Search results for your site
We regularly get questions concerning search results for sites both directly on www.clarku.edu as well as affiliate sites. Sometimes the question is long the lines of “how do I remove my name,” or “how can we remove this old page” from Google’s results. Other times, the question is quite the opposite. More recently we received a question from a student organization wondering why no evidence of their organization appeared when searching via the “Search Clark web site” form on www.clarku.edu. Clark’s web site search function currently relies upon Google’s search.
Removing content from Google’s search
Sometimes for reasons of obsolescence or out of personal privacy concerns, it is necessary to have content removed from Google’s index. There are actually several ways we can approach this as outlined on Google’s Webmaster Central site. If it is indeed outdated content, then the “fix” is really pretty simple. We will typically remove the page, and if appropriate redirect requests for that outdated content to another location on the site. Be aware that content removal from Google’s results is never truly instant, but once implemented, you should expect to see the content removed from search results within, say, 2 to 3 business days.
Adding your site to Clark’s Google Results
This is usually a little more complicated and something over which we have less control. Currently the search form on www.clarku.edu searches exclusively that domain. So, if the page or site in question is not hosted on www.clarku.edu, then it is “out of bounds” for our search, at least technically speaking. There are a couple of ways around this. For example, say you are a student doing research with a particular professor or academic program. If you’d like your page to show up in the Clark search, then what you need is an actual hyperlink on the www.clarku.edu site that references the site in question. Just to cite another case: while you will not find the student news site, scarlet.clarku.edu is searchable on www.clarku.edu, you will find that if you search www.clarku.edu for “The Scarlet,” that pages referencing this site do appear in the search.
Ranking your site or page within Clark’s Results
As you might suppose, this is even trickier than having the page appear at all. Google’s algorithm for controlling their search results is proprietary. There are a few ways that you can potentially affect rankings within search results. If your site is hosted on www.clarku.edu and you believe that it should appear “higher” on the results list, there are a few key things that may help: 1) Make sure that keywords of interest figure prominently in the page content; 2) Employ both “title” and heading tags and put the key words within these tags. 3) Your page will rank higher if other pages, both within Clark’s site and elsewhere, actually link to the page in question. Any time that hyperlink contains your key search words of interest, Google will take note of that in rankings.
Questions? Shoot us , and be sure to check out Wikipedia’s entry on Search Engine Optimization.
