Sometimes we evaluate sites which are not indexed in some search engines or are ranking very poorly.

This MIGHT be because they?ve been banned for dastardly  spamming techniques like heavy interlinking between domains or it might be because the site is brand new - alternatively it might be due to technical issues which we can advise on.

A big problem is sites that are geographically targeted but hosted in the wrong country or with the wrong domain suffix. For example if a site is hosted in Germany or Sweden and has a .com suffix, but aimed at the UK audience, it is unlikely to rank in the UK.

You can find out quickly what country a site is hosted in by using:

http://news.netcraft.com/

Another good reason why sites aren?t indexed is if there are duplicate sites around which all appear to be serving the same content. There are several ways this might have come about - sometimes people register several domains and set up server aliases, sometimes one domain forwards to another using frames, sometimes the redirect is a 301 permanent redirect and sometimes it?s a 302 temporary redirect. Ideally we want a 301 permanent redirect.

Server aliases appear to search engines like the worst form of duplicate content - in this instance a server header check returns and HTTP code of 200 (OK) and a search engine will index one domain but ignore all the others - or at best, index the homepage.

The quickest way of finding out what?s going on - in my opinion - is to use a tool like:

http://web-sniffer.net/

It gives you a server header check - you?re looking for a HTTP status code of 200?or 301? a 302 suggests a problem

It also gives you the HTML for the URL ? this is a good way of instantly diagnosing a site that uses Frame forwarding.

It tells you what the server is running e.g. IIS or Apache and also lets you see what scripting is enabled like ASP or PHP?