Homepage refusing to show up in Google (rest of pages fine)
-
edit
-
Ah, I was wondering since they may have entirely different pricing based upon who you talk to.
-
SiteLock
-
So, on an invoice, do you or the client pay Incapsula or SiteLock?
-
Exactly, I've been told that these problems surfaced around the time the firewall was put up. I've just removed the timthumb file and I'm working on disavowing the spammy links pointing to us. I'm considering ditching sitelock in the next few days and seeing if that helps at all. We were also looking at Sucuri as a firewall option as well.
-
All of the header checks I've done come back with Incapsula. I don't really want to get much further into that for a number of reasons. But if you're actually paying SiteLock that's pretty interesting.
But you're saying the site ranked for it's brand term, at least, before implementing either SiteLock or Incapsula?
-
This is a huge help. I spent some time yesterday going through the site and updating my links to https where possible. Those don't all appear to have indexed yet. The bit about the timthumb exploit is particularly helpful. My theme lets me disable that, and I can get rid of the timthumb php file. I'm still concerned that sitelock could be exaggerating the problem though, we started having these issues with google around when it was implemented.
-
The site is using Incapsula as a CDN and web application firewall. The site still has a timthumb file. So I wouldn't recommend stepping out from behind that right now.
A wildcard search on the domain yields a lot of spam backlinks. Check ahrefs.
-
The entire site appears to index fine. As Patrick pointed out, it appears some of the pages in the index aren't https. But I don't know when you made the move, so things may be chugging right along.
The issue is ranking. But I know what you mean.
So what we have is (not all bad, per se - just what I see):
- Previously hacked site
- Timthumb file
- Some very spammy links
- HTTPS implemented on unknown date
- Moved to CDN / WAF
- Redirects
No doubt, you're going to have to disavow the bad links. Take down requests are nice and all, and you should note them in your disavow submission, but you don't have to manually contact each individual link/domain. It's not really a fire-and-forget process. You can submit it more than once.
I would bet a shiny nickle the attack/hack exploited the timthumb file. The site still uses it. Stop using it. Find an alternative. All it does is resize images.
The https migration (redirects... etc.) is just a confounding factor.
After you've removed the timthumb file, request a security review. Also consider the site may still have issues from the hack. So fetch as google from Webmaster Tools. If you see anything different than the real page, you still have a problem.
Read a little more about recovering from a hacked site here. I think that's more than likely the core of the problem right now.
-
Let me guess - you're using SiteLock after you were hacked to keep them out?
SiteLock creates this issue frequently (we solved it for another Q&A user about a month ago.)
Disable SiteLock, check your settings are all right in Webmasters Tools and Fetch the page in WMT. Add a link to it on Google+ so it gets recrawled quickly.
I only see 1 backlink to the site from Ahrefs (https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/subdomains?target=www.newstaradhesives.com) and only 2 in Majestic (https://majestic.com/reports/site-explorer?folder=&q=www.newstaradhesives.com)
Very, very low authority & SiteLock - those would be the two I'd start with.
-
It absolutely was very hacked. I'm currently in the process of submitting takedowns manually for those spam posts in google's index. The site has been cleaned up and relaunched since. Could these be harming the indexing of the homepage as well?
-
I think Incapsula is throwing the false noindex tag. But yeah, that's just how Incapsula do. The home page shows just fine with a site: operator.
Judging by the anchor text I see pointed at the site... and the Timthumbs.php file... the site was very very hacked at some point.
Edit: Yep. It was hacked until late last year.
-
Hi Patrick
Thanks for taking a look. If I could ask, where are you seeing this noindex tag and what are you using to see it? I've got my homepage set up in the yoast seo plugin to index and follow, and I had also previously added a into my header just to make sure. My suspicion is that the sitelock firewall installed on our site right now is blocking robots. Does this make any sense?
Thanks again
-
I wanted to attach this image - in my crawl, I am getting a "noindex,nofollow" but your code isn't showing it. I would check with your web development team to see what exactly is happening and how this can be fixed.
-
Hi there
It appears your homepage has a "noindex,nofollow" tag - change this to "index,follow". Make sure this is fixed across the site.
If for some reason that doesn't work (which it will):
Have you checked to see if you have a manual action?
If you have multiple URLs going on with the same content - check your canonical tags and make sure you do a content audit to see if this information can be removed, consolidated, or updated. Your SSL seems to not be configured properly also.
I would also make sure that you do a backlink audit to see if any links can be removed or updated. Also, check your local SEO presence and that everything is on point and consistent. Same with on-site SEO.
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
-
How does Google rank a "Site:yourexamplesite.com" Query
Hi All, Sorry for the potentially confusing title. I am trying to find out how google ranks the pages of your site when you search "site:yourwebsite.com". When I did this with my website I was surprised what pages showed up on the first page, there were sub-category pages in the top 5 results and top level category pages that weren't on the first page. I have been unable to find information as to how google returns these results, is it the same algorithm/factors that make pages rank highly in a regular search, or does it have something to do with how recently google crawled these pages. Any feedback would be helpful. Additionally, if anyone has worked through a similar scenario I would be interested to know if there were any insights you gained from finding out which of your pages google returned first. Thanks for the help! Jason
Web Design | | Jason-Reid0 -
Google pagespeed / lazy image load
Hi, we are using the apache module of google pagespeed. It works really great, helps a lot. But today I've asked me one question: Does the "lazy load" feature for images harm the ranking? The module reworks the page to load the images only if the are visible at the screen. Is this behavior also triggered by the google bot? Or are the images invisible for google? Any expirience about that? Best wishes, Georg.
Web Design | | GeorgFranz0 -
Is it necessary to Remove 301 redirects from Wordpress after removing the 404 url from Google Webmaster?
There were many 404 urls in my site found by Google Webmaster. I've redirected these urls to the relevant urls with 301 redirect in wordpress. After that I removed these 404 urls from Google Index through Webmaster. "Should I cleanup these 301 redirects from Wordpress or not? ". Help Needed.
Web Design | | SangeetaC0 -
Traffic flow going through homepage, /default.aspx, and /index.htm - How do I fix this?
In the Google Analytics visitor flow section, most of my traffic is starting off on the homepage, but a significant portion somehow is being directed to /default.aspx, as well as a minor fraction at /index.htm - see the attached image for what this looks like. My questions are, why is this happening, is it negatively affecting the site, and should I just fix it through a filter in Analytics or consult IT? Navigating to the /default.aspx page in the address bar simply returns a blank screen. Any idea of what's going on here? The logo in the top left corner of the site directs to /index.htm, so I think I have that issue solved, but /default.aspx is definitely stumping me. The server currently runs on Apache, though I don't know if it always did. My standard method of simply Googling the problem didn't give me any definitive answers, so any help would be greatly appreciated. Q12QqpC.jpg
Web Design | | BD690 -
What happens if I 301 Redirect my homepage to a different page on site
If i were to 301 redirect the index page of my website to a page in a different subdirectory of my site would that adversely affect SEO? Does your home page need to be in the root of your site? I'm asking because a developer has told me that it would be best to do that since he needs to install OpenCart on the root of our domain...
Web Design | | SheffieldMarketing0 -
What is the best slideshow pluggin for seo in order to show alt of the images
what is the best slideshow pluggin for seo in order to show alt of the images
Web Design | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Legitimate hidden text and H1s are "OK?" Show me the data!
I'm trying to promote the SEO perspective during a site redesign so I'm researching the impact of design requests: Embedding text in graphic headers and applying to the graphics to get the SEO value Reducing view-able text on a page for design reasons and by using JavaScript to hide text in accordions or tabs. SEOmoz uses these techniques on their ranking report and most of what I read in teh forums says it is OK to hide text if your motives are pure and the text displays in a text-only browser. But I do SEO, not SEOK. I want to optimize, not just avoid penalties. And I try to make decisions based on data, not just anecdotes. Are there any studies out there on the effects these hidden-text topics? How much difference DOES it make to have the text exposed? Since there is potential for spam with these techniques, why would Google give the same rank to pages with and without hidden text? When I'm balancing UX and SEO, I want to clearly define the trade-off. What have you done when faced with this dilemma?
Web Design | | integra-telecom0 -
Site-wide footer links or single "website credits" page?
I see that you have already answered this question before back in 2007 (http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/2163), but wanted to ask your current opinion on the same question: Should I add a site-wide footer link to my client websites pointing to my website, or should I create a "website credits" page on my clients site, add this to the footer and then link from within this page out to my website?
Web Design | | eseyo0