Google de-indexed a page on my site
-
I have a site which is around 9 months old. For most search terms we rank fine (including top 3 rankings for competitive terms).
Recently one of our pages has been fluctuating wildly in the rankings and has now disappeared altogether from the rankings for over 1 week.
As a test I added a similar page to one of my other sites and it ranks fine.
I've checked webmaster tools and there is nothing of note there.
I'm not really sure what to do at this stage. Any advice would me much appreciated!
-
Another thing which is weird:
If I google "site:medexpress.co.uk" the page /clinics/erectile-dysfunction/viagra appears.
If I google "site:medexpress.co.uk viagra" that page no longer appears!
I could see why my page would have maybe dropped in the rankings but to go from a rank of around 30-70 for most of the keywords for this page to dropping off the index points to something more extraordinary. Its been like this for almost two weeks and I'm considering maybe changing the URL (as I mentioned other long-tail optimized blog pages are now starting to rank so it appears to be just this page).
Is it possible this page has been moved to the supplemental index for some reason?
-
Hi,
The domain actually has plenty of links and that page has two very high quality backlinks. The Moz tool for some reason is missing almost all the backlinks. If you use AHREFS it works much better (remembering to use www as the prefix for the domain).
The domain authority is 49 which is much higher than the bulk of sites on there and higher than the site in position number #1 which has somehow managed to rank with almost no backlinks (it has less than 20) or any quality content.
Whats even weirded I added a page to my other site www.centraltravelclinic.co.uk and it now outranks my main site even though it has less backlinks/relevant content.
There is even a page in my blog section which is now ranking as well.
I'm not sure but it seems as if there is some penalty against this one page...or something has gone wrong on the search index and it has been temporarily removed for whatever reason.
Regards,
Dwayne
-
Hi Everett,
I agree 100% the domain itself has a great name, the lack of domain authority or links undoubtably has taken its toll surprised it ranks for anything the honest without any authority.
A content marketing campaign with high quality content covering the topics he discussed like law, medical care and including tools for the end-user would make it extremely brand worthy.
I think the best way to go about it would be to start a six-month campaign and do some very aggressive work on site.
You have some great advice.
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
Thank you Thomas,
I did have a look at the site and came to the conclusion that it had relatively no domain authority or page/URL-level authority from quality backlinks. The page had no links, and the domain only had a couple, neither of them great. As you mention, this industry is very competitive. It is one of the most competitive niches online.
My recommendation was to embark on a content marketing campaign, possibly one that highlights medical care / law / coverage disparities between countries. The domain itself is very brandable, and if they were to latch onto a hot-topic issue in the right way they could get quoted as experts in that industry by major news outlets, or at least some decent blogs. Meanwhile, steady posting about the lindustry on the blog, occasional white papers or studies created by the company about the the industry... will help build their body of content and present their expertise on the topic. Any tool (calculators, price comparison charts, etc...) would also help. I also mentioned a recommended minimum budget for content creation and paid promotion of it over the next six months.
-
Hi Everett,
There is a good reason for him not not actually posting URL for keywords wants list for.
I think Deelo555 should private message you the information he sent me. They are keywords that are commonly thought of negatively is all I will say.
Deelo555 please send Everett what you sent me.
All the best,
Thomas
-
Deelo555 We'll need more information to be of much help here. Can you post the site and/or the keyword? If not, this is probably going to have to be assisted by private message with someone.
I'd look for over-optimized anchor text or spammy links going into that page just to make sure. From there I would look into whether the content on the page "should" rank for the keyword. In other words, does it answer the query or give the searcher what they are looking for? After that I would move on to general user experience. Does the site look good, trustworthy, authoritative...
Follow that path and you'll probably uncover some things to improve. If not, let us know.
-
I replied to the private message I hope it is helpful.
-
Fluxing sometimes can mean Google is testing your site verse the other competitors for that keyword.
If Google is unable to determine what is the most enjoyed by the end-user so they will allow for you to fluctuate in the SERPS.
If people query your keyword find your site in the SERPS then immediately leave once they have landed on your website. That is called "Pogo sticking" Google is simply trying to find out whether or not you are the best fit for that keyword.
1st off if you could test the site some of the tools below
https://moz.com/researchtools/crawl-test
http://deepcrawl.co.uk/ (Amazing tool)
http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ ( everyone should have a copy I recommend the paid but you can crawl 500 pages for free using SF free addition)
You want to be see what Google bot can see your site can do that using
http://www.feedthebot.com/tools/
Check your Robots.txt using
http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/seo-tools/robots-txt-generator/ ( this will pull the file sometimes there are more than 1 it does happen)
make sure that if you're using WordPress or other similar CMS is that Google bot is not being blocked from seeing J query
The reason for this is Google cannot see the site as it might be shown to the end user therefore they would be less likely to come back & index
https://www.authoritydev.com/dont-block-jquery-from-googlebot/
once we have completed eliminated and chance of robots.txt or no follow / no index then you will want to look at your entire website Very thoroughly.
I do not know how old your domain is could you share its age?
what is your domain authority? what is the page authority of pages not being indexed?
we need to look at all of this before we can render a verdict.
If you're uncomfortable sharing your URL publicly you're welcome to send it to me privately.
what type of URLs are pointing (if any) Internal or external are pointing at your pages that are not indexing.
Sincerely,
Thomas
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 to rank a page on established site quickly
Hi, I'm looking for information about how I can rank an e-commerce category page quickly from a link building perspective. It usually takes me 6-12 months to rank these pages within the top 3 spots with link building, but I would like to get results faster. My site is established for more than 10 years and performs well in Google organic search. Here is what usually works over a 6-12 month time span: 15-40 links within articles on DA 15-60 sites, built within 6-12 months More than 75% of the links are from blogs Variety of anchor text Combination of follow/nofollow Deep links to product pages within the category we're trying to rank Might be important to note that it was easy for us to get category pages listed in DMOZ categories, when it was still around but it didn't seem to play any role in getting ranked faster. Note: We only build links on real sites with real traffic and decent performance metrics. No PBNs or other crap sites. I'd sincerely appreciate it if anyone can make any suggestions or point me towards helpful info. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Choice0 -
Should I use noindex or robots to remove pages from the Google index?
I have a Magento site and just realized we have about 800 review pages indexed. The /review directory is disallowed in robots.txt but the pages are still indexed. From my understanding robots means it will not crawl the pages BUT if the pages are still indexed if they are linked from somewhere else. I can add the noindex tag to the review pages but they wont be crawled. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-do-not-use-noindex-in-robots-txt-20873.html Should I remove the robots.txt and add the noindex? Or just add the noindex to what I already have?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tylerj0 -
How do we decide which pages to index/de-index? Help for a 250k page site
At Siftery (siftery.com) we have about 250k pages, most of them reflected in our sitemap. Though after submitting a sitemap we started seeing an increase in the number of pages Google indexed, in the past few weeks progress has slowed to a crawl at about 80k pages, and in fact has been coming down very marginally. Due to the nature of the site, a lot of the pages on the site likely look very similar to search engines. We've also broken down our sitemap into an index, so we know that most of the indexation problems are coming from a particular type of page (company profiles). Given these facts below, what do you recommend we do? Should we de-index all of the pages that are not being picked up by the Google index (and are therefore likely seen as low quality)? There seems to be a school of thought that de-indexing "thin" pages improves the ranking potential of the indexed pages. We have plans for enriching and differentiating the pages that are being picked up as thin (Moz itself picks them up as 'duplicate' pages even though they're not. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggiaco-siftery0 -
Google indexing only 1 page out of 2 similar pages made for different cities
We have created two category pages, in which we are showing products which could be delivered in separate cities. Both pages are related to cake delivery in that city. But out of these two category pages only 1 got indexed in google and other has not. Its been around 1 month but still only Bangalore category page got indexed. We have submitted sitemap and google is not giving any crawl error. We have also submitted for indexing from "Fetch as google" option in webmasters. www.winni.in/c/4/cakes (Indexed - Bangalore page - http://www.winni.in/sitemap/sitemap_blr_cakes.xml) 2. http://www.winni.in/hyderabad/cakes/c/4 (Not indexed - Hyderabad page - http://www.winni.in/sitemap/sitemap_hyd_cakes.xml) I tried searching for "hyderabad site:www.winni.in" in google but there also http://www.winni.in/hyderabad/cakes/c/4 this link is not coming, instead of this only www.winni.in/c/4/cakes is coming. Can anyone please let me know what could be the possible issue with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abhihan0 -
404 Pages. Can I change it to do this without getting penalized ? I want to lower our bounce rate from these pages to encourage the user to continue on the site
Hi All, We have been streaming our site and got rid of thousands of pages for redundant locations (Basically these used to be virtual locations where we didn't have a depot although we did deliver there and most of them was duplicate/thin content etc ). Most of them have little if any link value and I didn't want to 301 all of them as we already have quite a few 301's already We currently display a 404 page but I want to improve on this. Current 404 page is - http://goo.gl/rFRNMt I can get my developer to change it, so it will still be a 404 page but the user will see the relevant category page instead ? So it will look like this - http://goo.gl/Rc8YP8 . We could also use Java script to show the location name etc... Would be be okay ? or would google see this as cheating. basically I want to lower our bounce rates from these pages but still be attractive enough for the user to continue in the site and not go away. If this is not a good idea, then any recommendations on improving our current 404 would be greatly appreciated. thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Pages getting into Google Index, blocked by Robots.txt??
Hi all, So yesterday we set up to Remove URL's that got into the Google index that were not supposed to be there, due to faceted navigation... We searched for the URL's by using this in Google Search.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
site:www.sekretza.com inurl:price=
site:www.sekretza.com inurl:artists= So it brings up a list of "duplicate" pages, and they have the usual: "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more." So we removed them all, and google removed them all, every single one. This morning I do a check, and I find that more are creeping in - If i take one of the suspecting dupes to the Robots.txt tester, Google tells me it's Blocked. - and yet it's appearing in their index?? I'm confused as to why a path that is blocked is able to get into the index?? I'm thinking of lifting the Robots block so that Google can see that these pages also have a Meta NOINDEX,FOLLOW tag on - but surely that will waste my crawl budget on unnecessary pages? Any ideas? thanks.0 -
Google authorship page versus posrt
I have a wordpress.com blog and have recently set up google authorship (at least I think I have). If I add a new post what happens to the old post in terms of authorship? Is the solution opening a new page for each article? If so does the contribution link in google+ pick up all pages if you only have home link? many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | harddaysgrind1 -
Google Generating its Own Page Titles
Hi There I have a question regarding Google generating its own page titles for some of the pages on my website. I know that Google sometimes takes your H1 tag and uses it as a page title, however, can anyone tell me how I can stop this from happening? Is there a meta tag I can use, for example like the NOODP tag? Or do I have to change my page title? Thanks Sadie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dancape0