I would like Googlebot to visit my site again, it's undergone considerable changes since December 2007 when it last visited - in fact, it's had quite a steady stream of updates and changes since then.

In google webmaster tools it says "Set crawl rate' but the option for a faster rate is greyed out! It says I dont' need a faster crawl rate.

What gives? Why hasn't googlebot been there since December? I thought the minimum was a monthly crawl.

I'm kind of concerned about this. Makes me want to forget my website and just focus on my blog on wordpress.

The "faster" option is greyed out on mine too - I don't think it becomes available unless Google thinks there is specific circumstances that warrant it.

Also, I would not believe that Googlebot hasn't visited since December - when I check your cached copy - it says April 16. Your cache isn't available all the time - it seems to depend on which datacenter is being accessed when seaching. Google has been updating for the last few weeks and results are all over the map and sites appear and disappear from the serps. I wouldn't worry until things settle down.

thanks Doug. I thought it was odd, but that's what the webmaster tools page said - Dec. 07. I was pretty put out by that! LOL

it still says I have identical title tags on several pages but I fixed that several days ago. hopefully that will update soon

I just noticed that you have the same website content on (at least) two different domains - that is a BIG problem. You need to 301 each page from one domain to the other to get rid of the duplication.

It's one site with two domain names...or at least that's what I thought it was.

To Google it is duplicate content and the root of most of your ranking problems. You can't really have one site with two domain names - unless one domain is forwarded to the other using a 301 redirect. You can't have the same site being rendered with two different domain names in your browser address bar and rank well for either of the names.

I'm totally confused - lol. I'll have to check into that later tonight. I thought that I had one set up to "forward" to the other...

My old domain, karenricedesigns.com has just a single page dedicated to real estate, not duplicate at all, telling everyone that I'm no longer designing websites and am now doing real estate, and it links to my new site. Is that bad?

The problem is with http://www.karenricesells.com/ and http://www.wallenpaupacklakeproperty.com/ - they appear the same.

The one is set up to forward to the other. They are not two different sites - it is one site.

There is no forwarding - the url does not change in the address bar - so it is two sites with the same content as far as search engines are concerned.

Doesnt' the search engine see the real address - the server ID or whatever it is?

The search engines "see" the IP but that is not what they use to determine if a website is unique. There can be thousands of domains sharing one IP and they can all rank well in search engines if they have unique content.

In this situation you have two domains sharing identical content - which is a big problem as far as ranking is concerned.

Plus, both the www version and the non www version show up with the same content, so it is possible that google is seeing 4 sites with the same content.

Google webmaster tools has an option for letting them know which one you prefer but you should also have the non www url forwarded to the www url to be sure.

How the heck can I do that with the non www version?

my direct competitor's site (which I built) has a ranking of 4 and it has multiple domains set up the same way I had mine set up.

As Bigtoe mentioned, you can set the preferred domain to "www" in the Webmaster Tools.

As for the original issue of Googlebot not regularly crawling - I would suggest plugging in the other domain(s) for the site into Webmaster Tools and see if Googlebot is crawling there.

As for your competitors faring better than you despite using the same strategy - it can come down to you splitting your PR by having various links to either domain and maybe they only having links pointing at one of the domains - so they would not be splitting their PR. Or, maybe they have just been lucky so far.

Having multiple domains - mirror sites in effect - pointing at the same site is addressed in Google's Webmaster Guidelines...
"Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content."... and is well known to cause all sorts of ranking problems.

Also keep in mind that the duplication of title and tags issue that we noticed in an earlier thread impacts greatly your PR and Rank - so there are mulitiple issues here that will take time to be reflected in the serps once cleaned up.