*** City's Web Site Gets Lost In Online ***
Wenatchee, Washington -- 01/30/2008
The city's new Web site has fallen off the map.
Google searches for "Wenatchee" and "City of Wenatchee" don't
return a link to the city site — not only is it not at the top of the
list but nowhere on the following dozens of pages of search results.
In December the city launched its new Web site, which took a year
to develop and cost $100,000. The address is http://www.wenatcheewa.gov
Typing in the city's old address, cityofwenatchee.com, on Tuesday
brought up a page saying "Invalid Request." The address should
have automatically sent people to the new Web site.
Dale Cantrell, the city's information systems director, thinks the
broken link is to blame for the city site falling off Google's radar.
He fixed the link Tuesday morning.
Local Web designer Courtney Prather expects the new city site will
soon start showing up on the top results for Wenatchee-related searches.
"In the natural order of things it's going to get indexed pretty soon,"
Cantrell said. "In a short time we'll pop back up at the top when you
search 'City of Wenatchee' at Google."
How Google decides what shows up at the top of search results is
a mystery — the company keeps secret the mathematical formulas
that generate results.
But the foundation of what results are based on
is common knowledge among tech folks, Prather said.
She did the site for the Wenatchee Valley Chamber of Commerce,
which shows up at the top of the Google search results for "Wenatchee"
or "City of Wenatchee." East Wenatchee's Web site returns sixth on the
list when searching "City of Wenatchee."
Prather said returns are based on how many other sites to which a
particular site is linked. The Chamber of Commerce site links to hundreds
of business and other organizations. Those sites link back to the chamber,
making it a local Internet hub. There's also a ton of text on the site,
including countless mentions of "Wenatchee." Prather said search
engines read plain text like a book, latching onto relevant words.
So why care?
"It's absolutely critical that we have this to be competitive,"
said Mayor Dennis Johnson in December when the new site
hit the Web. He said the site is important in "drawing quality
workers and businesses to Wenatchee."
Wenatchee's new Web site features online bill paying, interactive
maps, recreation program registration and, soon, forms residents
can fill out to report problems such as potholes.
'Wenatchee' Google search top returns
1. Wenatchee Valley Chamber of Commerce
2. Wenatchee Valley Convention & Visitors Bureau
3. The Wenatchee World
4. Wikipedia entry for Wenatchee
5. Wenatchee National Forest
CC - http://www.wenworld.com
Comments On Wen World Site - Users
For one, even the most basic SEO (search engine optimization)
newby knows to at least properly input data into the meta tags.
The title tag lacks any key terms that will help in the ranking, a
nd the description tag is completely empty. Empty. And while the
keyword tags are often ignored by the 'bots, at least fill them.
Those, too, are empty. 100k and they didn't even bother to fill
the metas? Come on. If an SEO business were to put this out
as a finished product, they'd be sued. -- CC - Jim Guthrie
The website as listed in this article (wenatchee.wa.gov)
doesn't seem to be correct either. If you do a search for
that you get wenatcheewa.gov which will take you to the
city's website. -- CC - L Hays
Bwahahahahahaha. Wenatchee can't even put up a simple web site.
Yet another feather of flops in the city's hat. -- CC - Dave Havoc
Gene`s BMX News Quote: -- 01/30/2008
Oh how sad that is But then that is our government for us.
At first back in December 2007 in a news PR it quoted that the
City of Wenatchee payed $75,000 for the new web site But now
in todays news PR it quotes that the City of Wenatchee has payed
$100,000 for the new web site. I ask how much did the new web
site cost. ( 12/20/2007 - Re: City Launches New $75,000 Web Site )
Is it $75,000 or $100,000 for the new web site? If they payed
more than $500.00 for this new web site they are fools and
some one has suckers us all out of are tax payers money...
Im going to agree with Jim Guthrie on his quote;
For one, even the most basic SEO (search engine optimization)
newby knows to at least properly input data into the meta tags.
The title tag lacks any key terms that will help in the ranking, a
nd the description tag is completely empty. Empty. And while the
keyword tags are often ignored by the 'bots, at least fill them.
Those, too, are empty. 100k and they didn't even bother to fill
the metas? Come on.
It does not take much to make a meta tag on any web site page.
META Tags are used as part of your HTML code. Some "Spiders/Bots"
uses the information contained within META Tags to index your page.
In most cases a Spider will grab only the first few words, sentences or
paragraphs and use those words as the description and keywords for your
Web page. META Tags on the other hand tell the Spider what info to use.
Search engine bots do crawl the web looking for new url addresses and
information to add. But you do have to have that meta tag for it to work.
It looks like someone is trying to down on Google.com for lacking.
News flash for you all, Google.com Search Engine is working fine.
It is the lack of information on the new http://www.wenatcheewa.gov site
is the reason that Google.com Search Engine is not picking it up.
How Google decides what shows up at the top of search results
is a mystery — the company keeps secret the mathematical formulas
that generate results.
How Google.com generate results is NO mystery.
Google.com uses a patented algorithm called PageRank to rank
web pages that match a given search string. The PageRank algorithm
computes a recursive score for web pages, based on the weighted sum
of the PageRanks of the pages linking to them. The PageRank derives
from human-generalinks, correlates well with concepts of importance.
Google.com adds and update new sites to there index each time they
crawl the web, Google.com cannot make any predictions or guarantees
about when or if they will appear. Google’s robot scanning the Internet
is called GoogleBot. The technology employed in GoogleBots is varied.
They all share cache between them. The different spiders include vertical
search spiders and spiders associated with ad targeting called meta tags.
Want to know more, Check out the How Google crawls my site page at:
http://www.google.com/support/webmaster ... topic=8843
http://www.google.com/support/webmaster ... topic=8846
http://www.google.com/support/webmaster ... topic=8460
And a look at that so called mathematical formula that generates
the results called PageRank: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
And to the City of Wenatchee Employee that told me last week
that the City of Wenatchee has to pay Google.com to in list the
new web site address in to there search engine, You are a fool!
Google.com DOES NOT! CHARGE ANYONE MONEY to list any web
site address in to there search engine. It is FREE! Here, have a look
at what Google.com says: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
Yes, there are some pay areas that Google.com does marketing but
is the City of Wenatchee`s new web site making any money with its
contents? If so, as a tax payer in Wenatchee, I want to see a income
report from this new web site if it was made to bring in money for
the City of Wenatchee. I think most of the citizens in Wenatchee
would agree and would like to see a income report if this is true.
If it is not true then listing in to Google.com search engine is FREE!
Come on City of Wenatchee, Be smart and learn the backbones
of the world wide web and how it works and what it takes before
you all start blasting down the way Google.com web site works.
Dont get me wrong, the new web site lay out and URL looks nice but
Come on City Of Wenatchee, you all can do much better than this.
And Oh, I almost for got to say this, This also applies with the
Yahoo! search engine http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
Just saying this becouse Yahoo! does host a nice big server farm
here in Wenatchee and Quincy. Just giving them some respect too.
---
Geneb...Wenatchee,Washington-USA
***** Gene`s BMX *****
All Things Northwest in BMX!
http://www.genesbmx.com
