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It used to be a common practice to design and develop "Under Construction" (UC) messages to place on your site during temporary downtime or when a website was being either developed or redesigned.
 There was a certain flair attached to fancy UC pages. Designers would use flash animation, animated gifs, and background audio. The thoughts behind UC pages were valid in that companies were focused on creating a buzz about their "coming soon" websites in order to foster curiosity among customers and also to demonstrate that they were wading in the technology wave, just not quite ready to ride.
While the thought process is valid, it is slowly becoming, like many concepts in technology, obsolete. With the rise of search engine popularity and the reliance that online businesses place on search engine rankings, webmasters who post "Construction" pages are essentially closing their doors and turning out the lights of their online business.
When search engine spiders come across a "Construction" page, they leave immediately. Even small, poorly built websites can usually hold a search engine's attention long enough to get a handful of pages spidered and listed. But the sole purpose of a "construction" page is to prevent visitors from viewing any pages, content, images, etc. within a website. This is a novel idea if you are trying to keep customers from viewing inaccurate information, old graphics, and so on. However, you will also lose search engine optimization and search engine ranking opportunities in the process.
In summary, though it may be tempting to utilize "construction" pages while you are either developing or redesigning your website, be warned that when you keep visitors from entering your site, you keep search engine spiders out as well. |
