Google Not Indexing Description or correct title (very technical)
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Hey guys,
I am managing the site: http://www.theattractionforums.com/
If you search the keyword "PUA Forums", it will be in the top 10 results, however the title of the forum will be "PUA Forums" rather than using the code in the title tag, and no description will display at all (despite there being one in the code).
Any page other than the home-page that ranks shows the correct title and description.
We're completely baffled! Here are some interesting bits and pieces:
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It shows up fine on Bing
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If I go into GWT and Fetch as Google Bot, it shows up as "Unreachable" when I try to pull the home-page.
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We previously found that it was pulling 'index.htm' before 'index.php' - and this was pulling a blank page. I've fixed this in the .htaccess however to make it redirect, however this hasn't solved the problem.
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I've disallowed it from pulling the description .etc from the Open Directory with the use of meta tags - didn't change anything.
It's vBulletin and is running vBSEO
Any suggestions at all guys?
I'll be forever in anyones debt who can solve this, it's proving to be near impossible to fix.
Here is the .htaccess file, it may be a part of the issue:
RewriteEngine On
DirectoryIndex index.php index.html
Redirect /index.html http://www.theattractionforums.com/index.php
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.theattractionforums.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.theattractionforums.com/$1 [L,R=301]RewriteRule ^((urllist|sitemap_).*.(xml|txt)(.gz)?)$ vbseo_sitemap/vbseo_getsitemap.php?sitemap=$1 [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(admincp/|modcp/|cron|vbseo_sitemap/)
RewriteRule ^((archive/)?(..php(/.)?)?)$ vbseo.php [L,QSA]RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^(admincp|modcp|clientscript|cpstyles|images)/
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ vbseo.php [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^forum/(.*)$ http://www.theattractionforums.com/$1 [R=301,L] -
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Hey guys,
SEOmoz's software done a crawl for me, and we got a crawl error at this page:
http://www.theattractionforums.com/%3Ca%20href=
This translates to:
http://www.theattractionforums.com/<a href=
What do you think is going on? So confused!
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Hi Guys,
I've fixed up the above, the 'meta name' and the 'title' issues - however this still doesn't seem to explain why Google wouldn't be able t crawl the page.
It also seems strange that Google would choose NO description over one that is provided. While theoretically plausible, I would find it extremely odd.
Thanks guys,
JC
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I don't know if this is specifically related but I spotted a typo in your homepage's source code while reviewing this. You have this code: <metaname="robots" <span="">content="noodp,noydir" /></metaname="robots">
in your HTML head. There should be a space between meta and name in that tag. I didn't spot anything else that jumped out to me as wrong. I'd fix that tag for sure, and I hope someone else here can help illuminate further.
Best,
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The reason it is not using your title is you have stuffed it with keywords
PUA Forums | The Attraction Forums | Free Men's Dating Forum | The Mystery Method: How to Get Beautiful Women into Bed
its 118 characters long, it should be 65 at most, google will not use such a title
somthing like
Free Men's Dating Forum | PUA Forums
would be better, remember its a title not a short story, just give the poeple an idea, dont try to give them a sales picth
google picks a description that matchs the query, it is hard to predict when it will use your description tag.
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