Google Index Status Falling Fast - What should I be considering?
-
Hi Folks,
Working on an ecommerce site. I have found a month on month fall in the Index Status continuing since late 2015. This has resulted in around 80% of pages indexed according to Webmaster.
I do not seem to have any bad links or server issues. I am in the early stages of working through, updating content and tags but am yet to see a slowing of the fall.
If anybody has tips on where to look for to issues or insight to resolve this I would really appreciate it.
Thanks everybody!
Tim
-
Hi dude, thank you so much for taking time to look at this site. It is really kind of you. I will be taking a look at all the points raised over the next week to see what we can achieve. Thanks, Tim
-
Thank you for taking so much time to look at our site. I really appreciate it. I will dig in to the points to see what we can achieve. Thanks again, Tim
-
Thanks dude, I will take a look at this. Really appreciate you taking time to respond.
-
Hi Tim,
I agree with Laura on the canonical tags. I've worked on several large Magento sites and I've never seen any issue with the way Magento handles it - by canonicalizing product URLs to the root directory.
In fact, I actually prefer this was over assigning a product to a 'primary' category and using that as the canonical.
As Laura said, a reduction in the total number of indexed pages might actually be a really big positive here! More pages indexed does not mean it's better. If they are low quality/duplicate pages that have been removed from index, that's a really good thing.
I did find some issues with your robots.txt file:
- Disallow: /media/ - should be removed because it's blocking images from being crawled (this is a default Magento thing and they should remove it!)
- Disallow: /? - this basically means that any URLs containing a ? will not be crawled and with the way pagination is setup on the site, this means that any pages after 1 are not being crawled.
This could be impacting how many product pages you have indexed - which would definitely be a bad thing! You would obviously want your product pages to be crawled and indexed.
Solution: I would leave Disallow: /? in robots.txt because it stops a product filter URLs being crawled, but I would add the following line:
Allow: */?p=
This line will allow your paginated pages to be crawled, which will also allow products linked from those pages to be crawled.
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
David
-
I would be interested in seeing examples of where this has happened. Were the canonical tags added after the URLs were already indexed or were the canonicals in place when the site launched?
-
However, the canonical is only an advisory tag. I've had few cases where people have relied on their canonical tag when their site has numerous product url types (as above with category in the url and just product url) which has many references to these different urls elsewhere (onsite and offsite) and they are now indexed as both versions, which is not always ideal. It also means that reporting tools such as Screaming Frog only show the true URLs on the site. It's also saving crawl budget as it doesn't have to crawl the category produced url and the canonical url.
Whilst it's not a major issue, it's something I would look at changing.
-
If I understand you correctly, you are referring to the following two URLs:
https://www.symectech.com/epos-systems/customer-displays/pole-mounting-kit-94591.html
https://www.symectech.com/pole-mounting-kit-94614.html
Both of these have the same canonical referenced, which is https://www.symectech.com/pole-mounting-kit-94614.html.
It doesn't matter what actually shows in the address box. For the purposes of indexation, what matters is what is referenced in the canonical tag.
.
-
What I've suggested will be avoiding these duplicate urls? Here's some actual examples, going via a tier two category I get the following product url:
https://www.symectech.com/epos-systems/customer-displays/pole-mounting-kit-94591.html
With a canonical of:
https://www.symectech.com/pole-mounting-kit-94614.html
Yet when going from https://www.symectech.com/epos-systems/?limit=32&p=2 (a tier 1 category) I get the canonical url.
So if there are products listed in multiple tier two categories then that's multiple urls for the same product. With the suggestion I made, there would only be one variation of this product url (the canonical)
-
A reduction in the number of pages indexed does not necessarily mean something is wrong. In fact, it could mean that something is right, especially if your rankings are improving.
How are you determining that only 80% of pages are indexed? Can you provide a specific URL that is not being indexed?
If you made changes to your canonical tag, robots.txt , or meta robots tag, these could all cause a reduction in the number of pages being indexed.
-
The canonicals appear to be set up correctly, and I would not advise listing the product URLs as their canonicals in the category as suggested above. That will create duplicate URLs with the same content, which is exactly what canonical tags are designed to avoid.
-
Just going through Laura's list as a checklist for ones that are applicable:
- Have you checked your robots.txt file or page-level meta robots tag to see if you are blocking or noindexing anything?
Nothing that I can see, that's causing a major issue.
- Is it a large site? If so, check for issues that may affect crawl budget.
The main thing I can see is that the product urls and canonicals are different, is there anyway of listing the product urls as their canonical versions in the category?
-
<a name="_GoBack"></a>Sorry for the delay in response. Website is symectech.com
We have fixed various issues including a noindex issue earlier this year but our index status is continuing to fall. However, the ranking seems to be improving week on week according to MOZ. Thanks.
Tim
-
Just to echo what Laura has said, if you can share a URL that would be great so we can help you get to the source of the problem.
Try running a tool like screamingfrog (https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/) to check the issues above that Laura has mentioned, as doing a lot of those by hand can be quite time consuming.
Also, do you have a drop in rankings with your pages falling out the index?
-
Any chance you can share the URL? That would make it much easier for someone to help in this forum. Without the URL, I can offer a few diagnostic questions.
- Have the number of pages on the site remained the same and pages are being removed from the index? Or have you added more content, but the percentage in the index has decreased?
- Have you checked your robots.txt file or page-level meta robots tag to see if you are blocking or noindexing anything?
- Have you submitted an XML sitemap? If so, check the XML sitemap to make sure what's being submitted should be indexed. It's possible to submit a sitemap that includes noindexed pages, especially with some automated tools.
- Is it a large site? If so, check for issues that may affect crawl budget.
- Have you changed any canonical tags?
- Have you used the Fetch as Google tool to diagnose a specific URL?
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
-
Will disallowing URL's in the robots.txt file stop those URL's being indexed by Google
I found a lot of duplicate title tags showing in Google Webmaster Tools. When I visited the URL's that these duplicates belonged to, I found that they were just images from a gallery that we didn't particularly want Google to index. There is no benefit to the end user in these image pages being indexed in Google. Our developer has told us that these urls are created by a module and are not "real" pages in the CMS. They would like to add the following to our robots.txt file Disallow: /catalog/product/gallery/ QUESTION: If the these pages are already indexed by Google, will this adjustment to the robots.txt file help to remove the pages from the index? We don't want these pages to be found.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath0 -
Google Is Indexing The Wrong Page For My Keyword
For a long time (almost 3 mounth) google indexing the wrong page for my main keyword.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tiedemann_Anselm
The problem is that each time google indexed another page each time for a period of 4-7 days, Sometimes i see the home page, sometimes a category page and sometimes a product page.
It seems though Google has not yet decided what his favorite / better page for this keyword. This is the pages google index: (In most cases you can find the site on the second or third page) Main Page: http://bit.ly/19fOqDh Category Page: http://bit.ly/1ebpiRn Another Category: http://bit.ly/K3MZl4 Product Page: http://bit.ly/1c73B1s All links I get to the website are natural links, therefore in most cases the anchor we got is the website name. In addition I have many links I get from bloggers that asked to do a review on one of my products, I'm very careful about that and so I'm always checking the blogger and their website only if it is something good, I allowed it. also i never ask for a link back (must of the time i receive without asking), and as I said, most of their links are anchor with my website name. Here some example of links that i received from bloggers: http://bit.ly/1hF0pQb http://bit.ly/1a8ogT1 http://bit.ly/1bqqRr8 http://bit.ly/1c5QeC7 http://bit.ly/1gXgzXJ Please Can I get a recommendation what should you do?
Should I try to change the anchor of the link?
Do I need to not allow bloggers to make a review on my products? I'd love to hear what you recommend,
Thanks for the help0 -
WMT Index Status - Possible Duplicate Content
Hi everyone. A little background: I have a website that is 3 years old. For a period of 8 months I was in the top 5 for my main targeted keyword. I seemed to have survived the man eating panda but not so sure about the blood thirsty penguin. Anyway; my homepage, along with other important pages, have been wiped of the face of Google's planet. First I got rid of some links that may not have been helping and disavowed them. When this didn't work I decided to do a complete redesign of my site with better content, cleaner design, removed ads (only had 1) and incorporated social integration. This has had no effect at all. I filed a reconsideration request and was told that I have NOT had any manual spam penalties made against me, by the way I never received any warning messages in WMT. SO, what could be the problem? Maybe it's duplicate content? In WMT the Index Status indicates that there are 260 pages indexed. However; I have only 47 pages in my sitemap and when I do a site: search on Google it only retrieves 44 pages. So what are all these other pages? Before I uploaded the redesign I removed all the current pages from the index and cache using the remove URL tool in WMT. I should mention that I have a blog on Blogger that is linked to a subdomain on my hosting account i.e. http://blog.mydomain.co.uk. Are the blog posts counted as pages on my site or on Blogger's servers? Ahhhh this is too complicated lol Any help will be much appreciated! Many thanks, Mark.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nortski0 -
Which index page should I canonical to?
Hello! I'm doing a routine clean up of my code and had a question about the canonical tag. On the index page, I have the following: I have never put any thought into which index path is the best to use. http://www.example.com http://www.example.com/ http://www.example.com/index.php Could someone shed some light on this for me? Does it make a difference? Thanks! Ryan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ryan_Phillips1 -
Adding Orphaned Pages to the Google Index
Hey folks, How do you think Google will treat adding 300K orphaned pages to a 4.5 million page site. The URLs would resolve but there would be no on site navigation to those pages, Google would only know about them through sitemap.xmls. These pages are super low competition. The plot thickens, what we are really after is to get 150k real pages back on the site, these pages do have crawlable paths on the site but in order to do that (for technical reasons) we need to push these other 300k orphaned pages live (it's an all or nothing deal) a) Do you think Google will have a problem with this or just decide to not index some or most these pages since they are orphaned. b) If these pages will just fall out of the index or not get included, and have no chance of ever accumulating PR anyway since they are not linked to, would it make sense to just noindex them? c) Should we not submit sitemap.xml files at all, and take our 150k and just ignore these 300k and hope Google ignores them as well since they are orhpaned? d) If Google is OK with this maybe we should submit the sitemap.xmls and keep an eye on the pages, maybe they will rank and bring us a bit of traffic, but we don't want to do that if it could be an issue with Google. Thanks for your opinions and if you have any hard evidence either way especially thanks for that info. 😉
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | irvingw0 -
Is Google mad at me for redirecting...?
Hi, I have an e-commerce website that sells unique items (one of a kind). We have hundreds of items and the items are rapidly sold. Up till now I kept the sold items under our "sold items" section but it started to get back at me as we have more "sold" than non sold and we are having duplication problems (the items are quite similar besides to sizes etc.). What should we do? Should we redirect 100 pages each week? Will Google be upset with that? (for driving it crazy) Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
Should I prevent Google from indexing blog tag and category pages?
I am working on a website that has a regularly updated Wordpress blog and am unsure whether or not the category and tag pages should be indexable. The blog posts are often outranked by the tag and category pages and they are ultimately leaving me with a duplicate content issue. With this in mind, I assumed that the best thing to do would be to remove the tag and category pages from the index, but after speaking to someone else about the issue, I am no longer sure. I have tried researching online, but there isn't anything that provided any further information. Please can anyone with any experience of dealing with issues like this or with any knowledge of the topic help me to resolve this annoying issue. Any input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PaulRogers0 -
What are the different tactics for getting ranked/ included in Google finance searches such as http://www.google.com/finance/company_news?q=NASDAQ:ADBE
I don't know what ranking factors they are using for this feed. The results vary greatly from a search done at google.com or google.com/news and google.com/finance I'm working with a website that regularly publishes finance-related news and currently gets traffic from google finance. I'm wondering what we can do to optimize our news articles to possibly show more prominently or more often. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joemascaro0