Google has deindexed a page it thinks is set to 'noindex', but is in fact still set to 'index'
-
A page on our WordPress powered website has had an error message thrown up in GSC to say it is included in the sitemap but set to 'noindex'. The page has also been removed from Google's search results.
Page is https://www.onlinemortgageadvisor.co.uk/bad-credit-mortgages/how-to-get-a-mortgage-with-bad-credit/
Looking at the page code, plus using Screaming Frog and Ahrefs crawlers, the page is very clearly still set to 'index'. The SEO plugin we use has not been changed to 'noindex' the page.
I have asked for it to be reindexed via GSC but I'm concerned why Google thinks this page was asked to be noindexed.
Can anyone help with this one? Has anyone seen this before, been hit with this recently, got any advice...?
-
@effectdigital and @jasongmcmahon did you ever get to the bottom of this and if so what caused it and what was the long term fix, as GSC and Google seem to behaving in a peculiar way?
We had a similar issue with this page: https://www.simplyadverse.co.uk/bad-credit-mortgage, but after several cache clears and re-indexing/fix requests it indexed fine.
We now have a page on another similar site that is stubbornly refusing to index. Its a new site and other than the a simple domain homepage, all pages when under development had "noindex " on them.
Several pages on the site on launch behaved like this with GSC saying the page was marked as "noindex" but submitted in the sitemap, but when you check to see if indexing was possible GSC says its fine (we'd removed noindex and setup the sitemap) . All crawling tools say its fine, but this page wont index despite repeated attempts over a couple of weeks, all other pages are now fine, but this page won't index: https://simplysl.co.uk/buy-to-let/
Other than they're all mortgage related sites/pages, I can't fathom why one page would be troublesome and all others index OK despite having the same setup and indexing process, any ideas?
-
Thanks, I'll take a look
-
Thanks for going into so much detail, much appreciated.
We've asked Google to reindex it and 'validate the fix', even though we can't find anything to fix!
-
Hi there, check that caching isn; the issues at server & CMS levels. Other than that reindex the page via GSC
-
This is really weird. Really really weird!
As you say, your site's source code seems to confirm that it is set to index. If we look here, we can plainly see that the coding syntax for a no-index directive is "noindex" (all one word).
Let's look at your source code:
Yep, everything seems fine there! But what if a script is modifying your source code and including the directive - and Google's picking up on that?
If we look at the modified source code which I rendered and saved to a file here:
... we can see, there are no problems here either:
Wow - that's really unhelpful!
Let's see what happens if we specifically search Google's live index for the URL:
Interestingly, when we search Google's index for this page, we get this page returned instead.
It makes sense that Google would return that URL if it couldn't return the main URL, as one is nested inside of the other. If everything was healthy, we'd see Google listing both URLs instead of just one of them. Even if you edit my index query to remove the trailing slash, you still only get the nested URL (not the one you want to be showing, which is at a slightly higher-up level)
Another thought I had was, hmm maybe this is a canonical tag gone rogue. That bore no fruit either, as this page (which you want to index, yet won't) canonicals to this page - and both of those URLs are exactly the same. As such, it's obvious that we can't blame the canonical tag either! I even viewed the modified source to see if it got altered, no dice (the canonical tag is just fine)
Maybe the XML file is telling Google not to index the URL?
Nope - that's fine too! No problems there...
Could the robots.txt file be interfering?
No! Darn it, that's not the problem
I know that a no-index or blocking directive can also be sent through the HTTP header (usually via X-robots). Let's check the response header of your URL out:
Nothing there that really raises my eyebrow. This is enabled and set to block, but to be honest that shouldn't affect Google's crawling at all. Anyone correct me if I am wrong, but defending your site against cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks doesn't impede crawling right?
Fudge it. Let's fling it through Google's Page-Speed Insights tool. Usually that will tell you if something is being blocked and why...
Nothing useful still!
Google's mobile friendly tool gives us some, semi-interesting information:
But it doesn't say the page can't be loaded. It only says some resources which the page pulls in can't be loaded! And guess what? They're all external things on other websites (other than a few theme related bits, but nothing IMO that should stop the whole page loading).
Let's try DeepCrawl's indexability checker (they make amazing software by the way... expensive though):
Sir... there is NO GOOD REASON why your URL shouldn't be indexed. I am 99.9% certain you have encountered a legit Google bug. Post about it here. Only Google can help you at this juncture
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
-
No: 'noindex' detected in 'robots' meta tag
Pages on my site show No: 'noindex' detected in 'robots' meta tag. However, when I inspect the pages html, it does not show noindex. In fact, it shows index, follow. Majority of pages show the error and are not indexed by Google...Not sure why this is happening. The page below in search console shows the error above...
Technical SEO | | Sean_White_Consult0 -
Best practices for types of pages not to index
Trying to better understand best practices for when and when not use a content="noindex". Are there certain types of pages that we shouldn't want Google to index? Contact form pages, privacy policy pages, internal search pages, archive pages (using wordpress). Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | RichHamilton_qcs0 -
Google crawling but not indexing for no apparent reason
Client's site went secure about two months ago and chose root domain as rel canonical (so site redirects to https://rootdomain.com (no "www"). Client is seeing the site recognized and indexed by Google about every 3-5 days and then not indexed until they request a "Fetch". They've been going through this annoying process for about 3 weeks now. Not sure if it's a server issue or a domain issue. They've done work to enhance .htaccess (i.e., the redirects) and robots.txt. If you've encountered this issue and have a recommendation or have a tech site or person resource to recommend, please let me know. Google search engine results are respectable. One option would be to do nothing but then would SERPs start to fall without requesting a new Fetch? Thanks in advance, Alan
Technical SEO | | alankoen1230 -
Will you get more 'google juice' if your social links are in your websites header, rather than its footer?
Hi team, I'm in the process of making some aesthetic changes to my website. Its getting quite cluttered so the main purpose is to clean up its look. I currently have 3x social links in the header, right at the top, and i would really like to move these to the footer to remove some clutter in the header. My concern is that moving them may have an impact on the domains ranking in google. Website: www.mountainjade.co.nz We've made some huge gains against our competitors over the past 6 months and I don't want to jeopardise that. Any help would be much appreciated as i'm self taught in SEO and have learnt through making mistakes. This time however, with Moz, i'd rather get some advice before I make any decisions! Thanks is advance, Jake S
Technical SEO | | Jacobsheehan0 -
How long does it take for Google for deindexing pages?
Hi mozzers, We just launched a mobile website(parallel) and realized that it created many duplicate content with desktop URLs. I decided to add name="robots" content="No index, No follow" /> to the entire mobile site. My only concern is that I am still seeing the mobile site indexed when it's been almost a week I added these tags. Does anyone know how long it takes google to deindex your content? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Noindex Pages indexed
I'm having problem that gogole is index my search results pages even though i have added the "noindex" metatag. Is the best thing to block the robot from crawling that file using robots.txt?
Technical SEO | | Tedred0 -
Why does SEOMos Pro include noindex pages?
I'm new to SEOMoz. Been digesting the crawl data and have a tonne of action items that we'll be executing on fairly soon. Love it! One thing I noticed is in some of crawl warnings include pages that expressly have the ROBOTS meta tag with the "noindex" value. Example: many of my noindex pages don't include meta descriptions. Therefore, is it safe to ignore warnings of this nature for these pages?
Technical SEO | | ChatterBlock0 -
Should we use Google's crawl delay setting?
We’ve been noticing a huge uptick in Google’s spidering lately, and along with it a notable worsening of render times. Yesterday, for example, Google spidered our site at a rate of 30:1 (google spider vs. organic traffic.) So in other words, for every organic page request, Google hits the site 30 times. Our render times have lengthened to an avg. of 2 seconds (and up to 2.5 seconds). Before this renewed interest Google has taken in us we were seeing closer to one second average render times, and often half of that. A year ago, the ratio of Spider to Organic was between 6:1 and 10:1. Is requesting a crawl-delay from Googlebot a viable option? Our goal would be only to reduce Googlebot traffic, and hopefully improve render times and organic traffic. Thanks, Trisha
Technical SEO | | lzhao0