Webhelp no longer indexed by Google?

Question

Hi,We're having problems with Google indexing our webhelp pages. For the past month the number of indexed pages has dropped to very few pages.Looks like the problem is in webhelp frames. We've been told that when a non-index page is loaded, it it then forcibly reloaded within the frame. And this behavior is not welcome by Google any longer...We're not using RoboHelp, but we're considering it as our new help authoring solution. The question is: will switching to RoboHelp solve the Google indexing problem or not?Or is it this problem common for the webhelp format in general?Thanks!

Willam van Weelden · Answer

Hi,

I don’t think that WebHelp refreshes when a search spider tries to access it, but I’m not sure. I don’t know which HAT you’re using no, but it is a global problem of traditional help that it depends on lots of scripts to create an index, glossary, etc.

They way to work around this would be to provide an XML sitemap to allow Google to know which pages to index. I have a script available on my site <http://wvanweelden.eu/product/sitemap-generator> for RoboHelp, (please note: this is a commercial script) but I don’t know about other HAT’s. I’ve used the sitemap on several project and I haven’t run into any problems with Google indexing.

Greet,

Willam

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