Home page suddenly dropped from index!!
-
A client's home page, which has always done very well, has just dropped out of Google's index overnight!
Webmaster tools does not show any problem. The page doesn't even show up if we Google the company name.The Robot.txt contains:
Default Flywheel robots file
User-agent: *
Disallow: /calendar/action:posterboard/
Disallow: /events/action~posterboard/The only unusual thing I'm aware of is some A/B testing of the page done with 'Optimizely' - it redirects visitors to a test page, but it's not a 'real' redirect in that redirect checker tools still see the page as a 200. Also, other pages that are being tested this way are not having the same problem.
Other recent activity over the last few weeks/months includes linking to the page from some of our blog posts using the page topic as anchor text.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Caro -
Woot! So glad to see it wasn't a penalty!
-
Michael,
Duplicate content wasn't the issue in the end, but your response prompted me to analyse their home page text more closely and I discovered that there was room for improvement - too much of the home page content was also present on other pages of the site. Thanks for that!
-
Everyone, this has been resolved! The problem turned out to be a code error in the canonical tag for the page. There was an extra space and slash. Ironically, the canonical tag was one of the first things we looked at, yet we all overlooked that error
Thank you all so much for your input and assistance.
-
Thank you Michael...I'll do that.
-
I've seen a client have an internal page just suddenly be de-indexed. What appears to have happened is that Google saw it as a near duplicate of another page on their site, and dropped it from the index for that reason. Then, magically, it reappeared a week later.
You may be seeing something like this here. See what Moz Pro thinks in terms of duplicate content on your site, and if the home page gets called out along with another page.
-
Thanks so much for that info. I had not heard of Kerboo...I'll definitely check that out right away. Your input has been extremely helpful Kristina.
Caro
-
I would be incredibly surprised if internal links to the homepage caused the issue. Google expects you to have a bunch of internal links to the homepage.
What you're going to need to do now is do a thorough review of all of the external links pointing to your homepage. I would do this with a tool - I recommend Kerboo, although I'm sure there are others that could do the same thing. Otherwise, you can look through all of the links yourself and look for spam indications (steps outlined in this handy Moz article).
Either way, make sure that you pull your list of links from Ahrefs or Majestic. Ideally both, and merge the lists. Moz doesn't crawl nearly as many links.
Since you haven't gotten a manual penalty warning, you're going to have to take as many of the spammy links you find down as you can and disavow the others. For speed, I'd recommend that you immediately upload a list of spammy links with Google's disavow tool, then start asking for an actual removal.
Keep in mind that you're probably going to disavow links that were helping rankings, so expect that your homepage won't come back ranking as well for nonbranded search terms as it used to. You'll probably want to start out uploading a very conservative set of URLs to the disavow tool, wait a couple of days to see if that fixes the problem, upload a bigger set, check, etc.
Good luck!
-
No luck Kristina
I'm wondering if it's an algorithmic penalty in response to back links. We've never done shady linking, but over the years the site has gathered some strange links. Or, is there some chance that about two dozen anchor text links from their blog to the home page could have done it? I deleted them. But I can't request reconsideration if the penalty isn't manual.
-
Any luck so far? Usually it only takes a few hours for Google to crawl new pages after you submit them in GSC, in my experience.
-
I see no serious crawl issues. Mostly things we're already addressing, like duplicate content caused by blog tags and categories, missing meta descriptions (mostly in our knowledge base, so not an issue) and stuff like that.
When I checked the home page alone it said zero high, medium or low priority issues.
The page only de-indexed very recently. Maybe the next crawl will catch something. Same with GSC...it looks like the last 2 days of info is not available yet.
I should mention the home page Optimizely test had been running for at least a week before the page got dropped (will get actual date from client) , plus they have had a product page running a test for weeks with no problem. But I still think your suggestion to pause the test is a good one as I don't want anything to hinder the process of fixing this.
Update: Optimizely has been paused, code removed, home page submitted in GSC.
-
Okay, I ran some tests, and can't see anything that could've gone wrong. That does make it seem like a penalty, but given that this coincided with setting up Optimizely, let's go down that path first.
While your team is taking down the test - have you checked Moz to see if its crawler sees anything that could be causing an issue? I set up my Moz crawler to look into it, but it'll take a few days.
-
Thanks Kristina,
We have not tried pausing the test, but I can request they do that. It may be a good idea to do it regardless of whether it's causing the problem or not, while we get this issue sorted out.
Fetch as Google gave this result:HTTP/1.1 200 OK - so looks ok. I understand this also submits your page to Google as an actual indexing request?
site:https://website.com shows all our pages except the home page.
So, it looks like it's decided not to rank it for some reason.
I deleted some links from the blog to the home page - they had a keyword phrase as the anchor text. There were about 20 links that had accumulated over a few months. Not sure if that's the issue.
Still no manual penalty notice from Google.
-
Hm, I've done a lot with Optimizely in the past, and it's never caused an SEO problem, but it's completely possible something went wrong. Since that's your first inkling, have you tried pausing that test and removing the Optimizely code from the homepage? Then you can determine whether or not it's an Optimizely problem.
Another thing you can do is use the Fetch as Googlebot feature in GSC. Does GSC say it can fetch the page properly?
If it says it can, try searching for "site:www.yourcompanysite.com". This will show if Google's got your URL in its index. If nothing comes up, it's not there; if it comes up, Google's decided not to rank it for some reason.
After those steps, get back to us so we can figure out where to go from there!
Good luck,
Kristina
-
Jordan, not on the original version of the home page, but there is on the B test version.
The way I understand it the B version is a javascript page that is noindexed. Their redirect system seems to leave the original page looking like there is no redirect. Are you suggesting we use a 302 instead? -
Also, Google recommends you 302 those url's instead of returning a 200 http code. You can read more about their best practices about a/b testing.
-
Is there a 'meta no index no follow tag' implemented by chance?
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
-
Insane traffic loss and indexed pages after June Core Update, what can i do to bring it back?
Hello Everybody! After June Core Update was released, we saw an insane drop on traffic/revenue and indexed pages on GSC (Image attached below) The biggest problem here was: Our pages that were out of the index were shown as "Blocked by robots.txt", and when we run the "fetch as Google" tool, it says "Crawl Anomaly". Even though, our robots.txt it's completely clean (Without any disallow's or noindex rules), so I strongly believe that the reason that this pattern of error is showing, is because of the June Core Update. I've come up with some solutions, but none of them seems to work: 1- Add hreflang on the domain: We have other sites in other countries, and ours seems like it's the only one without this tag. The June update was primarily made to minimize two SERP results per domain (or more if google thinks it's relevant). Maybe other sites have "taken our spot" on the SERPS, our domain is considerably newer in comparison to the other countries. 2- Mannualy index all the important pages that were lost The idea was to renew the content on the page (title, meta description, paragraphs and so on) and use the manual GSC index tool. But none of that seems to work as well, all it says is "Crawl Anomaly". 3- Create a new domain If nothing works, this should. We would be looking for a new domain name and treat it as a whole new site. (But frankly, it should be some other way out, this is for an EXTREME case and if nobody could help us. ) I'm open for ideas, and as the days have gone by, our organic revenue and traffic doesn't seem like it's coming up again. I'm Desperate for a solution Any Ideas gCi46YE
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | muriloacct0 -
Site move-Redirecting and Indexing dynamic pages
I have an interesting problem I would like to pick someone else’s brain. Our business has over 80 different products, each with a dedicated page (specs, gallery, copy etc.) on the main website. Main site itself, is used for presentation purpose only and doesn’t offer a direct path to purchase. A few years ago, to serve a specific customer segment, we have created a site where customers can perform a quick purchase via one of our major strategic partners. Now we are looking to migrate this old legacy service, site and all its pages under the new umbrella (main domain/CMS). Problem #1 Redirects/ relevancy/ SEO equity Ideally, we could simply perform 1:1 - 301 redirect from old legacy product pages to the relevant new site products pages. The problem is that Call to action (buy), some images and in some cases, parts of the copy must be changed to some degree to accommodate this segment. The second problem is in our dev and creative team. There are not enough resources to dedicate for the creation of the new pages so we can perform 1:1 301 redirects. So, the potential decision is to redirect a visitor to the dynamic page URL where parent product page will be used to apply personalization rules and a new page with dynamic content (buy button, different gallery etc.) is displayed to the user (see attached diagram). If we redirect directly to parent URL and then apply personalization rules, URL will stay the same and this is what we are trying to avoid (we must mention in the URL that user is on purchase path, otherwise this redirect and page where the user lands, can be seen as deceptive). Also Dynamic pages will have static URLs and unique page/title tag and meta description. Problem #2 : Indexation/Canonicalization The dynamic page is canonicalized to the parent page and does have nearly identical content/look and feel, but both serve a different purpose and we want both indexed in search. Hope my explanation is clear and someone can chip in. Any input is greatly appreciated! vCm2Dt.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bgvsiteadmin1 -
Duplicate Page getting indexed and not the main page!
Main Page: www.domain.com/service
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ishrat-Khan
Duplicate Page: www.domain.com/products-handler.php/?cat=service 1. My page was getting indexed properly in 2015 as: www.domain.com/service
2. Redesigning done in Aug 2016, a new URL pattern surfaced for my pages with parameter "products-handler"
3. One of my product landing pages had got 301-permanent redirected on the "products-handler" page
MAIN PAGE: www.domain.com/service GETTING REDIRECTED TO: www.domain.com/products-handler.php/?cat=service
4. This redirection was appearing until Nov 2016.
5. I took over the website in 2017, the main page was getting indexed and deindexed on and off.
6. This June it suddenly started showing an index of this page "domain.com/products-handler.php/?cat=service"
7. These "products-handler.php" pages were creating sitewide internal duplicacy, hence I blocked them in robots.
8. Then my page (Main Page: www.domain.com/service) got totally off the Google index Q1) What could be the possible reasons for the creation of these pages?
Q2) How can 301 get placed from main to duplicate URL?
Q3) When I have submitted my main URL multiple times in Search Console, why it doesn't get indexed?
Q4) How can I make Google understand that these URLs are not my preferred URLs?
Q5) How can I permanently remove these (products-handler.php) URLs? All the suggestions and discussions are welcome! Thanks in advance! 🙂0 -
Sitemap Indexed Pages, Google Glitch or Problem With Site?
Hello, I have a quick question about our Sitemap Web Pages Indexed status in Google Search Console. Because of the drastic drop I can't tell if this is a glitch or a serious issue. When you look at the attached image you can see that under Sitemaps Web Pages Indexed has dropped suddenly on 3/12/17 from 6029 to 540. Our Index status shows 7K+ indexed. Other than product updates/additions and homepage layout updates there have been no significant changes to this website. If it helps we are operating on the Volusion platform. Thanks for your help! -Ryan rou1zMs
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rrhansen0 -
Redirected Old Pages Still Indexed
Hello, we migrated a domain onto a new Wordpress site over a year ago. We redirected (with plugin: simple 301 redirects) all the old urls (.asp) to the corresponding new wordpress urls (non-.asp). The old pages are still indexed by Google, even though when you click on them you are redirected to the new page. Can someone tell me reasons they would still be indexed? Do you think it is hurting my rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | phogan0 -
How can I optimize pages in an index stack
I have created an index stack. My home page is http://www.southernwhitewater.com My home page (if your look at it through moz bat for chrome bar} incorporates all the pages in the index. Is this Bad? I would prefer to index each page separately. As per my site index in the footer What is the best way to optimize all these pages individually and still have the customers arrive at the top and links directed to the home page ( which is actually the 1st page). I feel I am going to need a rel=coniacal might be needed somewhere. Any help would be great!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VelocityWebsites0 -
What are the SEO issues we should consider on a plug in that creates a custom home page based on zip code or GPS location.
We are developing a plug in the changes the home page relative to a users location or zip code. We believe this will provide users with a more personalized experience. We are concerned about how this might affect SEO. We are also wondering if we should partner with one of the SEO ply in developers. We were thinking about Yoast. Is there another partner that might be better? I would appreciate any feedback people can give.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ron_McCabe0 -
Why is a page with a noindex code being indexed?
I was looking through the pages indexed by Google (with site:www.mywebsite.com) and one of the results was a page with "noindex, follow" in the code that seems to be a page generated by blog searches. Any ideas why it seems to be indexed or how to de-index it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0