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
-
Bing search results - Site links
My site links in Bing search results are pulling through the footer text instead of the meta description (see image). Is there any way of controlling this? 2L2VusT
Technical SEO | | RWesley0 -
Google indexing staging / development site that is redirected...
Hi Moz Fans! - Please help. We had a acme.stagingdomain.com while a site was in development, when it went live it redirected (302) to acmeprofessionalservices.com (real names redacted!!) no known external links to staging site although staging site url has been emailed from Google Apps(!!!) now found that staging site is in the index even though it redirects to the proper public site. and some (but not all) of the pages are in the index too. They all redirect to the proper public site when visited. It is convenient to have a redirect from the staging site to the new one for the team, Chrome etc. remember frequently visited sites. Be a shame to lose that. Yes, these pages can be removed using webmaster tools.
Technical SEO | | mozroadjan
But how did they get in the index to start with? And if we're building a new site, and a customer has an existing site is there a danger of duplicate content etc. penalties caused by the staging site? We had a similar incident recently when a PDF that was not linked anywhere on the site appeared in the index. The link had been emailed through Google Apps, and visited in Chrome, but that was it. So 3 questions. Why is the staging site still in the index despite the redirects? How did they get in the index in the first place? Will the new staging site affect the rank of the existing site, eg. duplicate content penalties?0 -
Has google applied some update on 12 september ??
I have a website www.Hindi-comedy.com , on 12 of Sep the traffic gradually fell from 320 clicks to 50 clicks in a day and my website ranking which was on 1st of 2nd page is now no where, has google applied some update on 12th of September, I use to rank well on keyword "Hindi comedy" but now its nowhere. Regards Gaurav
Technical SEO | | gaurav.agarwal0 -
No indexing url including query string with Robots txt
Dear all, how can I block url/pages with query strings like page.html?dir=asc&order=name with robots txt? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | HMK-NL0 -
Having to type Google CAPTCHA all the time
Hi guys, Our office has about 15 computers all on the same IP address and about 10 actively search on Google. Recently we have been asked to type in CAPTCHA almost every single time searching on Google and would like to know if you have any suggestions of resolving this. We do use Firefox Rank Checker to check ranking once per week (around 400 keywords) but we use Hide My Ass to hide the IP. No malware or virus detected on computers in the network. Many thanks for your help in advance David
Technical SEO | | sssrpm0 -
Does google "see through" php/asp redirects?
A lot of the time I see companies employing a technique like this: <a target="_blank" href="/external/wcpages/referral.aspx?URL=http%253a%252f%252fwww.xxxx.ca&ReferralType=W&ProfileID=22&ListingID=96&CategoryID=219">xxxxxa> Or similarly with php. In an attempt to log all the clicks that exit their site from certain locations. When google bot comes along and crawls this page, does it still understand that this page links to www.xxxx.ca?
Technical SEO | | adriandg0 -
How long does it take for customized Google Site Search to show results from pdf files?
The site in question is http://www.ejmh.eu I am pretty unsatisfied with the results I am getting from the Site Search provided by Google. We have over 160 pdf files in this subfolder: http://www.ejmh.eu/mellekletek The files are the digital versions of articles. When I search for content in those pdf files, Google does not show results. It does show results from older pages, dating back 1-2 years but it is certainly not showing anything from pdf files that I have just put up 3 weeks ago. My questions: If I place a Google Search on a site, does it not automatically display results from ALL the content in the root domain? Is there any correlation between how the Site Search is indexing the files and how Google is indexing the urls in general? Should I just wait and see whether site search performance improves or should I switch to another Search software like Zoom Search? It is vital to have a proper, high-quality search functioning on that site in the very near future. What are your experiences? Any tips are greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Lauroca0