YARGH! A useful post from a goofy pirate: Your theme matters.
 

I've never seen anything on this but if you know about this disregard :)

I have two similar sites pulling the same feeds, and are roughly the same domains (one is pluralized form of the other) I noticed that one has weird stuff indexed (ie feedlinks, wp login page etc.) and seems to be neglected by google while the other one seems to be indexing fine.

I had a hunch because of what was being indexed on the one site might have something to do with theme I was using.

If you use firefox and the webdev plugin you can disable styles and see the page as a spider would.

Sure enough when I compared the two themes without css styling, one was displaying all the menu stuff up top, while the other one had all the menu stuff at the bottom.

I am going through a lot of the themes I usually use to see if there are any more that behave like this so I can switch them to the theme that displays the content up top rather than menu stuff.

Theme designers here, you should check out your templates to see how the content is really displaying.

huh? Why would CSS styling change how a spider sees a page - just use a text browser like Lynx is how I do it. Isn't that how a spider sees things?

I didn't say it was the css silly goose. Disabling the css is the way you can see how the theme is laid out content wise.

I'll post links to the themes in a minute so you can download them and see for yourself what I mean.

please do, because I'm confused!

the theme with with menu stuff up top was juice 2.0 from themes.wordpress.net

the other was unsleepable If you have the plugin to disable css just do test run and disable styles right on the test site.

because you can manipulate the location of a div from css to appear for
example at the bottom although its listed first in the html page.

and it doesn't change how a spider sees the page but how you see it
so while you see it at the bottom its actually first in page
creating duplicate content pages for spiders

Exactly right, but in this case the css has nothing to do with it. It's the theme itself that is causing the problem.

I know that, which is why I mentioned a text browser...

whats the plugin to disable css chio? this would be a good thread for bloggers :)

ya, but most browse from windows and never heard of a text browser :)

oops darksoul replied before your edit. If borked goes and does the test run he'll see what I mean.


Borked css had nothing to do with the post. I was just saying how disabling css would show the way the theme's divs are laid out and thus how a search engine would see the page.

Themes that are behaving like this would be very easy to fix by just rearranging the divs in the templates. The css regardless of how the divs are laid out will display the page correctly.

It's the webdeveloper plugin for Firefox. Get it here: http://chrispederick.com/work/webdeveloper/

http://www.ratemypaysite.com/ -> with css
http://www.ratemypaysite.com/?nocss=1 -> without css

See how the links and ads and other such info show at the bottom without the CSS? The main text/description gets pushed to the top, as far as the google spider sees it.

I see it - very interesting, because in a text browser, they both show the menus at teh top, yet disabling css shows a different picture...

Hmm that is weird. I checked with the google cache of those pages and see the layout as I did by disabling css so I think that's what matters. Strange though, are you using lynx?

yeah, but in a text browser, both sites show content at top...
the WP themes though show a different story - both themes in a text browser show links at top, though without CSS, only one has links at top.

Wow great spot

Just one Q

Coudl you get penalized by google for changing a theme cos wouldnt it be changing alot of pages all in one go

It is weird! yes, I'm using lynx

http://www.csszengarden.com/

It doesn't get penalized and it has a TON of themes. Try some of them. They're quite amazing.

no.
changing html doesn't count

Not sure on that but in this case I think it can only help as it seemed google was having a hard time because of the theme.

I have noticed weird things with themes a lot lately though. I had a site that ranked number 1 for a phrase that was very important to me. When I changed one of my other sites theme, the #1 rank site got pushed down about 3 results, while one of the sites that was responsible for the #1 ranking became #1. Not a huge problem because one of my sites is still number one, but I would prefer it be the actual site, not the one with the bliggo ad about it. I changed the themes back so I hope that'll make a difference.

f youre talking about wordpress its just the way the php files are 'stacked' into the index.php file so a simple 'view source' would give the same info..

bumped :)

I don't have the plugin installed. This site should work for others without firefox or the plugin.


http://www.seo-browser.com

rtfp idiot :2 cents:

I'm an idiot for misunderstanding what he was talking about?

You go sparky.

That seo browser link is cool.