# Making a RoR site search index friendly **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [October 25, 2007, 8:28am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/making-a-ror-site-search-index-friendly/118265 "2007-10-25T08:28:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![mgreenly](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@mgreenly](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mgreenly)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2007, 8:28am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/making-a-ror-site-search-index-friendly/118265/1 "2007-10-25T08:28:43Z")
I’ve added [http://guildcorner.org/](http://guildcorner.org/) to Google about a week ago, and uploaded a site map (in fact, the site map is dynamic and lists every character and guild currently registered.) I’ve seen googlebot hitting the site. It hit every page in my site map so far. However, according to the webmaster’s tools Google provides, no pages are indexed. Searching for words that should certainly make my site appear show this is probably the case. Searching for site:guildcorner.org returns nothing at all. Is this perhaps because of caching? I know you cannot really respect certain http headers (like if-modified-since and expires) easily in a dynamic site, but I would have thought google would still index what it could see? –Michael ---
**Author:** ![mgreenly](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@mgreenly](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mgreenly)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2007, 8:31am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/making-a-ror-site-search-index-friendly/118265/2 "2007-10-25T08:31:38Z")
> I’ve added [http://guildcorner.org/](http://guildcorner.org/) to Google about a week ago, and > uploaded a site map (in fact, the site map is dynamic and lists every > character and guild currently registered.) Well, right now it’s returning a 500 server error… but i’m guessing it probably wasn’t… > I’ve seen googlebot hitting the site. It hit every page in my site > map so far. However, according to the webmaster’s tools Google > provides, no pages are indexed. Searching for words that should > certainly make my site appear show this is probably the case. > Searching for site:guildcorner.org returns nothing at all. > > Is this perhaps because of caching? I know you cannot really respect > certain http headers (like if-modified-since and expires) easily in a > dynamic site, but I would have thought google would still index what > it could see? Sign up for the google webmaster tools and see what google thinks of your site… there should be some reports in there on what’s indexed, what it can’t find, etc. etc… -philip ---
**Author:** ![mgreenly](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@mgreenly](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mgreenly)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2007, 8:49am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/making-a-ror-site-search-index-friendly/118265/3 "2007-10-25T08:49:13Z")
On 10/25/07, Philip H. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Well, right now it’s returning a 500 server error… but i’m guessing it > probably wasn’t… That certainly should not be happening. Turns out I forgot the flag to delete associated records. 😕 Fixed now. > Sign up for the google webmaster tools and see what google thinks of your > site… there should be some reports in there on what’s indexed, what it > can’t find, etc. etc… That’s the problem – it says no pages are indexed. No stats at all. Just … nothing. –Michael ---
**Author:** ![mgreenly](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@mgreenly](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mgreenly)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2007, 10:37pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/making-a-ror-site-search-index-friendly/118265/4 "2007-10-25T22:37:52Z")
Michael G. wrote: > Is this perhaps because of caching? I know you cannot really respect > certain http headers (like if-modified-since and expires) easily in a > dynamic site, but I would have thought google would still index what > it could see? > > –Michael It takes a while for new sites to get added to Google’s actual index after they are submitted and spidered. It took mine several weeks to start showing up. Even more than that, there is some talk of a sandbox that keeps your site from showing up in top search results for a few months at least. It is a protection against spam sites. Just be patient and your site will eventually show up. 🙂 - Mike Sager [http://thegrateful.org](http://thegrateful.org)