Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI
      Moz Local

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. Fetch as Google temporarily lifting a penalty?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Fetch as Google temporarily lifting a penalty?

    Technical SEO
    3
    6
    940
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • semcheck1
      semcheck1 last edited by

      Hi, I was wondering if anyone has seen this behaviour before? I haven't!

      We have around 20 sites and each one has lost all of its rankings (not in index at all) since the medic update apart from specifying a location on the end of a keyword.

      I set to work trying to identify a common issue on each site, and began by improving speed issues in insights. On one site I realised that after I had improved the speed score and then clicked "fetch as google" the rankings for that site all returned within seconds.

      I did the same for a different site and exactly the same result. Cue me jumping around the office in delight! The pressure is off, people's jobs are safe, have a cup of tea and relax.

      Unfortunately this relief only lasted between 6-12 hours and then the rankings go again. To me it seems like what is happening is that the sites are all suffering from some kind of on page penalty which is lifted until the page can be assessed again and when it is the penalty is reapplied.

      Not one to give up I set about methodically making changes until I found the issue. So far I have completely rewritten a site, reduced over use of keywords, added over 2000 words to homepage. Clicked fetch as google and the site came back - for 6 hours..... So then I gave the site a completely fresh redesign and again clicked fetch as google, and same result. Since doing all that, I have swapped over to https, 301 redirected etc and now the site is completely gone and won't come back after fetching as google. Uh!

      So before I dig myself even deeper, has anyone any ideas?

      Thanks.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • willcritchlow
        willcritchlow last edited by

        Unfortunately it's going to be difficult to dig deeper into this without knowing the site - are you able to share the details?

        I'm with Martijn that there should be no connection between these features. The only thing I have come up with that could plausibly cause anything like what you are seeing is something related to JavaScript execution (and this would not be a feature working as it's intended to work). We know that there is a delay between initial indexing and JavaScript indexing. It seems plausible to me that if there were a serious enough issue with the JS execution / indexing that either that step failed or that it made the site look spammy enough to get penalised that we could conceivably see the behaviour you describe - where it ranks until Google executes the JS.

        I guess my first step to investigating this would be to look at the JS requirements on your site and consider the differences between with and without JS rendering (and if there is any issue with the chrome version that we know executes the JS render at Google's side).

        Interested to hear if you discover anything more.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • semcheck1
          semcheck1 @Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

          Hey, it’s good to have a fresh pair of eyes on it. There may something else as simple that I’ve missed.

          Rankings check on my Mac, 2 x webservers via Remote Desktop in different locations, 2 x independent ranking checkers and they all show the same... recovery for 12ish hours, along with traffic and conversions. Then nothing.

          When the rankings dissapear I can hit fetch as again straight away and they come straight back. If I leave it for days, then they’re gone for days, until I hit fetch then straight back.

          cheers

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Martijn_Scheijbeler
            Martijn_Scheijbeler @semcheck1 last edited by

            Ok, that still doesn't mean that they're not personalized. But I'll skip on that part for now.
            In the end, the changes that you're seeing aren't triggered by what you're doing with Fetch as Google. I'll leave it up to some others to see if they'll shine a light on the situation.

            semcheck1 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • semcheck1
              semcheck1 @Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

              Hi,

              Thanks,

              They’re not personalised as my ranking checkers don’t show personalised results 😉

              Martijn_Scheijbeler 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Martijn_Scheijbeler
                Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

                Hi,

                I'm afraid I have to help you with this dream, there is no connection whatsoever between the rankings and the feature to Fetch as Google within Google Search Console. What likely is happening is that you're already getting personalized results and within a certain timeframe, the ads won't be shown as the results will be different as Google thinks that you've already seen the first results on the page the first time that you Googled this.

                Fetch as Google doesn't provide any signal to the regular ranking engines to say: "Hey, we've fetched something new and now it's going to make an impact on this". Definitely not at the speed that you're describing (within seconds).

                Martijn.

                semcheck1 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • LivDetrick

                  Does google look at H3 tags?

                  I've had someone tell me that google doesn't pay attention to H3 tags -- only H1 and H2.  I haven't found much online to back this up or discredit it; thought I'd ask the Moz community!

                  Technical SEO | | LivDetrick
                  5
                • seogirl22

                  Vanity URLs are being indexed in Google

                  We are currently using vanity URLs to track offline marketing, the vanity URL is structured as www.clientdomain.com/publication, this URL then is 302 redirected to the actual URL on the website not a custom landing page. The resulting redirected URL looks like:  www.clientdomain.com/xyzpage?utm_source=print&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=printcampaign. We have started to notice that some of the vanity URLs are being indexed in Google search. To prevent this from happening should we be using a 301 redirect instead of a 302 and will the Google index ignore the utm parameters in the URL that is being 301 redirect to?  If not, any suggestions on how to handle? Thanks,

                  Technical SEO | | seogirl22
                  1
                • Datel

                  Is Google suppressing a page from results - if so why?

                  UPDATE: It seems the issue was that pages were accessible via multiple URLs (i.e. with and without trailing slash, with and without .aspx extension). Once this issue was resolved, pages started ranking again. Our website used to rank well for a keyword (top 5), though this was over a year ago now. Since then the page no longer ranks at all, but sub pages of that page rank around 40th-60th. I searched for our site and the term on Google (i.e. 'Keyword site:MySite.com') and increased the number of results to 100, again the page isn't in the results. However when I just search for our site (site:MySite.com) then the page is there, appearing higher up the results than the sub pages. I thought this may be down to keyword stuffing; there were around 20-30 instances of the keyword on the page, however roughly the same quantity of keywords were on each sub pages as well. I've now removed some of the excess keywords from all sections as it was getting in the way of usability as well, but I just wanted some thoughts on whether this is a likely cause or if there is something else I should be worried about.

                  Technical SEO | | Datel
                  1
                • suchde

                  Missing meta descriptions from Google SERPs

                  Hullo all, I run an e-commerce website and hence have a lot of product category/sub-category pages to handle. Despite giving each of these category pages meta descriptions, in the Google SERPs, a lot of these descriptions don't show up fully. Rather, only half the text that I'd inputed as my meta desc. shows up; the other half has generic stuff from that page given.  I've attached a screen shot to give you an example of what comes up in the SERPs. Could you please tell me what exactly is the problem? Is it a coding issue? Or has Google not crawled that page? Need help asap! Thank you in advance! aE9RKXJ

                  Technical SEO | | suchde
                  0
                • lemonz

                  How does Google Crawl Multi-Regional Sites?

                  I've been reading up on this on Webmaster Tools but just wanted to see if anyone could explain it a bit better. I have a website which is going live soon which is going to be set up to redirect to a localised URL based on the IP address i.e. NZ IP ranges will go to .co.nz, Aus IP addresses would go to .com.au and then USA or other non-specified IP addresses will go to the .com address. There is a single CMS installation for the website. Does this impact the way in which Google is able to search the site? Will all domains be crawled or just one? Any help would be great - thanks!

                  Technical SEO | | lemonz
                  0
                • UnderRugSwept

                  Google is indexing my directories

                  I'm sure this has been asked before, but I was looking at all of Google's results for my site and I found dozens of results for directories such as: Index of /scouting/blog/wp-includes/js/swfupload/plugins Obviously I don't want those indexed. How do I prevent Google from indexing those? Also, it only seems to be doing it with Wordpress, not any of the directories on my main site. (We have a wordpress blog, which is only a portion of the site)

                  Technical SEO | | UnderRugSwept
                  0
                • WalesDragon

                  Google News URL Format

                  Hi, We are currently redesigning our gaming website (www.totallygn.com) and one of our main goals is to get listed by Google News in future. Looking at the Google News URL requirements "The URL for each article must contain a unique number consisting of at least three digits." How does the above affect SEO structure?  I was planning on using a format such as www.totallygn.com/xbox-360/360-reviews/fifa-12-review how would this compare to something like? www.totallygn.com/xbox-360/360-reviews/fifa-12-review234 Thanks in advance for your help

                  Technical SEO | | WalesDragon
                  0
                • Websensejim

                  Why has Google removed meta descriptions from SERPS?

                  One of my clients' sites has just been redesigned with lots of new URLs added. So the 301 redirections have been put in place and most of the new URLs have now been indexed. BUT Google is still showing all the old URLs in the SERPS and even worse it only displays the title tag. The meta description is not shown, no rich snippet, no text, nothing below the title. This is proving disastrous as visitors are not clicking on a result with no description. I have to assume its got something to do with the redirection, but why is it not showing the descriptions? I've checked the old URLs and he meta description is definitely still in the code, but Google is choosing not to show it. I've never seen this before so I'm struggling for an answer. I'd like to know why or how this is happening, and if it can be resolved. I realise that this may be resolved when Google stops showing all the old URLs but there's no telling how long that will take (can it be speeded up?)

                  Technical SEO | | Websensejim
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.