Why is Google not indexing my site?
-
I'm a bit confused as to why my site just isn't indexing on Google. Even if I type in my brand name, my social channels rank and there's no evidence of my website. I've followed all of the advice I've read and gone into webmaster tools and got the Wordpress yoast plug-in but nothing seems to be making a difference!One thing I've noticed, in Google Webmaster Tools it says "Couldn’t communicate with the DNS server." in site errors. I've called GoDaddy and they said that everything is fine. A bit frustrating. Trying to work out what my next steps should be but feeling a bit lost to be honest! Any help GREATLY appreciated!
-
These two URL's
http://simplycrowngreenbowls.wordpress.com/
http://simplycrowngreenbowls.com/
Should 301 Redirect to
-
Got ya. Sorry for being slow, but what should I make sure is pointed there?
-
Your best bet would be to login to the WP account and have it redirect to your new site. This would be the quickest way to let Google know that the WP site is the old site, plus if you had any links to it the juice would flow to the new one instead of going away.
-
Preferred Landing Page.
-
Ah I see, thank you. I've deleted the wordpress.com site, I started it before the proper site and don't need it so hopefully simplycrowngreenbowls.co.uk will start to replace that?
-
Apparently Google thinks the http://simplycrowngreenbowls.wordpress.com/ site is more relevant. (I see that this is also your site.) Google cached the .wordpress site first, so it might just be holding on to that because there is no overwhelming reason not to.
You have a line in the content of that .wordpress page instructing people to go to simplycrowngreenbowls.co.uk, but you do not actually 301 redirect the page. As Shawn said, you should do that.
If you do a Bing or Yahoo search your site simplycrowngreenbowls.co.uk comes up first, and as I mentioned I can find your site with the site: operator in Google, so I do not think it is a case of your preferred site not being findable. (I also took a look with Screaming Frog and didn't see any glaring errors.)
-
How come I don't see my site if i type in "simply crown green bowls"?
-
I can see your site indexed in Google. When I do site:simplycrowngreenbowls.co.uk in a Google search bar, I see nine pages from your site come up.
-
Thanks Shawn. What do you mean by get everything to point to your PLP?
-
That shouldn't be an issue as long as you have the correct DNS in the settings.
Something I noticed, is this you as well? http://simplycrowngreenbowls.wordpress.com/
If it is, you might want to do a 301 redirect from that to your domain.
Are you parking the US version of the domain? I found http://simplycrowngreenbowls.com/ and it shows GoDaddy.com saying that the domain is parked for free courtesy of GoDaddy.
My guess, and I am by no imagination a server wizard, there is a disconnect with what you want to rank and what Google is finding. I would talk with 1and1 or GoDaddy to see if they can help you get everything to point to your PLP and go from there.
I am all over the place on this reply, but hopefully it helps get you in the right direction.
-
By the way, GoDaddy is the host and 1and1 is registrar. Could that be causing a problem? I spoke to them both today and both said they couldn't see any problems.
-
Hi Shawn,
I don't mind posting the URL, it's http://simplycrowngreenbowls.co.uk
It would be fantastic to know if you see any technical issues.
-
Without knowing the URL it's hard to troubleshoot if there are technical issues with the page/site.
If you don't want to post personal or business stuff here no worries.
Things to try:
-
Screaming Frog - have it crawl your URL to find any issues
-
Do a Google site search to see if they have any pages indexed
-
Use semRush for those URL's and see if any keywords rank
-
Is GoDaddy your host or just the registrar? If they are not your host, contact them. Make sure to provide the exact error from GWT to help troubleshoot
-
Check robots.txt to ensure that isn't blocking.
Those are the few things top of head I would try
-
-
OK, thanks.
Any idea where the problem lies then? The site is about two months old and competing for moderately low competition key words and is just not ranking, even if I type in the brand name!
-
That is correct, if there was an issue it would say partial or something else and then you could click into it to see what Google sees.
-
Hi Shawn,
Thanks for the response. It says completed with a green tick so I presume that's fine?
-
Try to fetch your site as Google in GWT to see what it says. If there are DNS errors, it should give you some indication of where the error is.
Google Support article to do some more research - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2598813
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
-
On our site by mistake some wrong links were entered and google crawled them. We have fixed those links. But they still show up in Not Found Errors. Should we just mark them as fixed? Or what is the best way to deal with them?
Some parameter was not sent. So the link was read as : null/city, null/country instead cityname/city
Technical SEO | | Lybrate06060 -
How do you link your adaptive mobile site to Google Analytics?
With Google now saying they're putting a lot more emphasis on mobile sites, we recently got notifications from Google Webmaster Tools saying that some of our pages are not built for mobile. Some of these pages, however have an adaptive page that when you visit from a mobile phone (m.mysite.com), you're taken to instead of the desktop version. My question is, how do I let Google know that I have an adaptive site and not get penalized for poor mobile usability? I already have Google Analytics on the mobile site, I just need to somehow let Webmaster tools / Google's web crawlers know that they should be looking to my mobile site for usability, not the desktop site. Any advice is appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Ditigal_Taylor0 -
Meta keywords shown in Google SERPS as site description
I'm seeing Google display meta-keywords in the SERP description for some sites (at least a half dozen that I've checked). I BELIEVE IT IS AN AJAX ISSUE BECAUSE: The sites all use AJAX to display content. So the meta-keywords are in the header, and the javascript that displays the content. Non-AJAX parts of the site display properly in Google SERPS The meta-keywords don't visibly appear anywhere on the page. When I turn off images and Javascript in Chrome I don't see any hidden keyword text. I BELIEVE IT IS A GOOGLE-SPECIFIC ISSUE BECAUSE: Each site displays properly in Bing and Yahoo SERPS - the meta-description is the description. However, (as expected) I see the same strange meta-keyword activity in Aol search In Screaming Frog's SERP preview I see the meta-description as the description. Google has been ignoring met-keywords for years. Any idea why it's appearing in the SERPS for these AJAX powered sites? I found one other person who saw that Google may be reading and displaying their content in AJAX even though that content is meant to appear on a different "page". No one on that Google Forum seemed to understand the person's problem. The only reason I get it is because now I'm seeing it with my own eyes. I know the Moz community can do better, so i'm posting about it here.
Technical SEO | | AlexCobb0 -
Fake Links indexing in google
Hello everyone, I have an interesting situation occurring here, and hoping maybe someone here has seen something of this nature or be able to offer some sort of advice. So, we recently installed a wordpress to a subdomain for our business and have been blogging through it. We added the google webmaster tools meta tag and I've noticed an increase in 404 links. I brought this up to or server admin, and he verified that there were a lot of ip's pinging our server looking for these links that don't exist. We've combed through our server files and nothing seems to be compromised. Today, we noticed that when you do site:ourdomain.com into google the subdomain with wordpress shows hundreds of these fake links, that when you visit them, return a 404 page. Just curious if anyone has seen anything like this, what it may be, how we can stop it, could it negatively impact us in anyway? Should we even worry about it? Here's the link to the google results. https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Amshowells.com&oq=site%3A&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j69i58.1905j0j1&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8 (odd links show up on pages 2-3+)
Technical SEO | | mshowells0 -
Missing files in Google and Bing Index
We uploaded our sitemap a while back and we are no longer see around 8 out of 33 pages. We try submitting the sitemap again about 1-2 weeks ago and there but no additional pages are seen when I do site: option in both search engines. I reviewed the sitemap and it includes all the pages. I am not seeing any errors in the seo moz for these pages. Any ideas what I should try?
Technical SEO | | EZSchoolApps0 -
How to know which pages are indexed by Google?
So apparently we have some sites that are just duplicates of our original main site but aiming at different markets/cities. They have completely different urls but are the same content as our main site with different market/city changed. How do I know for sure which ones are indexed. I enter the url into Google and its not there. Even if I put in " around " it. Is there another way to query google for my site? Is there a website that will tell you which ones are indexed? This is probably a dumb question.
Technical SEO | | greenhornet770 -
Which factors are effect on Google index?
Mywebsite have 455 URL submitedbut only 77 URLs are indexed. How can i improve more indexed URL?
Technical SEO | | magician0 -
Google search result going to a page that I did not put on my site
Hi, I am seeing a very strange result in google for my site. When doing a search for the term "london reflexology" my site comes up 18th in the results. But when I click the link or check the URL it shows up as: http://www.reflexologyonline.co.uk/reflexologyonline.php?Action=Webring This is not right at all. It looks like some sort of cloaking but I am not sure. I am new to SEO and I do not know why goole is showing this URL that does not exist on my site and of witch the content is totally wrong. Can anyone please help with this? See the 2 linked images for more details. It seems to me the site might be hacked or something to that effect. Please help.... jyJdP.png 71Mf4.png
Technical SEO | | RupDog0