Search Engine Myths Debunked - Myths Three, Four, and Five
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Search engines will find every link to your site
Sometimes logic is the most valuable tool in the SEO’s toolbox. Search engines don’t know every link that exists, and so they won’t index every link to your site that you know of.
That said, they won’t even index all the links found on pages indexed by search engines. Spiders can’t follow certain links (such as JavaScript links), and that will affect the number of links counted by search engines.
Search engines will list every link to your site
Search engines don’t necessarily list all the links they find to a site.
In fact, they tend not to: Google, for instance, will only list links (a “link: www.example.com” search will turn up sites that link to www.example.com) with PageRank above a certain threshold. The exact algorithm varies is a complex one; for instance, if your only link is from a PR3 site, it will most likely be listed. However, if you have 100 links and one is from a PR3 site, it most likely will not be listed.
Note, however, that there is a difference between listing linking sites and considering them in the ranking algorithm. Many more sites will be factored in than will be listed.
Search engine bots will index your entire site at once
I’ve heard people tell me all too often that “Googlebot has left, and he (or she!) didn’t even finish indexing my site!”
Bots will typically take multiple visits to index your entire site, particularly if it has large amounts of content. The first visit, also, isn’t likely to be a deep crawl; it will more likely be a quick “check” on the state of your site.
There are a few variables, for those whose curiosity I’ve piqued, that will affect the manner in which your site is indexed. Sites with high PageRank will tend to be indexed more quickly and more thoroughly than sites with low PageRank.
I do concede that this policy represents something of a catch-22. You can’t be indexed thoroughly until you have a high PageRank, and you may be unable to receive a high PageRank without a thorough indexing.
Also, search engine bots seem limited to a certain depth when indexing, at least at first. Root pages (example.com/page.html) will be indexed before deeper pages (e.g., example.com/sub/subsub/subsubsub/…).
Next: Myths Six, Seven, and Eight >>
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