A guiding principle in the development and implementation of the SearchDex Organic Search Platform involves following search engines published guidelines. On this page, SearchDex addresses the published guidelines of Google.  Each Google guideline* listed below is followed by the SearchDex response in green text, which addresses SearchDex features, development guidelines, and general principles that are employed to ensure compliance.

SearchDex Response to Google Technical Guidelines:

Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session ID's, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.
   Client sites that support browser-adapted content delivery treat search engine agents as Lynx browsers. Recommendations are that clients maintain informative content textually, and use non-textual mechanisms for user experience enhancement only.

Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session ID's or arguments that track their path through the site. These techniques are useful for tracking individual user behavior, but the access pattern of bots is entirely different. Using these techniques may result in incomplete indexing of your site, as bots may not be able to eliminate URLs that look different but actually point to the same page.
   SessionIDs are eliminated, prevented, or handled by proxy. Query parameters are re-engineered or eliminated.

Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This feature allows your web server to tell Google whether your content has changed since we last crawled your site. Supporting this feature saves you bandwidth and overhead.
   Proper IMS responses are generated by knowing the database state (alpha testing).

Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it's current for your site so that you don't accidentally block the Googlebot crawler.
   A robots.txt file is on client sites to cordon sections of the site that employ interactive navigation, login, sessions, cookies, or other crawl-averse architecture.

If your company buys a content management system, make sure that the system can export your content so that search engine spiders can crawl your site.
   Integration to databases and content management systems enable content export.

SearchDex Response to Google Quality Guidelines:

Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users, or present different content to search engines than you display to users.
   Clients which use SearchDex make available indexable content that is the same as presented to users.

Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a web site that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
   Only site original content is made accessible; tricks are not possible nor approved.

Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
   SearchDex does not support link scheme architectures.

Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our terms of service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.
   Rank checking is not possible with SearchDex.

Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
   Sites which employ these techniques are not eligible for the SearchDex license. Indexed pages do not contain hidden text or hidden links.

Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
   Sites which employ these techniques are not eligible for the license. No content is cloaked – content presented to users is presented to search engines. No sneaky redirects and no ad-popup pages are allowed on the published pages.

Don't send automated queries to Google.
   SearchDex does not allow this.

Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
   Sites which employ these techniques are not eligible for the SearchDex license. Only product descriptive text and content developed by the client is presented.

Don't create multiple pages, sub domains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
   Sites which employ these techniques are not eligible for the SearchDex license. The published pages exist only on the primary domain.

Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
   Sites which employ these techniques are not eligible for the license. The product descriptive text and content developed by the client is presented. No pages are created just for search engines. The content of pages presented to search engines is identical the content presented to users. There are no doorway pages nor are there any special “engine only” pages.

*These guidelines can be found at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Download our Best Practices Policy here
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