Google & Bing not indexing a Joomla Site properly....
-
Can someone explain the following to me please.
The background:
I launched a new website - new domain with no history. I added the domain to my Bing webmaster tools account, verified the domain and submitted the XML sitemap at the same time. I added the domain to my Google analytics account and link webmaster tools and verified the domain - I was NOT asked to submit the sitemap or anything. The site has only 10 pages.
The situation:
The site shows up in bing when I search using site:www.domain.com - Pages indexed:- 1 (the home page) The site shows up in google when I search using site:www.domain.com - Pages indexed:- 30 Please note Google found 30 pages - the sitemap and site only has 10 pages - I have found out due to the way the site has been built that there are "hidden" pages i.e. A page displaying half of a page as it is made up using element in Joomla.
My questions:-
1. Why does Bing find 1 page and Google find 30 - surely Bing should at least find the 10 pages of the site as it has the sitemap? (I suspect I know the answer but I want other peoples input).
2. Why does Google find these hidden elements - Whats the best way to sort this - controllnig the htaccess or robots.txt OR have the programmer look into how Joomla works more to stop this happening.
3. Any Joomla experts out there had the same experience with "hidden" pages showing when you type site:www.domain.com into Google.
I will look forward to your input!
-
Thanks Ryan -
1. I thought as much with Bing but wanted to see other people thoughts - I will hunt around for the submit in webmaster tools. It begs the obvious question what's better quality (bing being selective) or quantity (google analysing it all and deciding for its self).... To be debated at length! lol
2 & 3. W3C no errors
and no css errors either..... I think it is the way we put the pages together using modules and laying them out via css - we employ our own coder. I don't really want to broadcast clients sites on forums etc.... But I am looking to improve to ensure we are doing things right - if something is not right we need to do it again and get it right. I don't want to get a rep for bad quality and bad work.
-
** Why does Bing find 1 page and Google find 30 **
Bing is much more selective then Google when it comes to indexing a site. Additionally, Bing takes longer as well. That has always been my experience but if others feel differently feel free to share.
Bing does has a way for you to manually submit all 10 pages. From the Bing Dashboard choose CONFIGURE > Submit URL, then enter each URL. By submitting the URL in this manner you can be certain Bing sees all your site's pages.
To be clear, Bing may crawl the page and choose not to index it. Bing also many index a page then later choose to drop it from their index. Bing has high quality standards related to content and various trust factors.
Why does Google find these hidden elements - Whats the best way to sort this - controllnig the htaccess or robots.txt OR have the programmer look into how Joomla works more to stop this happening.
Who built your site? Did you have a "random" developer build it? Or a professional Joomla developer who focuses only on building Joomla sites? How much experience does your developer have with the particular version of Joomla being used (likely 2.5 or 3.0)? Since you did not share your URL, the best I can offer is general advice. Try going using the HTML code validator from W3C. If you see dozens of errors then the site was not cleanly coded and you may have various issues.
I generally do not advice using robots.txt to block elements as they may still be crawled. I would need to view the site to offer more targeted advice.
Any Joomla experts out there had the same experience with "hidden" pages showing when you type site:www.domain.com into Google.
It can easily happen and typically occurs when a developer's focus is delivering the site rather then SEO. A developer's focus is typically satisfying you, their client, which is not unreasonable. Your requests likely focused on the appearance of the site and it's main functionality. It takes a lot more time and effort to developer an SEO optimized site when compared to a "regular" site.
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
-
Google Only Indexing Canonical Root URL Instead of Specified URL Parameters
We just launched a website about 1 month ago and noticed that Google was indexing, but not displaying, URLs with "?location=" parameters such as: http://www.castlemap.com/local-house-values/?location=great-falls-virginia and http://www.castlemap.com/local-house-values/?location=mclean-virginia. Instead, Google has only been displaying our root URL http://www.castlemap.com/local-house-values/ in its search results -- which we don't want as the URLs with specific locations are more important and each has its own unique list of houses for sale. We have Yoast setup with all of these ?location values added in our sitemap that has successfully been submitted to Google's Sitemaps: http://www.castlemap.com/buy-location-sitemap.xml I also tried going into the old Google Search Console and setting the "location" URL Parameter to Crawl Every URL with the Specifies Effect enabled... and I even see the two URLs I mentioned above in Google's list of Parameter Samples... but the pages are still not being added to Google. Even after Requesting Indexing again after making all of these changes a few days ago, these URLs are still displaying as Allowing Indexing, but Not On Google in the Search Console and not showing up on Google when I manually search for the entire URL. Why are these pages not showing up on Google and how can we get them to display? Only solution I can think of would be to set our main /local-house-values/ page to noindex in order to have Google favor all of our other URL parameter versions... but I'm guessing that's probably not a good solution for multiple reasons.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nitruc0 -
Google does not index image sitemap
Hi, we put an image sitemap in the searchconsole/webmastertools http://www.sillasdepaseo.es/sillasdepaseo/sitemap-images.xml it contains only the indexed products and all images on the pages. We also claimed the CDN in the searchconsole http://media.sillasdepaseo.es/ It has been 2 weeks now, Google indexes the pages, but not the images. What can we do? Thanks in advance. Dieter Lang
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Storesco0 -
Moving a lot of pdfs to main site. Worth trying to get them indexed?
On my main site we link to pdfs that are located on another one of our domains. The only thing that is on this other domain is the pdfs. It was setup really poorly so I am going to redesign everything and probably move it. Is it worthwhile trying to add these pdfs to our sitemap and to try and get them indexed? They are all connected to a current item, but the content is original.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
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 -
Can Google index PDFs with flash?
Does anyone know if Google can index PDF with Flash embedded? I would assume that the regular flash recommendations are still valid, even when embedded in another document. I would assume there is a list of the filetype and version which Google can index with the search appliance, but was not able to find any. Does anyone have a link or a list?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andreas.wpv0 -
Google Places & Multiple Listings
Our client used to have a listing in each city, but after updating the addresses they were forever under review. Google said that businesses serving customers at their locations can only list their primary office. Back when this client had multiple city listings, all addresses but one were UPS boxes. If they are to change back to "No, all customers come to the business location," can they once again submit a listing for each city using these addresses? Yes, I realize they are UPS boxes, but they insist on being listed for each city.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | elcrazyhorse0 -
Will Google penalize a site that had many links pointing to it with utm codes?
I want to track conversions using utm parameters from guest blog posts on sites other than my own site. Will Google penalize my site for having a bunch of external articles pointing to one page with unique anchor text but utm code? e.g. mysite.com/seo-text?utm_campaign=guest-blogs
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wepayinc0 -
Migrating a site from a standalone site to a subdivision of large .gov.uk site
The scenario We’ve been asked by a client, a Non-Government Organisation who are being absorbed by a larger government ministry, for help with the SEO of their site. They will be going from a reasonably large standalone site to a small sub-directory on a high authority government site and they want some input on how best to maintain their rankings. They will be going from the Number 1 ranked site in their niche (current site domainRank 59) to being a sub directory on a domainRank 100 site). The current site will remain, but as a members only resource, behind a paywall. I’ve been checking to see the impact that it had on a related site, but that one has put a catch all 302 redirect on it’s pages so is losing the benefit of a it’s historical authority. My thoughts Robust 301 redirect set up to pass as much benefit as possible to the new pages. Focus on rewriting content to promote most effective keywords – would suggest testing of titles, meta descriptions etc but not sure how often they will be able to edit the new site. ‘We have moved’ messaging going out to webmasters of existing linking sites to try to encourage as much revision of linking as possible. Development of link-bait to try and get the new pages seen. Am I going about this the right way? Thanks in advance. Phil
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smrs-digital0