Watching Google as TheScreencastingHandbook enters the index

Mea Culpa – I was wondering why it was taking Google so long to index this site and only 2 days back did I discover that NoFollow and NoIndex were set in the META tags.  Oops.  If this happens to you with WordPress see Settings|Privacy and make sure you enable everyone and bots to read the content!

I’ve kept a close eye on Google using their site: search (site:thescreencastinghandbook.com) to see how my pages would be indexed.  Interestingly the first thing to go in was my pdf linked from the homepage that details my chapter outline, that was yesterday.  Today I see two ‘tag’ links to Captivate and Workflow (they are rather unimportant tags to me, but maybe Google thinks otherwis?).

Update: one day later I see two pages of results for the site: query where google has indexed all of my ‘tag’ entries and this blog post, but not the homepage or other blog entries yet.

I wish that Google Webmaster Tool had flagged that the entire site was flagged NoFollow and NoIndex, I’d have flipped the privacy switch weeks back if I’d have realised.  Still, every day it is good to learn something new!

Tags: Bots, Chapter Outline, Google, Mea Culpa, Meta Tags, Nofollow, Noindex, Oops, Pdf, Privacy, Webmaster Tool