Ranking gone for the original page and a shortened url ranks instead.
-
Hi Experts!!! Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year In Advance.
I am been facing a issue with a few of my SERP results for "Singapore Visa" and related keyword. Until last to last Saturday i.e 16th December, I ranked for Singapore visa keyword with this url https://in.musafir.com/Visa/singapore-visa.aspx !!! But since 18th December I am ranking for "Singapore Visa" keyword with this url and message below it in place of description.
Singapore visa - Musafir.com
go.musafir.com/Singapore-visa
No information is available for this page.
Learn whyThe go.musafir.com/Singapore-visa redirects to https://in.musafir.com/Visa/singapore-visa.aspx with some UTM parameters. The URL go.musafir.com/Singapore-visa is a shortened URL which was used for SMS marketing and all of a sudden Google has picked it in SERP instead of Singapore VIsa Landing Page.
The Singapore visa Main page is not blocked by Robots.txt file.
Please help me to resolve this.
-
For my own understanding should you or should you not disallow the google ?gclid= parameter?
Timo
-
That was quick - good job!
P.
-
Hey Thompson!!! The idea worked. And the original ranking is back. Thanks a ton.
-
Great! Happy to help. And yea, do let us know how the adjustments work out.
And thank you for the wonderful wishes - very much appreciated. Wishing you a rewarding 2018 too!
Paul
-
Thanks Thompson.
This answers my question. Will update the suggested changes and will keep you posted if this works. Have a great end to the old year and wishing you lots of success and peace in new year.
-
Your robots.txt is actually the issue in this case, Sainath. (The giveaway is that No information is available for this page text, which is the standard response on Google for a page that is blocked by robots.txt.)
The problem is that your robots.txt is blocking all URLs that contain UTM parameters . Since the shortened URL is redirecting to a site page URL which contains UTM parameters (https://in.musafir.com/Visa/Singapore-Visa.aspx?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=youtube_channel&utm_campaign=Singapore_visa_video) and is therefore blocked from crawling, Google can't properly crawl/discover the actual destination page and its real URL and meta-description via this link, so it continues to return the only info it has available - the shortened URL and the blocked-description warning.
Your site is already protected from issues with UTM parameter URLs because it has properly implemented self-referential canonical tags, which is the correct way to deal with them. You should remove the robots.txt blocks for all those parameters (especially including the gclid - I suspect that's causing issues with our Adwords Quality Score). This way, the search engine will be able to properly understand each stage of the redirect you've created and index the proper URL and meta-description
In short - those parameter blocks in your robots.txt file are causing multiple issues for your site, without doing anything beneficial.
Does that make sense?
Paul
-
What at first seems to be inexplicable, appear possible causes.
First a pop up, which Google penalizes since last February.
Secondly, despite the chain of redirects, the second page has better PA and mR.
Hope this helps. Good luck!Mª Verónica
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
-
Website have Caching/Indexing / Ranking Issue
Hi, My Website (https://www.v3cars.com) is not cached or indexed on regular basic from last 15 days. before this it was cached or indexed on regular basic. We are uploading fresh content on daily basic. Currently my new content is not ranked anywhere in Google even after cached or indexed. Please help and suggest. Sandeep - Love to Cars
Algorithm Updates | | onlinesandeep0 -
Does the more number of ranking pages improve the website ranking?
Hi all, Let's say there is a website with 100 pages ad 95 pages are not ranking for any keywords; but the other 5 pages including homepage are ranking for some keywords. In this scenario, the 95% non-ranking pages does impact the other 5% pages rankings? Or every page holds their credibility in ranking irrespective of other pages in website? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Is user engagement a ranking signal?
Read something about user engagement might be a signal that Google uses, along with links and on-site optimisation, to decide if a search result goes up or down. What should I believe and what are the developments in this field?
Algorithm Updates | | MozzieJr0 -
Page 2 to page 1
I've found a lot of times it does not take much activity to get a keyword from ranking on page 3 of Google or further down to page 2 but there seems to be a hurdle from page 2 to page 1. It is very frustrating to be between 11 and 15 but not being able to make that push to 9 or 10. Has anyone got or seen any data to justifiy this?
Algorithm Updates | | S_Curtis0 -
Does Google or Bing use words in the page title beyond the displayed limit for ranking purposes?
Standard good practice for on-page SEO includes keeping page title length below the maximum that Google displays in the SERPs. But words in the title beyond that maximum can be indexed, even if they don't show in the SERPs for end users. For ranking purposes, is there any value in words beyond the character limit in page titles that are truncated in the SERPs?
Algorithm Updates | | KyleJB0 -
Decent rankings in Google, nothing in Bing and Yahoo
Hi there, I'm in the process of SEOing a site in a very competitive sector, the short term loans market. The URL for the site is http://www.piggy-bank.co.uk. I've managed to get a fair bit of success in Google for some very competitive keywords like short term loans, short term lender etc but in Bing and Yahoo I'm having no luck at all, with only 2 visits in the past month and no decent rankings!! I think I'm doing everything right, with regular new content on the site, decent technical SEO, semantic site structure, regular site map upload, a 10 year old domain, holistic link building through guest blogging etc, but still no luck at all. Looking at the webmaster tools in Bing, 95% of the URLs are indexed, but I'm getting such a low impression count, and obviously, an even lower click through. Am I missing something really obvious? Does anyone have any suggestions to improve my Bing and Yahoo rankings? I've worked on 100s of other sites and Yahoo and Bing tend to be the easy win to make the client happy 😉 Thanks in advance for your help. Dan
Algorithm Updates | | djslimited1 -
What do you think Google analyzes for SERP ranking?
I've been doing some research trying to figure out how the Google algorithm works. The one thing that is constant is that nothing is constant. This makes me believe that Google takes a variable that all sites have and divides it by that number. One example would be taking the load time in MS and dividing it by the total number or points the website scored. This would give all of the websites a random appearance since there that variable would throw off all the other constants. I'm going to continue doing research but I was wondering what you guys think matters in the Google Algorithm. -Shane
Algorithm Updates | | Seoperior0 -
Can Google display a diffrent page title?
Hi if I search google UK for the phrase car leasing, google returns my listing as Car Lease Deals However the same search on Yahoo or Bing bring back Contract Hire | Vehicle & Car Leasing Deals | Car Lease Deals this is the real page title. Why would this happen? Thanks Andy
Algorithm Updates | | First-VehicleLeasing0