Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Googlebot being redirected but not users?
-
Hi,
We seem to have a slightly odd issue.
We noticed that a number of our location category pages were slipping off 1 page, and onto page 2 in our niche. On inspection, we noticed that our Arizona page had started ranking in place of a number of other location pages - Cali, Idaho, NJ etc. Weirdly, the pages they had replaced were no longer indexed, and would remain so, despite being fetched, tweeted etc.
One test was to see when the dropped out pages had been last crawled, or at least cached. When conducting the 'cache:domain.com/category/location' on these pages, we were getting 301 redirected to, you guessed it, the Arizona page. Very odd. However, the dropped out pages were serving 200 OK when run through header checker tools, screaming frog etc.
On the face of it, it would seem Googlebot is getting redirected when it is hitting a number of our key location pages, but users are not. Has anyone experienced anything like this? The theming of the pages are quite different in terms of content, meta etc.
Thanks.
-
Can anyone offer any insight on this? The issue shows no sign of improving, and our organic is tanking.
If this really is an issue on Google's side, and it appears based on our technical set up, how can I force Google to take note and reindex the pages?
Here are some more examples, from across a number of categories..
Category A:
Page that has dropped out of index: https://goo.gl/KEQ8Yh
Cached version of that page: https://goo.gl/DPzFWMPage that has dropped out of index: https://goo.gl/5KiQ4s Cached version of that page: https://goo.gl/myRWNg Category B: Page that has dropped out of index: https://goo.gl/pr3YQs
Cached version of that page: https://goo.gl/8SEYi5 Page that has dropped out of index: https://goo.gl/LqzDrg
Cached version of that page: https://goo.gl/iwPs45 Category
Page that has dropped out of index: https://goo.gl/YBZS7c Cached version of that page:https://goo.gl/n33QzG Page that has dropped out of index: https://goo.gl/Ht4gfO
Cached version of that page: https://goo.gl/u81vbA -
Weirdly, at the time this seemed to correct itself overnight without any fixes our end. However 6 months on and it has happened again... Only this time, all location pages have dropped out of index, but latest cache versions all redirect to the Kansas page.
Have checked log files for these relevant URLs, and all show 200 (and being crawled regularly). When you fetch them in SC the show as complete, and they are all still indexed in Bing.
Very confused!
-
Hi Nicola,
Have you checked your canonical tags to be sure that they are pointing to the correct URL? Sometimes with storefront pages people just copy/paste the same HTML, swapping out the contact information. But maybe they forgot to update the canonical tags?
Keep us updated!
-
Thanks for advice Chris. Have checked, and can't see any issues with htaccess or robots seem. A very strange one indeed!
-
Hi Anthony,
Desktop returns 200, whilst mobile returns a 302 to the mDOT site.
Thanks.
-
Hi Nicola,
Sounds like a very strange one indeed. I can't say I've ever heard of Google giving a redirect when other 3rd party crawlers give you a 200.
My only suggestion to begin the troubleshooting would be to have a look at your htaccess and maybe Robots to see if there are any directives in there addressing Google specifically.
Anthony's suggestion is also a great idea. At least you'll see what Google is picking up on those pages right now rather what they saw last time it was cached.
-
You mention these pages are returning 200 in SEO tools, but would you please share what are these URLs are returning when you Fetch as Googlebot in Google Search Console? Test it in both desktop and mobile versions.
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
-
301 Redirect in breadcrumb. How bad is it?
Hi all, How bad is it to have a link in the breadcrumb that 301 redirects? We had to create some hidden category pages in our ecommerce platform bigcommerce to create a display on our category pages in a certain format. Though whilst the category page was set to not visable in bigcommerce admin the URL still showed in the live site bread crumb. SO, we set a 301 redirect on it so it didnt produce a 404. However we have lost a lot of SEO ground the past few months. could this be why? is it bad to have a 301 redirect in the breadrcrumb.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | oceanstorm0 -
Does Google Index URLs that are always 302 redirected
Hello community Due to the architecture of our site, we have a bunch of URLs that are 302 redirected to the same URL plus a query string appended to it. For example: www.example.com/hello.html is 302 redirected to www.example.com/hello.html?___store=abc The www.example.com/hello.html?___store=abc page also has a link canonical tag to www.example.com/hello.html In the above example, can www.example.com/hello.html every be Indexed, by google as I assume the googlebot will always be redirected to www.example.com/hello.html?___store=abc and will never see www.example.com/hello.html ? Thanks in advance for the help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommRulz0 -
Too many 301 redirects?
Hey, My company currently has one chief website with about 500-600 other domains that all feature the same material as the chief website. These domains have been around for about 5 years and have actually picked up some link traffic. I have all of these identical web-pages utilizing rel=canonical but I was wondering if I would be better served, from SEO purposes, to 301 redirect all of these sites to their respective pages on our chief website? If I add 500 301 redirects, will the major search engines consider this to be black-hat link-building even though the sites are related and technically already feature the same content? For an example, the chief website is www.1099pro.com and I would 301 redirect the below sites to the chief site: 1099softwarepro.com 1099softwarepro.info 1099softwarepro.net 1099softwarepro.biz 1099softwareprofessionals.com 1099softwareprofessionals.info ...you get the point
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Stew2220 -
Redirecting non www site
Hello Ladies and Gentlemen. I 100% agree with the redirecting of the non www domain name. After all we see so many times, especially in MOZ how the two different domains contain different links, different DA and of course different PA. So I have posed the question to our IT company, "How would we go about redirecting our non www domain to the www version?", "Where would we do that?", " we cant do the redirect on our webserver because the website is listed as an IP address, not a domain name, so would we do the redirect somewhere at GoDaddy?" who is currently maintain our DNS record So here is the response from IT: " I would setup a CNAME record in DNS (GoDaddy), such that no matter if you go to the bare domain, or the www, you end up in the same place. As for SEO, having a 301 redirect for your bare domain isn't necessary, because both the bare domain and the www are the same domain. 301 is a redirect for "permanently moved" and is common when you change domain names. Using the bare domain or the www are NOT DIFFERENT DOMAINS, so the 301 would not be accurate, and you'd be telling engines you've moved, when you haven't - which may negatively impact your rank. It sounds to me that IT is NOT recommending the redirect. How can this be? Or are we talking about two different things? Will the redirect cause the melt down as the IT company suggests? Or do they nut understand SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Davenport-Tractor0 -
.htaccess 301 Redirect Help! Specific Redirects and Blanket Rule
Hi there, I have the following domains: OLD DOMAIN: domain1.co.uk NEW DOMAIN: domain2.co.uk I need to create a .htaccess file that 301 redirects specific, individual pages on domain1.co.uk to domain2.co.uk I've searched for hours to try and find a solution, but I can't find anything that will do what I need. The pages on domain1.co.uk are all kinds of filenames and extensions, but they will be redirected to a Wordpress website that has a clean folder structure. Some example URL's to be redirected from the old website: http://www.domain1.co.uk/charitypage.php?charity=357 http://www.domain1.co.uk/adopt.php http://www.domain1.co.uk/register/?type=2 These will need to be redirected to the following URL types on the new domain: http://www.domain2.co.uk/charities/ http://www.domain2.co.uk/adopt/ http://www.domain2.co.uk/register/ I would also like a blanket/catch-all redirect from anything else on www.domain1.co.uk to the homepage of www.domain2.co.uk if there isn't a specific individual redirect in place. I'm literally tearing my hair out with this, so any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Townpages0 -
Moving Content To Another Website With No Redirect?
I've got a website that has lots of valuable content and tools but it's been hit too hard by both Panda and Penguin. I came to the conclusion that I'd be better off with a new website as this one is going to hell no matter how much time and money I put in it. Had I started a new website the first time it got hit by Penguin, I'd be profitable today. I'd like to move some of that content to this other domain but I don't want to do 301 redirects as I don't want to pass bad link juice. I know I'll lose all links and visitors to the original website but I don't care. My only concern is duplicate content. I was thinking of setting the pages to noindex on the original website and wait until they don't appear in Google's index. Then I'd move them over to the new domain to be indexed again. Do you see any problem with this? Should I rewrite everything instead? I hate spinning content...!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault741 -
Redirecting index.html to the root
Hi, I was wondering if there is a safe way to consolidate link juice on a single version of a home page. I find incoming links to my site that link to both mysite.com/ and mysite.com/index.html. I've decided to go with mysite.com/ as my main and only URL for the site and now I'd like to transfer all link juice from mysite.com/index.html to mysite.com/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | romanbond
When i tried 301 redirect from index.html to the root it created an indefinite loop, of course. I know I can use a RewriteRule.., but will it transfer the juice?? Please help!7 -
Keyword-Rich Domains - Redirect?
Hi, Mozzers- I have a client that has a bunch of pretty nice keyword-rich domain names. Their traffic and rankings are good. They provide legal services in the Chicago area. I have lots of good content that I could use to start a blog using a domain like keyword,keyword-blog.com. Good idea? Currently I have a resources area on their website but feel like this area could be getting a little bloated and some news-related stuff isn't really appropriate. 2 Questions: Should I use one of the decent domains for a blog and build up the rankings, traffic, and link to the main site? Or is this lots of work for little payout? Both sites would be hosted in the cloud. Some of the domain names are related to their name, others are keyword or geo-targeted. Would it be wise to setup 301 redirects going to their website? Pros/cons? If you need additional info, please PM me for details. Thank you, friends! LHC
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lhc670
