Re-Launched Website: Developer Fogot to Remove noindex tags.
-
Our company's website has maintained decent rankings for the last 12 years we've been in business for our primary keywords. We recently had our website rebuilt from the ground up, and the developers left the noindex tags on all of our 400+ pages when we launched it. I didn't catch the error for 6 days. During which time, I used the Fetch feature in Google, submitting a site-wide fetch, as well as manual submissions for our top 100 URLs . In addition, every page that was indexed previously had a 301 set up for it, which was pointing to a destination with a noindex.
I caught the error today, and the developer removed the tags. Does anyone have any experience with a situation similar to this? In the SERPs, we are still ranking at this moment, and it's displaying our old URLs, and they are 301 redirecting just fine. But, what happens now? For 6 full days, we told Google not to index any of our pages, while also using the Fetch feature, contradicting ourselves.
Any words of wisdom or advice as to what I can do at this point to avoid potential fall out?Thanks
-
I appreciate everyone's feedback. Very helpful- thank you for taking the time to respond. Heading over to upload a sitemap now!
Thanks again,
Kristin -
One of our competitors, who ranked #1 for a good money term (we were #2) had a developer redo their entire site. He had noindex on every page when the new site went up.
When we saw the new site we sniffed the code, saw the noindex in there and laughed really hard.
A couple days later they dropped completely from the SERPs and we started getting all of their sales.
It took them a couple weeks to figure out what happened. But when they fixed it they popped right back into the SERPs at old rankings a couple days later.
We talk to these guys by phone occasionally. If they would have called us we would have told them how to fix it... but since they hired an expensive developer we didn't want to stick our noses in.
-
I've dealt with similar issues with robots.txt blocks of the entire site, as well as robots meta noindex tags. You should be fine now that you've taken the noindex tag off, and the old pages are redirecting. It may take longer for Google to update their index with the new URLs, but otherwise I don't think you need to worry too much. Maybe resubmit the sitemap and do another fetch on key pages.
Good luck!
-
Make sure you send in a sitemap and all should be well.
I've dealt with cases where certain pages were noindex but then removed. As long as you fixed all your errors, it should be back to normal. Think of a site going down intermittently, rankings don't get affected too much (I believe Matt Cutts confirmed this in a youtube video)
-
Hi Kristin
I have no experience of this happening, but I would suggest that you create a full sitemap and submit that to Google Webmaster tools asap.
Peter
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
-
Solved Is there a way to remove the Moz branding from automated PDF reports that are emailed to clients?
Is there a way to remove the Moz branding from automated PDF reports that are emailed to clients?
Reporting & Analytics | | ArttiaCreative0 -
Do lots of event tracking via tag manager will it slow down my site?
Hi All, For my Ecommerce site I have done lots of tracking total I do have total 45 event tracking but many times one event, track many pages. So if visitors click on url or button then do my site speed affect because of these trackings? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | pragnesh96390 -
Google Webmaster Tools, about multiple entries for your website
Hi I have a doubt about Google Webmaster Tools or Central as it is call today. I remember that google recommended to have one profile of your website for each domain structure. Let me try to be more clear one profile for http://www.yoursite.com, an other for http://yoursite.com, an other for https://www.yoursite.com, etc. Then in each of them we uploaded our sitemaps and cross our fingers. Now from my experience always the complete url have better index status from the sitemap. Now my question is, today as Google requested all our websites run under https, so conserving the other profiles is affecting how google index our pages? shall we have to delete the old profiles or is better to maintain them? Thanks. Pablo
Reporting & Analytics | | FWC_SEO0 -
Why is this tag not firing in Google Analytics?
I setup Google Tag Manager on this site- http://germanhausbarn.com I am trying to setup event tracking for the donate, newsletter, and Contact Us button at the bottom of the page. The most recent version is published, and I ran debug and it shows that they fire, but nothing is coming up in analytics. Any thoughts?
Reporting & Analytics | | EcommerceSite0 -
Client's Google Analytics account access is 'user' only from previous web developer
Just wondering if you have any advice on the following scenario: Client's GA account was set-up by a previous web developer. The client's GA account is a user account (not admin). When we request from the previous web developer that the account access be changed to admin, the web developer says they can't do that as we'll then have access to all the other GA accounts within their account. Does this mean we'll have to create a new GA profile for the client and lose all historic GA data? Any guidance greatly appreciated.
Reporting & Analytics | | aoifep0 -
Cookies/Tracking/Code developement
So. I have an online application form, on the website. It's maked with php, html and css. What i like to place on the email, is a cookie tracking system. For example, when someone search on the google for " web design ", and then see my result on google organic, comes the visitor to my site, charge the fields of application forms and click send. Than, me like an admin, i receive an email with informations of a customer, i see name/surname/etc.. but i like to integrate is for example, like to see a: IP from Visitors, who charged the fields Referrerr, if google, like to see which query he typed. How can i do this please?
Reporting & Analytics | | leadsprofi0 -
Why Webmasters Tools verification meta tags change??
Why do these keep changing for sites that I have verfied over and over and over and over? About a month goes by and the meta code has changed and the site is unverified again. Seems like a trick to force you into logging into Webmaster Tools all the time. What gives???
Reporting & Analytics | | 2CDevGroup0 -
RE: Google Analytics keywords metric and appropriate keywords
Greetings, When running Google Analytics' keyword report, I see that the over 85% of the top 100 keywords used to find us include a word in our name (Eagle's Nest Foundation and Camp -- with "eagle" or "eagle's nest" being the most frequent) or the name of one of our programs. Does this mean that most folks searching for summer camps in North Carolina already know about us and that we therefore need to optimize for broader keywords, to cast a wider net for folks who don't already know about us? Thanks, Dave
Reporting & Analytics | | DMoff0