I was googling a question I had and I realized I should have seen my stackexchange question somewhere in the results - but I didn't. I just assumed it was because it was down the list beyond the top ones I saw. But I was curious so I tuned the google search until it really should have appeared - at least so I thought. Is it a issue with how I'm asking the question or are we 'hidden' from the search engines while still in private beta?
3 Answers
Sites are in private beta for their first first week or two before they are available to the general public (and Google Search). Sites in private beta require login to view any of the information, and only those who committed to the proposal, or were invited by committers, can even log in. So Google doesn't have any visibility into Genealogy.SE yet.
I think Google is blocked while we're in private beta. A search for pages on this site doesn't turn up any questions, only public facing pages.
Yes, it is because we are private beta, as efgen said.
But I wanted to add that once we are in public beta, we will be getting indexed and quite quickly, I might add.
As an example, as I write this, I look up "nokia lumia 710 connection issue" on Google and a question asked just 4 hours ago on the Windows Phone beta shows up.
Over at Stack Overflow, Google indexes new questions almost instantly. If you ask a question there, you can find it in Google a minute later. I'm not sure if the other stack exchange sites index that rapidly.
UPDATE!! We are now in beta and getting indexed.
I just checked and a post from 2 hours ago was not indexed.
But a post from 9 hours ago was! See: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Finding+German+Records+(Early+1900's+and+earlier)%22