ago, I registered fedorum.com without the .net and .org extensions. The exact day when fedorum.com was registered is June 11, 2022. So how much content has been published since?
A quick overview of the site structure
So far, the fedorum.com website consists of:
- 4 pages
- 23 blog posts
The above list does not include the category and tags links of which WordPress generates a lot of. As far as search results go, they are not important. Contrary, the blog posts are very important and should be served to those who are looking for the information they provide.
Right from the beginning, Google was slow to index the site. The domain name was new and it took several weeks for the first links to appear. Although I constantly submitted every new blog post via the Google Search Console, indexing was very slow. Microsoft’s Bing search engine is even slower. DuckDuckGo seems to be connected to Bing and thus provides similar results.
Here is a graphic which shows the indexing progress of fedorum.com
Google Search Console
The Google Search Console is an invaluable tool for everyone who publishes a website. It pretty much shows everything one needs to know in order to provide an optimal growth experience.
Still, Google’s progress is slower than slow. Without indexing, websites can’t be found and even when indexed, Google has no obligation to feature a link. Instead, they push content that is often not related to my search. Let’s look at a sample search
Sample search test
Let’s say that I don’t like how Gnome 42 shows those large toolbars on top of every window. There are plenty of complaints about this ugly feature but few fixes. To share my method of how I make the window title bar thinner, I posted a blog post with the title: Gnome how to make windows title bar smaller
If I google “Gnome how to make windows title bar smaller”, I first get a paragraph of text with the advise to change the theme. Every Gnome 42 user knows that this is no longer supported so let’s move on and examine the rest of the links my search returned.
None of the top 20 search returns link to my blog post which shows how to make the windows title bar smaller. Amazingly, one of the top 20 responses was published in 2012 which is 10 years old. I don’t know why Google is so biased when it comes to showing search results and guessing is not helping anyone.
To Google’s defense, none of the other search engines are any better. Microsofts’s Bing is way behind Google and DuckDuckGo seems to be closely following Bing unless I am missing something.
So how can we fix this
Almighty Google serves the index and in their kindness provide a way where we can buy a top link spot. Many companies do that and by now we are used to it. There is no end in sight when it comes to advertising so for the time being, the cheap way is to simply publish more content. The more posts we publish, the better then chance that visitors take a closer look at our site and discover when Google hides.
Not everything about Google is bad news. Their Gmail filter is very powerful and easily filters out spam from those who offer their SEO services. At least they have some pity on those who can’t afford to advertise just yet and with that, I end hoping that you will find encouragement to continue your project. Write blog posts and don’t give up.
The secret TOOL
In time, more and more people will realize that they have a little secret tool which most people miss. Google offers a little button below the search field which is called Tools.
Clicking that button reveals an new row. The first item is a drop-down field with the title “Any time”. Clicking that will reveal additional settings. So if you look for a new solution to software then the “past week” or “past month” setting will increase your chances of finding better search results.
Thank you for visiting fedorum.com and if you are happen to read up on Fedora Linux then take a look at the blog section
