Why is my blog disappearing from Google index?
-
My Google blogger blog is about 10 months old. In that time i have worked really hard with adding unique content, building relationships with other bloggers in the same niche, and done some inbound marketing.
2 weeks ago I updated the template to something cleaner, with a little more "wordpress" feel to it. This means i've messed about with the code a lot in these weeks, adding social buttons etc.
The problem is that from some point late last week thurs/fri my pages started disappearing from Googles index. I have checked webmaster tools and have no manual actions. My link profile is pretty clean as its a new site, and i have manually checked every piece of content published for plagiarism etc.
So what is going on? Did i break my blog? Or is something else amiss? Impressions are down 96% comparing Nov 1-5th to previous 5 days.
site is here: http://bit.ly/174beVm
Thanks for any help in advance.
-
Thank you. That thought process did occur to me at the time of adding the robots txt, however that was back in March and the impressions drop has happened this week.
I have updated the robots.txt to show the new disallow command rather than "/search".
I also just installed my last back-up which was just before i added Google comments.
Thanks for your help!
-
I really think the main issue is with the robots.txt. If you think about it, all of your blog posts that are not featured on the home page would be inaccessible to Google (since the pagination at the bottom and the main navigation URLs to browse posts all contain "/search"). So once the posts leave the homepage, you're telling Google they shouldn't see them anymore.
I only brought up the issue with "cloaked" text because the second link I saw was to a credit company and a red flag went up in my head screaming SPAM! But it looks to be legitimate.
I would advise you update the robots.txt and create an XML sitemap for all your posts/pages and submit that to Google Webmaster Tools. Should clear things up!
-
Thanks for this. I knew i needed to stop search being crawled for duplicate content and the disallow "/search" operator seemed to be the way a few others had done it. I will update that line to show the new query instead, presuming this is relevant for blogger blogs?
-
That line of text is from the fourth post down "Sales Stats Confirm the UK Still Loves Cars", its truncating the posts to show "read more". However the source code, for some reason, shows all of the post.
Could there be something missing from here? I did delete the code that shows number of comments per post as i integrated Google comments late last week and the numbers didnt add up.
-
Also, your robots.txt is disallowing "/search" which appears in the URL for all paginated pages on the homepage as well as in your "browse posts" category URLs. I would advise that you remove that line from your robots.txt. If you want to prevent search queries from being indexed, replace that with the following line:
Disallow: /*q=
That should prevent search queries from getting crawled or indexed.
-
I've only begun looking into your issue however I noticed something odd when looking at the source code of your home page. I did a search for a couple of snippets of code (noindex, meta data, etc..) but when I searched for nofollow, I found a few links that seem to have a fair amount of text associated with them. However I do not see the text on the actual site.
The first instance is in line 1406 of your source code, there is a link to smnt.co.uk and some text about private vehicle registrations yet that link and text is not visible on the home page.
You may want to look in to that, while there may not have been a manual action against you, it's possible that your pages are being caught in Google's algorithm.
Hope that helps
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
-
Blogs Not Getting Indexed Intermittently - Why?
Over the past 5 months many of our clients are having indexing issues for their blog posts.
Technical SEO | | JohnBracamontes
A blog from 5 months ago could be indexed, and a blog from 1 month ago could be indexed but blogs from 4, 3 and 2 months ago aren't indexed. It isn't consistent and there is not commonality across all of these clients that would point to why this is happening. We've checked sitemap, robots, canonical issues, internal linking, combed through Search Console, run Moz reports, run SEM Rush reports (sorry Moz), but can't find anything. We are now manually submitting URLs to be indexed to try and ensure they get into the index. Search console reports for many of the URLs will show that the blog has been fetched and crawled, but not indexed (with no errors). In some cases we find that the blog paginated pages (i.e. blog/page/2 , blog/page/3 , etc.) are getting indexed but not the blogs themselves. There aren't any nofollow tags on the links going to the blogs either. Any ideas? *I've added a screenshot of one of the URL inspection reports from Search Console alt text0 -
My Website disappeared from Google Search Results overnight
Hello there, I'm the owner of the Website https://cours-toujours.com/, dedicated to reviewing running shoes. My Website is pretty young and I'm currently focused on building new reviews (so I keep adding new articles, week after week, I did not really focus on the rest of the website for now).Until a few days ago, I saw growing traffic on my Website, everything seemed good and I kept adding new reviews to my website.And then suddently traffic dropped and went to 0 in 2 days (I went from 550 impressions/day to 49 impressions/day in 2 days :/)When I look in the Google Search Console, I don't see any issue: my sitemaps are submitted and the correct number of URLs are reported I don't have any Manual Action or Security Issue I don't have any Removal Request Everything seems fine... But I can barely find my website in Google Search Results.When I do a site search (site:cours-toujours.com), I find only 2 pages of results, mostly non-important pages (categories, etc.).I asked in Google Community Forums, and i got this reply about my pages being too similar to one another (https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/44880689?hl=en). But I'm not really happy with this answer, as all my pages have ~1000 words of unique content (even if of course they have the same structure as they are all dedicatd to reviewing a running shoe...)Any idea where this might come from/how I can fix the issue?
Technical SEO | | SimonCoursToujours0 -
What's going on with google index - javascript and google bot
Hi all, Weird issue with one of my websites. The website URL: http://www.athletictrainers.myindustrytracker.com/ Let's take 2 diffrenet article pages from this website: 1st: http://www.athletictrainers.myindustrytracker.com/en/article/71232/ As you can see the page is indexed correctly on google: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dfbzhHkl5K4J:www.athletictrainers.myindustrytracker.com/en/article/71232/10-minute-core-and-cardio&hl=en&strip=1 (that the "text only" version, indexed on May 19th) 2nd: http://www.athletictrainers.myindustrytracker.com/en/article/69811 As you can see the page isn't indexed correctly on google: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KeU6-oViFkgJ:www.athletictrainers.myindustrytracker.com/en/article/69811&hl=en&strip=1 (that the "text only" version, indexed on May 21th) They both have the same code, and about the dates, there are pages that indexed before the 19th and they also problematic. Google can't read the content, he can read it when he wants to. Can you think what is the problem with that? I know that google can read JS and crawl our pages correctly, but it happens only with few pages and not all of them (as you can see above).
Technical SEO | | cobano0 -
About how google works
Hey guyz,
Technical SEO | | atakala
I want to ask a basic question. If I search for Larry Page lets say.
I think google look for it's index for word larry and page distinct.
And mix it up. But the question ;
Can google show a result which only Larry exist on the page but any of the synonym or the stem of the Page not exist .
If it can happen how this page can be showned in larry page query. Thank you.0 -
How can I stop google indexing an image
I have put a map of cornwall on my site on the Corwnall Page, and for some reason Google.de has picked it up and shows it up in the top 4 images for a search for cornwall? The result is I am getting about 80% of the traffic coming to my site for the search Cornwall (I get about 50 unique visits per day, over 40 a day are landing on the Cornwall page. Is this a problem for my normal SEO as a Close up Magician? Will google start to think my site is about Cornwall? Should I noindex the image (I say that like I know how! - How do I noindex that image? ) Or is any traffic to a site good traffic, I imagine they will be clicking on the link landing on the page and then leaving, which I suspect is not good for google reputation. Any thoughts anyone Thanks Roger http://www.rogerlapin.co.uk Where they land http://www.google.de/imgres?imgurl=http://www.rogerlapin.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/map-of-cornwall.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.rogerlapin.co.uk/magician-cornwall-magicians-hire-cornwall&h=904&w=1000&sz=167&tbnid=9GFlDv3BTz4ikM:&tbnh=99&tbnw=110&zoom=1&usg=__-b4bUYWREU_wAy2M04LrsrkzZpw=&docid=AUFmzso0arbGDM&sa=X&ei=HLZ2UpGYDMrY0QWXp4D4Dg&ved=0CEgQ9QEwAw&dur=2958
Technical SEO | | rnperki0 -
Quality Issues: My blog is blocked on Google Search Engine
Hi Webmasters, I got an email from google team. The email is included below. **Google Webmaster Tools: Quality Issues on http://abcdblogger.com/**August 8, 2012 Dear site owner or webmaster of http://abcdblogger.com/, We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines. If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see ourWebmaster Help Forum for support. Sincerely, Google Search Quality Team My blog is completely blocked on Google Search engine. I removed all existing posts and reinstalled a fresh version of wordpress and wrote a good article. I redirected all broken links my homepage with a 301. After making those changes I submitted a reconsideration request to Google, But they declined it. I doubt that the reason for blocking could be due to the backlinks pointing to my domain. I think Google's Disavow Tool help me to remove low quality backlinks, But how can I sort low quality backlinks using Opensite Explorer? If possible can you create a text file with all possible low quality links, So that I could submit it using Google Disavow Tool. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | hafiskani0 -
Google local listings
im working with gutter installation company, and we're ranking for all the top keywords in google. the only thing that we're not ranking for is for the map results, for the keyword "gutter ma" since we're located in Springfield ma, i thing Google considers certain areas from Boston, because its more center of Massachusetts, What can i do to improve my rankings in maps for this keyword, because i know it wont work with PO box since i need to confirm an address? Thanks
Technical SEO | | vladraush990 -
Noindex Pages indexed
I'm having problem that gogole is index my search results pages even though i have added the "noindex" metatag. Is the best thing to block the robot from crawling that file using robots.txt?
Technical SEO | | Tedred0