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
-
One last update
Both sitemaps now only show 1320 indexed pages each or 2640 total. So the non secure urls in the xml sitemap did fall off a few days after submitting them.
The site is still fully indexed in google but overall impression share has fallen according to GSC. GA shows slight increases in overall organic traffic.
-
Just wanted to pass on an update.
The XML sitemap file with all HTTP urls is showing that 95% of the urls are indexed under Sitemaps Web Pages Indexed.
Not sure if we should have two identical Sitemaps submitted with the only difference being https vs http. Any reason for me not to have both submitted.
-
Hey Oleg,
Thanks for responding.
When I checked Google everything is still there, or at least we have 8K+ urls still in googles index. Traffic from organic is still good but impressions have declined a bit, nothing major.
I did call Volusion (our cart host) to ask when they switched from http to https links in the sitemap.asp file and they, A: couldn't give me that information, or B: Didn't quite understand my question. However they did say that they are aware of some platform technical issues regarding canonical tags and an http to https redirect issue which they are working on but have no date of completion, nor would they tell me when these issues came about. They said these errors have nothing to do with what I'm seeing in GSC but I have a hunch it does.
What I'm going to do is submit a second sitemap in XML which has all http links to see if that one shows any differently in GSC.
-
If the website is still indexed in google (search site:domain.com to see how many pages are indexed), then you might have a canonical URL/sitemap mismatch. e.g. your sitemap has urls site.com/Page-A/ but the canonical url is site.com/page-a/.. Google would still index your site but the # of urls indexed from the sitemap would drop. Another example is your sitemap urls are http but the website is actually https.
Thats the only thing that I can think of (aside from GSC bug) that would cause a drop.
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
-
My url disappeared from Google but Search Console shows indexed. This url has been indexed for more than a year. Please help!
Super weird problem that I can't solve for last 5 hours. One of my urls: https://www.dcacar.com/lax-car-service.html Has been indexed for more than a year and also has an AMP version, few hours ago I realized that it had disappeared from serps. We were ranking on page 1 for several key terms. When I perform a search "site:dcacar.com " the url is no where to be found on all 5 pages. But when I check my Google Console it shows as indexed I requested to index again but nothing changed. All other 50 or so urls are not effected at all, this is the only url that has gone missing can someone solve this mystery for me please. Thanks a lot in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Davit19850 -
Is this a good sitemap hierarchy for a big eCommerce site (50k+ pages).
Hi guys, hope you're all good. I am currently in the process of designing a new sitemap hierarchy to ensure that every page on the site gets indexed and is accessible via Google. It's important that our sitemap file is well structured, divided and organised into relevant sub-categories to improve indexing. I just wanted to make sure that it's all good before forwarding onto the development team for them to consider. At the moment the site has everything thrown into /sitemap.xml/ and it exceeds the 50k limit. Here is what I have came up with: A primary sitemap.xml referencing other sitemap files, each of the following areas will have their own sitemap of which is referenced by /sitemap.xml/. As an example, sitemap.xml will contain 6 links, all of which link to other sitemaps. Product pages; Blog posts; Categories and sub categories; Forum posts, pages etc; TV specific pages (we have a TV show); Other pages. Is this format correct? Once it has been implemented I can then go ahead and submit all 6 separate sitemaps to webmaster tools + add a sitemap link to the footer of the site. All comments are greatly appreciated - if you know of a site which has a good sitemap architecture, please send the link my way! Brett
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brett-S0 -
Drop in Indexed pages
Hope everyone is having an Awesome December! I first noticed a drop in my index in the beginnings of November. My site drop in indexed pages from 1400 to 600 in the past 3-4 weeks. I don't know the cause of it, and would like the community to help me figure out why my indexing has dropped. Thank you for taking time out of your schedule to read this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BSC0 -
Google cache is showing my UK homepage site instead of the US homepage and ranking the UK site in US
Hi There, When I check the cache of the US website (www.us.allsaints.com) Google returns the UK website. This is also reflected in the US Google Search Results when the UK site ranks for our brand name instead of the US site. The homepage has hreflang tags only on the homepage and the domains have been pointed correctly to the right territories via Google Webmaster Console.This has happened before in 26th July 2015 and was wondering if any had any idea why this is happening or if any one has experienced the same issueFDGjldR
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adzhass0 -
Why is page still indexing?
Hi all, I have a few pages that - despite having a robots meta tag and no follow, no index, they are showing up in Google SERPs. In troubleshooting this with my team, it was brought up that another page could be linking to these pages and causing this. Is that plausible? How could I confirm that? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SSFCU
Sarah0 -
Indexing Dynamic Pages
http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/search/Wiper+Blade/03300/C0047.oap?make=Honda&model=Accord&year=2005&vi=1430764 How is O'Reilly getting this page indexed? It shows up in organic results for [2005 honda accord windshield wiper size].
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingof50 -
Should pages of old news articles be indexed?
My website published about 3 news articles a day and is set up so that old news articles can be accessed through a "back" button with articles going to page 2 then page 3 then page 4, etc... as new articles push them down. The pages include a link to the article and a short snippet. I was thinking I would want Google to index the first 3 pages of articles, but after that the pages are not worthwhile. Could these pages harm me and should they be noindexed and/or added as a canonical URL to the main news page - or is leaving them as is fine because they are so deep into the site that Google won't see them, but I also won't be penalized for having week content? Thanks for the help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
Removing pages from index
Hello, I run an e-commerce website. I just realized that Google has "pagination" pages in the index which should not be there. In fact, I have no idea how they got there. For example, www.mydomain.com/category-name.asp?page=3434532
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexGop
There are hundreds of these pages in the index. There are no links to these pages on the website, so I am assuming someone is trying to ruin my rankings by linking to the pages that do not exist. The page content displays category information with no products. I realize that its a flaw in design, and I am working on fixing it (301 none existent pages). Meanwhile, I am not sure if I should request removal of these pages. If so, what is the best way to request bulk removal. Also, should I 301, 404 or 410 these pages? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Alex0