No descripton on Google/Yahoo/Bing, updated robots.txt - what is the turnaround time or next step for visible results?
-
Hello,
New to the MOZ community and thrilled to be learning alongside all of you! One of our clients' sites is currently showing a 'blocked' meta description due to an old robots.txt file (eg: A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt)
We have updated the site's robots.txt to allow all bots. The meta tag has also been updated in WordPress (via the SEO Yoast plugin)
See image here of Google listing and site URL: http://imgur.com/46wajJw
I have also ensured that the most recent robots.txt has been submitted via Google Webmaster Tools.
When can we expect these results to update? Is there a step I may have overlooked?
Thank you,
Adam -
Great, the good news is following submission of a sitemap via Webmaster Tools, things appear to be remedied on Google! It does seem, however, that the issue still persists on Bing/Yahoo.
Some of the 404's are links from an old site that weren't carried over following my redesign; so that will be handled shortly as well.
I've submitted the sitemap via Bing Webmaster Tools, as such I presume it's a similar matter of simply 'waiting on Bing'?
Many thanks for your valuable insight!
-
Hi There
It seems like there are some other issues tangled up in this.
- First off it looks like some non-www URLs indexed in Google are 301 redirecting to www but then 404'ing. It's good they redirect to www, but they should end up on active pages.
- The NON-www homepage is the one showing the robots.txt message. This should hopefully resolve in a week or two when Google re-crawled the NON-www URL, sees the 301 - the actual solution is getting the non-www URL out of the index, and having them rank the www homepage instead. The www homepage description shows up just fine.
- You may want to register the non-www version of the domain in webmaster tools, and make sure to clean up any errors that pop up there as well.
-
I just got this figured out, let's try dropping this into Google!
-
The 404 error could be around a common error experienced with Yoast sitemaps: http://kb.yoast.com/article/77-my-sitemap-index-is-giving-a-404-error-what-should-i-do
1st step is to try and reset the permalink structure, it could resolve the 404 error you're seeing. You definitely want to resolve your sitemap 404 error to submit a crawlable sitemap to Google.
-
Thanks! It would seem that the Sitemap URL http://www.altaspartners.com/sitemap_index.xml brings up a 404 page, so I'm a bit confused with that step - but otherwise it appears to be very clear!
-
In WordPress, go to the Yoast plugin and locate the sitemap URL / settings. Plug the sitemap URL into your browser and make sure that it renders properly.
Once you have that exact URL, drop it into Google Webmaster Tools and let it process. Google will let you know if they found any errors that need correcting. Once submitted, you just need to wait for Google to update its index and reflect your site's meta description.
Yoast has a great blog that goes in depth about its sitemap features: https://yoast.com/xml-sitemap-in-the-wordpress-seo-plugin/
-
Sounds great Ray, how would I go about checking these URLs for the Yoast siteap?
-
Yoast sets up a pretty efficient sitemap. Make sure the sitemap URL settings are correct, load it up in the browser to confirm, and submit your sitemap through GWT - that will help get a new crawl of the site and hopefully an update to their index so your meta descriptions begins to show in the SERPs.
-
Hi Ray,
With fetch as Googlebot, I see a redirection for the non-www, and a correct fetch for the www.Using SEO Yoast, it would seem the sitemap link leads to a 404?
-
Ha, that's exactly what I did.
I'm not showing any restrictions in your robots.txt file and the meta tag is assigned appropriately.
Have you tried to fetch the site with the Webmaster Tools 'fetch as googlebot' tool? If there is an issue, it should be apparent there. Doing this may also help get your page re-crawled more quickly and the index updated.
If everything is as it should be and you're only waiting on a re-index, that usually takes no longer than two weeks (for very infrequently indexed websites). Fetching with the Google bot may speed things up and getting an external link on a higher trafficked page could help as well.
Have you tried resubmitting a sitemap through GWT as well? That could be another trick to getting the page re-crawled more quickly.
-
Hello Ray,
Specifically, the firm name, which is spelled a-l-t-a-s p-a-r-t-n-e-r-s (it is easy to confuse with "Atlas Partners" which is another company altogether
-
What was the exact search term you used to bring up those SERPs?
When i search 'atlastpartners' and 'atlastpartners.com' it brings up your site with a meta description.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Results Title vs My Page Title
I'm having some trouble with my titles of a new site, it has been online for around two months now and i'm getting weird titles from most indexed pages. Since my site is focused on finding courses, the course title format is the following: URL: https://www.maseducacion.com/estudios/programacion-curricular--tecnigrap-2982
Technical SEO | | JoaoCJ
My Title: Course - Institute | Mybrand
Google Search Title: Course - Institute | Mybrand - Educativa Half of my results have that word at the end, don't know where it comes from, that word is only included in two links. Any idea on how to fix it?0 -
Why is robots.txt blocking URL's in sitemap?
Hi Folks, Any ideas why Google Webmaster Tools is indicating that my robots.txt is blocking URL's linked in my sitemap.xml, when in fact it isn't? I have checked the current robots.txt declarations and they are fine and I've also tested it in the 'robots.txt Tester' tool, which indicates for the URL's it's suggesting are blocked in the sitemap, in fact work fine. Is this a temporary issue that will be resolved over a few days or should I be concerned. I have recently removed the declaration from the robots.txt that would have been blocking them and then uploaded a new updated sitemap.xml. I'm assuming this issue is due to some sort of crossover. Thanks Gaz
Technical SEO | | PurpleGriffon0 -
Robots.txt on refinements
In dealing with Panda do you think it is a good idea to put all refinements for category pages in the robots.txt file? We already have a lot as noindex, follow but I am wondering if it would be better to address from a crawl perspective as the pages are probably thin duplicate content to Google.
Technical SEO | | Gordian0 -
Robots.txt and joomla
Hello, I use joomla for my website and automatically all those files are blocked is that good or bad, so I remove anything and if so why ? User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | seoanalytics
Disallow: /administrator/
Disallow: /cache/
Disallow: /components/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /installation/
Disallow: /language/
Disallow: /libraries/
Disallow: /media/
Disallow: /modules/
Disallow: /plugins/
Disallow: /templates/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /xmlrpc/ I also added to my robots.txt files my email address ( is that useful, I am afraid google passes PR to the email address )
and a javascript: void (0) because I have tabs on my webpage ( is that useful )
as well as a .pdf ( is it also useful ) any comments ? does anything need to be changed or is it ok ? Thank you,0 -
Received Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links , but no negative impact on ranking and traffic, What should i do next?
Hello, On May 19 , 2012 Google webmaster sent notification "Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to " both sites haven't lost any ranking or traffic as yet. I am worried, Should i panic,what should i be doing , will it be going down anytime soon? how to naturally build links?
Technical SEO | | conversiontactics0 -
Google showing former meta tags in search results inspite of new tags being crawled by it
I had changed the meta tags for a site www.aztexsodablast.com.au about a month back and Google has also crawled those new tags but in search results when I search for the term 'Aztex Sodablast' it is continuing to show the old tags while on the site, the new tags are being displayed. What may be the issue and how could I correct the problem?
Technical SEO | | pulseseo0 -
New page titles not updating in Google results even though recrawlled
I have updated the page title of a website - it's a top product page and very high authority (64 PA on a 63 DA). The page has been recrawlled and the cache updated - but the page tiltle in the Google snippet is still the same. Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | OddDog0 -
How to block/notify google that your domain has been added to sites with very low trustworthiness?
Hey Guys, I am writing to SEOmoz community because a problem occurred which I do not know how to solve: My domain (xyz.com) occured on very strange sites with very low trustworthiness (even blocked by google). Checking the site, I found out that all of the pictures were ALT=xyz.com. Could this hurt my position of my site on google rankings? How to prevent such actions, what should I do? Thanks for you help in advance!
Technical SEO | | Kajmany0