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
-
Track buttons in Google Tag Manager
Hi! First question: I am wondering if it's possible to track two buttons with the same code in Google Tag Manager without changing the code? There are different page URL's.. Second one: My tags are displayed in Google Analytics as 'events'. When I put the events in 'goals', the number of times it fired differs from my events. Someone who can help me with this issue?
Reporting & Analytics | | conversal0 -
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 -
Two GTM tags
Hi guys, I need some help on the following: My client has different websites worldwide all with country extensions and on overall .com domain. These websites (and GTM accounts) are all managed by local agencies. We would like to implement a cross domain tracking GA account in order to see some overall trends and numbers. We don't want to implement our codes in the existing containers as they are in many cases managed by local agencies. Is it really negative to implement two GTM containers on one website? Any other ideas? Thanks,
Reporting & Analytics | | WeAreDigital_BE
Sander0 -
Title Tag Capitalization Impact on SERP Rankings and Click Through Rates
My company made a branding decision to use lowercase for all of our title tags. This, of course, means that our titles on SERPs are all lower case. Overwhelmingly, it seems that websites use title case. This makes me wonder if we're shooting ourselves in the foot. Does using lower case titles negatively impact our rankings and/or click through rates? Is there any data out there suggesting that title case has a better click through rate than lower case? Thanks for reading!
Reporting & Analytics | | Solid_Gold0 -
Enchance Ecommerce Tag Fired on every page i visit why?
Hello Experts, I have added given below code (A) on my website and given below (B) setting in GTM. Now whenever i visit the site then two tags fired that is google analytic and enchance ecommerce. GA tag fired that is fine but why enhance ecommerce tag fired even if i visit any page? I think enhane ecommerce tag should be fired when i click on addtocart right?A)```
Reporting & Analytics | | bkmitesh
dataLayer.push({ 'event':'addToCart', 'ecommerce':{ 'currencyCode':'EUR', 'add':{ // 'add' actionFieldObject measures. 'products':[{ // adding a product to a shopping cart. 'name':'Triblend Android T-Shirt', 'id':'12345', 'price':'15.25', 'brand':'Google', 'category':'Apparel', 'variant':'Gray', 'quantity':1 }] } } }); Track type : Event Event Category: `Ecommerce` Event Action: `Add to Cart` Enable Enhanced Ecommerce Features: `true` Use Data Layer: `true` Basic Settings - Document Path: `{{url path}}` Firing Rule: `{{event}}` equals `addToCart``Thanks!`0 -
How can I use Google Analytics to detect users viewing my website on a TV?
I want to see in Google Analytics whether or not people are viewing my website on a TV, such as with a smart TV or other device connected to their TV. These are the only ways to do this that I have found so far: Operating system: Google TV, Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3, Xbox Browser: Nintendo Browser, Playstation 3 Are there other data points that I can reliably use to segment these users?
Reporting & Analytics | | RCF0 -
Accidental Link not being removed by Google WMT
I operate two sites for a client. One is a local business and one is their national business. I used the same template for both sites (with changes) but accidentally left a link in the footer to the local site. Now the local site is showing 12k backlinks from the national site. I removed the link over 2 weeks ago but it still shows up in Google WMT in the "Links to your Site" section. It goes to a coupon page and not a "targeted" page but 12k links to the local site is 6 TIMES what I had before. My question is: "Is there a way to get Google to remove the link from Google WMT?" More specifically force it. Like I said the link has been removed for over 2 weeks but it still shows up in the Local site's Incoming Links section of WMT. Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | DarinPirkey0 -
Best way to generate analytics reports for listing style website
I'm working on a website that includes dedicated pages for ~40 local businesses, and I need to be able to generate and export some basic reports I can send to each business. The data I need for each report is split between general sitewide data: total number of visitors to the site for month. number of visitors to each main category page what country they are from (main countries) - top 5 traffic source / keywords avg time on site As well as specific data for each individual page: how many people viewed specific total pages Time spent on individual page. Would this be possible with custom reports in analytics? I can see the number of different reports being difficult to maintain, especially as site grows. Anyone had expereince on a similar site of ideas on the best way to do this? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | zeald0