SearchNZ FAQ for Webmasters
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How does SearchNZ work?
SearchNZ is a 'crawling' (or 'indexing') Web search engine, it takes sites submitted to it and visits each web page within a Web site and stores a compact copy.
It then allows visitors to search for information located on all of the web pages it has stored and provides a link to the original Web site.
Perdiodically SearchNZ revisits web sites to update and get the latest new information contained within indexed Web sites.
SearchNZ is a FREE service provided to New Zealand Web site owners by NZCity to help fulfil its goal of promoting Kiwi Web sites to New Zealanders.
Being listed with SearchNZ gives Kiwi Web site owners significant free exposure for their products and services and all that is asked in return is that they adhere to simple rules to protect the integrity of the database for everyone.
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| Common Site Submission Questions |
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Why doesn't SearchNZ display my homepage first in the search results?
SearchNZ allows users to search for the most relevent pages to their query. Often the most relevent page on your Web site is not the homepage. If all you want displayed is your homepage, we recommend utilising a Web Directory rather than an indexing Search Engine.
Why doesn't SearchNZ keep my frames when people click on a link in the search results?
Search Engines have no concept of framesets, they visit one page at a time and allow people to search the pages it has visited. If you are having this problem there are several techniques you can apply to your web pages to allow them to reload themselves in a frameset. Please contact a professional web designer for further information.
Is there a way of 'hiding' my site or parts of my site from SearchNZ so others can't search the content?
Yes. SearchNZ supports the 'Robots Exclusion Standard' which allows you to specify parts of your site that you do not want to make publically searchable from SearchNZ. For more information on excluding pages, visit our guide to excluding pages from SearchNZ
Why do I give a title and description when I submit my site?
The information given is used to create your entry in the popular SearchNZ New Sites guide and in the validation process of your web site. The information is NOT used when displaying search results. Failure to provide enough information (or providing inaccurate or inappropriate information) will likely result in your site not being listed within the New Sites Guide.
I've submitted my site, how long does it take to approve it?
New Zealand named sites (ending in .nz) are automatically submitted for SearchNZ staff approval and if approved are passed through to an overnight web crawler, and should be able to be searched the following day.
Non .nz websites (.com, .net, .org) are submitted into a manual checking process where SearchNZ staff visit every site and make a decision if the site fits within SearchNZ's rules. Whilst this is normally done each night, in periods of extreme demand backlogs of up to a week can occur.
Once sites are checked, all sites .nz and non .nz are scanned and checked for inclusion in New Sites guide.
How can I control what is displayed in a search?
The first line of text within each result returned (also acts as the link to the web site) is taken from the page title (text between the <title> and </title>) on the page returned matching the keyword searched for. If you need help on this please refer to your Web designer.
The remaining text is taken from 'around' the matched words within the returned web page. In most cases this gives the searcher a quick way to see if your page is actually what they are searching for. In some cases the META DESCRIPTION value may be displayed as the result for your site so we recommend you create a meaningful description to use for this.
I have submitted my site to SearchNZ - why can't I find it when I search?
The best way to check that your site has been indexed is to try an uncommon word (that most sites would not contain) that appears in the <title> or the text of the page with the URL submitted.
The most common reasons we have found sites not being returned are...
- 'Flash' animated entry screens and sites - indexing search engines can't read text from Flash animations or follow redirects from 'splash' screens into the main parts of the site. Professional Web site designers should make sure there is a way for web browsers that do not support flash, however we recommend such sites list only with web directories.
- Sites with images only - A small number of Web designers build sites using mostly images, with any text on the page being part of a picture file. Search Engines can not index or search these sites.
- Sites using javascript for navigation or content generation - Some Web designers build sites using javascript navigation and sometimes even generate HTML using client-side Javascript. Most Search Engines can not interpret Javascript and so can't follow links or in some cases index text on these sites.
- Meta Tags - Meta Tags are NOT used on SearchNZ, so you won't find these if you search for them
- Your site may not have been accepted, if you are sure you have followed the submission rules and that it has been more than a week since you submitted the site, please feel free to use the feedback form to politely ask for an update on your website (don't forget to give us the site's URL).
Special Notes for free-hosted websites with domain names
A number of websites such as 'geocities.com' and 'cjb.net' offer personal domain names such as http://myname.geocities.com/, which are actually redirected to http://www.geocities.com/myname/. If you have a site such as this, please submit the non domain version (eg http://www.geocities.com/myname/) as SearchNZ will only index pages that are in the same domain as the domain submitted.
What type of sites are not allowed in SearchNZ?
SearchNZ is a free Search Service for New Zealand web content, and accordingly only accepts sites fulfilling its criteria as being a New Zealand site. In order to maintain the quality of the idex there are exceptions whereby SearchNZ will not accept particular types of New Zealand sites:
- SearchNZ does not accept sites with a focus on MLM (Multi-Level Marketing), 'Pyramid' schemes or Make Money fast, as there are already enough ways to find these sites and unfortunately they tend to be the biggest group of people who try to mislead Search Engines and devalue the results for searchers.
- Sites that act as a front for overseas sites or referal programs will not be accepted. Multiple attempts at submission may result in the URL or IP address being permanently banned from the index.
- To avoid multiple inclusions SearchNZ does not accept web sites that are large lists of links. The reason behind this is that results are returned with pointers to these sites rather than the actual sites that people are looking for. We will however accept submissions of link sites about pages or other information that would clearly be the target of someone looking.
*Please note that SearchNZ reserves the right to refuse inclusion to the SearchNZ index at its sole discretion
What are the common reasons my site might be rejected, removed or banned?
- The site has no way for us to easily identify it as a New Zealand Web site.
- You have submitted more than a single domain for the same site (eg www.nzcity.co.nz and www.nzcity.com, or; nzcity.co.nz and www.nzcity.co.nz - where two or more web sites are the same)
In these cases both sites would be removed, and in extreme cases (where numerous occurances of the same site have been submitted) the automatic removal and/or permanent banning of all submitted sites would result.
- Your site is using 'doorway' or 'gateway' pages, or any other dubious 'optimisation' technique whereby pages are created simply to link to parts of a Web site. The use or submission of pages that are not normally visible to your Web site visitors, or specifically designed for search engine indexers will almost always result in the offending site being permanently banned from SearchNZ. In addition any other sites submitted by the same person, IP address or company are also at risk of being omitted from the index.
- Sites that overuse 'CAPITALISATION', ~~~FuNnY~~~, or use more than 35 charaters in the title or 'overly' long descriptions will almost certainly miss the free promotion offered from being included in the SearchNZ new sites guide.
- Whilst it is acceptable to submit various content pages to SearchNZ, because SearchNZ crawls sub pages anyway it is usually not required. Submitting multiple pages will miss listing your site in the new sites guide, Submitting more than a handful of pages in a week will result in all pages being removed. (remember this is a free servce and we have to check every submission)
- Resubmitting the same Web site more than twice in any 30 day period is regarded to be excessive submissions and may result in removal of your site. Please remember that SearchNZ intelligently reindexes sites based on how dynamic the content is - so you shouldn't need to resubmit pages
NOTE: You are permitted to resubmit the same Web site less once a month.
My site was banned, what now?
This is an area of SearchNZ that is under constant development. If your site has been banned due to the rules being broken, there currently is no chance of it being relisted on SearchNZ in the short term.
In the future there may be an opportunity to have banned sites reconsidered for inclusion, however a relisting fee may be applied.
While we realise this may seem a tough stance, the number of site owners, "search engine optimising", web marketers and others who have abused the free promotion services offered by SearchNZ have
increased the cost of maintaining the index to the point whereby to keep the service free for everybody else some of this cost must be retrieved.
If you are concerned about your site being banned please make sure you, or anyone employed by you to submit your site adheres to the rules above.
The role of a Search Engine is to return relevent results: to boost your site's position in search engine results is simple: make your site's content more relevent than others above you in the results!
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