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Host/ISP-specific Issues

Here are some quick answers to the most commonly asked host-specific questions.

Note that hosting companies are continuously changing the details of their service. If you discover something here that is out-of-date please contact us.

TOP QUESTIONS
How do I index my AOL site?
How you index this site depends on how you coded up the links on your site.

If you used purely relative links like "page1.html" or "..\dir2\page2.html" (i.e. no leading "http://" nor a leading "/"), then you can simply change your web address to the actual location of your pages. If the address of your site is:

			http://hometown.aol.com/mysite/index.html
		
change your account's address to:
			http://members.hometown.aol.com/_ht_a/mysite/index.html
		
and then respider (reindex) your site.

If any of the links to other pages in your site start with either "http://" or "/" then you will need to add the additional starting points:

			http://hometown.aol.com/_ht_a/mysite/index.html
			http://members.hometown.aol.com/mysite/index.html
		
This will allow the spider to follow links through the AOL advertising frameset to the actual content of your site.
How do I index my "Homestead" site?
Homestead sites are unusual in that your pages are automatically duplicated by homestead so that a special version of your page can be served to whichever brand of browser your visitor is using. These additional pages always end with "~ns3.html" and "~ns4.html". You can use the following exclusion to prevent them from being indexed:
			*~ns?.html
		
For information on exclusions read How to Exclude Pages from Search.

Note: Homestead changed their service so that only pages you create with their SiteBuilder tool can be indexed. All other pages will use "dynamic web addresses" which will prevent links to those pages from being used after your site is indexed. If you click on one of those links you get an error message: "this page has expired".

This is not a search engine problem, but a hosting problem. If you cannot use their SiteBuilder 100% of the time and you want to have a search feature on your site, you will need to use a different hosting company.

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