undefined
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
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • 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.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    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
    • 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.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • 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. Homepage not indexed - seems to defy explanation

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.

Homepage not indexed - seems to defy explanation

Technical SEO
7
19
4.9k
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.
  • Marcus_Miller
    Marcus_Miller last edited by Oct 18, 2016, 10:53 AM

    Hey folks

    Hoping to get some more eyes on a specific problem I am seeing with a clients site.

    Site: http:www.ukjuicers.com 

    We have checked everything we can think of and the usual suspects here are not present:

    • Canonical URL is in place
    • Site is shown as indexed in search console
    • No Crawl, DNS, Connectivity or server errors
    • No robots.txt blocking - verified in search console
    • No robots meta tags or directives
    • Fetch as Google works
    • Fetch & render works
    • site command returns all other pages
    • info command does not return the homepage
    • homepage is cached and cache has been updated since this issue started: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.ukjuicers.com
    • homepage is indexed in yahoo and Bing
    • all variations redirect to the www.ukjuicers.com domain (.co.uk, .com, www, sans www etc)

    The only issue I found after some extensive digging was some issues with the HTTP and HTTPS versions of the site both being available and both specifying the canonical version as themselves. So, http site used canonicals with http and https site used canonicals with https. So, a conflict there with the canonical exacerbating the problem it is there to solve.

    The HTTPS site is not indexed though and we have set this up in webmaster tools and now the web developer has set redirects to ensure all versions even the https now 301 redirect to the http://www.ukjuicers.com page so these canonical issues have been ironed out.

    But... it's still not indexing the homepage.

    The practical implications of this are quite scary - the site used to be somewhere between 1st and 4th for keywords like 'juicers', 'juicer' etc. Now they are bottom of page 1 or top of page 2 with an internal page. They were jostling with the big boys (amazon, argos, john lewis etc) but now they are right at the bottom of the second page.

    It's a strange one - i have seen all manor of technical problems over the years but this one seems to defy sensible explanation. The next step is to do a full technical SEO audit of the site but I am always of the opinion that with many eyes all bugs are shallow so if anyone has any input or experience with odd indexation problems like this would love to get your input.

    Cheers
    Marcus

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • MikeRoberts
      MikeRoberts @Marcus_Miller last edited by Oct 20, 2016, 2:31 PM Oct 20, 2016, 2:31 PM

      Glad you figured it out. I honestly didn't think it would have been the canonicals. I'm a little surprised that the bots didn't just choose not to respect the suggestion as opposed to blanking your site from the index. Didn't think that was even a possibility from incorrect canonicals. Good to know for the future though in case anything like this comes up with anyone else's site.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • Marcus_Miller
        Marcus_Miller @AGMContainerControls last edited by Oct 19, 2016, 4:45 AM Oct 19, 2016, 4:45 AM

        Yep - it's back. Looks like resolving the canonical issue fixed it. Seems it was a usual suspect after all. 🙂

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Marcus_Miller
          Marcus_Miller @MikeRoberts last edited by Oct 19, 2016, 4:40 AM Oct 19, 2016, 4:40 AM

          Yep - bit of a weird one but in the end looks like the canonicals were the issue. Thanks for taking a look though man - super appreciated. 🙂

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Marcus_Miller
            Marcus_Miller @becole last edited by Oct 19, 2016, 4:39 AM Oct 19, 2016, 4:39 AM

            Hey Bernadette - thanks for the feedback. Site is back in the index now, looks like the canonicals were the culprit but the owners are keen for no future issues so I will dig in and take a look at these points. Cheers!

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Marcus_Miller
              Marcus_Miller last edited by Oct 19, 2016, 4:41 AM Oct 19, 2016, 4:37 AM

              Hey folks

              24 hours after we identified and fixed the canonical issue the site is now indexed again so it does look like it was indeed a canonical conundrum. Both the HTTP and HTTPS sites were claiming to be the canonical version so in some respects creating a conflict. We removed this conflict and it is now indexed.

              Thanks for the extra eyes folks - appreciated and if anyone ever needs another pair of eyes to look a problem give me a shout. 🙂

              Cheers
              Marcus

              MikeRoberts 1 Reply Last reply Oct 20, 2016, 2:31 PM Reply Quote 1
              • PenaltyHammer
                PenaltyHammer last edited by Oct 18, 2016, 6:04 PM Oct 18, 2016, 6:04 PM

                Hey Marcus. You just need some links from high authority website like moz:) People say you're indexed so case closed, job done:)

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • LoganRay
                  LoganRay last edited by Oct 19, 2016, 4:40 AM Oct 18, 2016, 4:46 PM

                  I just noticed that clicking on the entire slider, even out to the sides where it appears to be just white space, takes you to another page. At first I didn't realize what I was clicking that got me to the next page. When I do Crtl+A on the page, the full width of the slider images shows highlighted in blue, but to the side of those images outside of those bounds is linked. I'm wondering if Google sees this as cloaking and kicked out the homepage as a result.

                  *I did see that AGM pointed out it's indexed now, but that's not to say this wasn't the cause of original de-index.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • AGMContainerControls
                    AGMContainerControls Subscriber last edited by Oct 18, 2016, 4:11 PM Oct 18, 2016, 4:11 PM

                    As of this writing it looks like the page is indexed. By searching site:ukjuicers.com it comes up in the search results with about 861 other results. Not sure if there is anything you changed to get things working again but it seems to be in their index now.

                    Marcus_Miller 1 Reply Last reply Oct 19, 2016, 4:45 AM Reply Quote 1
                    • MikeRoberts
                      MikeRoberts last edited by Oct 19, 2016, 4:40 AM Oct 18, 2016, 2:55 PM

                      I took a look at all of the usual suspects as well... which amounts to pretty much everything that everyone else mentioned but I was intrigued by this issue and thought maybe another set of eyes might notice something that was off. Nothing was wrong in the page source from what I saw, no issues crawling it myself and I didn't see any penalties. Normally I'd think that if your homepage wasn't appearing for branded organic searches then a penalty was levied against you but when that is the case the homepage is still normally find-able in a Site operator search. M__aybe it is related to all the backlinks that were lost/deleted in the past month but I'm not sure why that would be the case unless removing the homepage from the index was a Penguin response to link issues... but I was under the impression that peguin was devaluing the link source not the link recipient and deleting/removing links seems to be a preferred method of handling penguin-related issues. So if there is a relationship between penguin and your homepage being deindexed then I am not sure at all why nor am I certain how to fix it as I'm not seeing anything in particular that screams "linking issue" at me. (though I only did a fairly cursory inspection of things)

                      So I am stumped. Whenever the issue is figure out I would love to know how/why this came to be.

                      Marcus_Miller 1 Reply Last reply Oct 19, 2016, 4:40 AM Reply Quote 1
                      • becole
                        becole last edited by Oct 19, 2016, 4:40 AM Oct 18, 2016, 1:05 PM

                        Marcus, I know this is frustrating. I've checked several things, and looked at many of the possibilities that you've already brought up. I don't have access to the Google Search Console, so I cannot comment about any of that data. I'm assuming that you don't have a manual action on the site or any other messages from Google.

                        What I've seen in the past is issues with schema markup, especially when it comes to reviews and how they're handled on sites. I'm not saying that this is the issue--but I've seen issues that Google has had with these (especially because there is the word "hidden" there in the code). So, you might look into that some more.

                        The issue could also be related to links--look at the links to the site's home page to see if there is an issue with low quality links pointing to that page or other unnatural links.

                        If someone has copied the page, added a canonical tag, and then added a "meta noindex tag" to their page, it's possible that they could have taken your page out of the index. This has happened before.

                        Marcus_Miller 1 Reply Last reply Oct 19, 2016, 4:39 AM Reply Quote 1
                        • PenaltyHammer
                          PenaltyHammer @Marcus_Miller last edited by Oct 18, 2016, 12:47 PM Oct 18, 2016, 12:47 PM

                          Unfortunately you're not amazon so maybe you must try harder;)

                          or force to index mainpage with some software or indexer website then wait a while.

                          I'm thinking about some negative seo made for your mainpage but so far can't see any symptoms.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • TimHolmes
                            TimHolmes @Marcus_Miller last edited by Oct 18, 2016, 12:26 PM Oct 18, 2016, 12:26 PM

                            This is a strange one then.... very strange.

                            Just performed a site: search and like you said it is not showing up as indexed. There is normally something technical to explain an issue like this, but I cannot see anything after looking at your site robots and source code.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • Marcus_Miller
                              Marcus_Miller @PenaltyHammer last edited by Oct 18, 2016, 12:22 PM Oct 18, 2016, 12:22 PM

                              Hey Krzysztof

                              Yeah, the page has little textual content but... neither does the amazon homepage. Ultimately the page is a jump in point for all the products and the content suits that. Certainly, I could understand Google not liking the page but would that not result in a reduced rank rather than a complete removal like this?

                              On the dodgy links front they have never done anything on that front - so anything there would be surprising (or just incidental cruft that is out there on scraper sites and the like).

                              Super odd. 😞

                              PenaltyHammer 1 Reply Last reply Oct 18, 2016, 12:47 PM Reply Quote 0
                              • Marcus_Miller
                                Marcus_Miller @LoganRay last edited by Oct 18, 2016, 12:19 PM Oct 18, 2016, 12:19 PM

                                Yep - super odd. 15 years or so in this game and never seen anything quite like this. Transient drops but usually it boiled down to some simple technical error or more often user error cough no index / robots.txt cough

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • Marcus_Miller
                                  Marcus_Miller @TimHolmes last edited by Oct 18, 2016, 12:18 PM Oct 18, 2016, 12:18 PM

                                  Hey - the real issue here is the page is just not indexed. It's not there. Not that another page is a more suitable or preferential result. Ultimately that was the best page for a user to jump in at... The page is not even returned in a brand search so... can't see how any other page could be more suitable for that kind of search.

                                  TimHolmes 1 Reply Last reply Oct 18, 2016, 12:26 PM Reply Quote 0
                                  • PenaltyHammer
                                    PenaltyHammer last edited by Oct 18, 2016, 11:56 AM Oct 18, 2016, 11:54 AM

                                    Hi Marcus

                                    The only thing I think it can be the issue is the number of words on mainpage. Mostly I see images and words from menus, links and not main content. Digging deeper can help (seo audit).

                                    This can be a penguin too but to know the answer, full link analysis is needed. After quick glance I see some unnatural links but not in larger number. Maybe they got footprints not visible at once (same ip, c class, content with link etc).

                                    Marcus_Miller 1 Reply Last reply Oct 18, 2016, 12:22 PM Reply Quote 0
                                    • LoganRay
                                      LoganRay last edited by Oct 18, 2016, 11:53 AM Oct 18, 2016, 11:53 AM

                                      You're not kidding, this does defy explanation. When did it drop out of the index?

                                      In all honesty, I don't have a solution, you've already checked everything I would have. I'm mostly commenting so I can keep up with this issue and see how it unfolds. Very curious to see if anyone can identify what's happening here.

                                      Marcus_Miller 1 Reply Last reply Oct 18, 2016, 12:19 PM Reply Quote 0
                                      • TimHolmes
                                        TimHolmes last edited by Oct 18, 2016, 11:46 AM Oct 18, 2016, 11:46 AM

                                        Hmmm, is it a case of Google simply feels the homepage is not as engaging and relevant in terms of search to your users and they put more emphasis on product pages which it choose to feature instead.

                                        I often find that for key terms our product pages almost always rank higher then the homepage unless a brand only search.

                                        Secondly, is this a recent change? Could the most recent Penguin update have simply resulted in your competitors getting a boost where as before the previous algo was holding them back which has resulted in your position slide.

                                        Marcus_Miller 1 Reply Last reply Oct 18, 2016, 12:18 PM Reply Quote 0
                                        • 1 / 1
                                        1 out of 19
                                        • First post
                                          1/19
                                          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

                                        • NielsDE

                                          Is having my homepage on a subfolder harmful?

                                          Hi guys, I am the webmaster of the following two websites: www.gpblog.com/nl
                                          www.gpblog.com/en The first URL is the Dutch version of GPBlog, the second URL is the UK version of GPblog. Whenever a person visits www.gpblog.com he gets redirected to either the Dutch version or the UK version based on his location. My question is: is it harmful to have 1. your homepage on a subfolder and 2. is it harmful to run two different languages on one domain using this technique? Thank you in advance!

                                          Technical SEO | Jun 13, 2019, 7:14 AM | NielsDE
                                          1
                                        • RobertvanHeerde

                                          Subpage with own homepage and navigation good or bad?

                                          Hi everybody, I have the following question. At the company I work, we deliver several services. We help people buy the right second hand car (technical inspections). But we also have an import-service. Because those services are so different, I want to split them on our website. So our main website is all about the technical inspections. Then, when you click on import, you go to www.example.com/import. A subpage with it's own homepage en navigation, all about the import service. It's like you have an extra website on the same domain. Does anyone has experience with this in terms of SEO? Thank you for your time! Kind regards, Robert

                                          Technical SEO | Aug 22, 2017, 8:01 AM | RobertvanHeerde
                                          0
                                        • ArchieChilds

                                          Does google index images or ALT text only?

                                          Does google index images or ALT text only?

                                          Technical SEO | Aug 20, 2016, 5:01 AM | ArchieChilds
                                          0
                                        • theLotter

                                          2 Versions of Same Homepage

                                          We want to show new and returning visitors different versions of our homepage (same URL) What, if anything, should we use as the markup to tell Google what we are doing?
                                          Any danger that Google will think we are cloaking? Thanks!

                                          Technical SEO | Jun 2, 2014, 9:53 AM | theLotter
                                          0
                                        • rikmon

                                          De-indexed from Google

                                          Hi Search Experts! We are just launching a new site for a client with a completely new URL.  The client can not provide any access details for their existing site.  Any ideas how can we get the existing site de-indexed from Google? Thanks guys!

                                          Technical SEO | Nov 14, 2012, 2:20 PM | rikmon
                                          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 | Sep 13, 2012, 5:07 PM | UnderRugSwept
                                          0
                                        • kchandler

                                          Block a sub-domain from being indexed

                                          This is a pretty quick and simple (i'm hoping) question. What is the best way to completely block a sub domain from getting indexed from all search engines? One item i cannot use is the meta "no follow" tag. Thanks! - Kyle

                                          Technical SEO | Aug 25, 2011, 5:24 AM | kchandler
                                          0
                                        • nicole.healthline

                                          Does Google index XML files?

                                          Does Google or other search engines include XML files in their index? More specifically, I am wondering how Google knows the difference between an xml filetype and an RSS feed.

                                          Technical SEO | Jul 7, 2011, 1:40 PM | nicole.healthline
                                          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.