Re-Launched Website: Developer Fogot to Remove noindex tags.
-
Our company's website has maintained decent rankings for the last 12 years we've been in business for our primary keywords. We recently had our website rebuilt from the ground up, and the developers left the noindex tags on all of our 400+ pages when we launched it. I didn't catch the error for 6 days. During which time, I used the Fetch feature in Google, submitting a site-wide fetch, as well as manual submissions for our top 100 URLs . In addition, every page that was indexed previously had a 301 set up for it, which was pointing to a destination with a noindex.
I caught the error today, and the developer removed the tags. Does anyone have any experience with a situation similar to this? In the SERPs, we are still ranking at this moment, and it's displaying our old URLs, and they are 301 redirecting just fine. But, what happens now? For 6 full days, we told Google not to index any of our pages, while also using the Fetch feature, contradicting ourselves.
Any words of wisdom or advice as to what I can do at this point to avoid potential fall out?Thanks
-
I appreciate everyone's feedback. Very helpful- thank you for taking the time to respond. Heading over to upload a sitemap now!
Thanks again,
Kristin -
One of our competitors, who ranked #1 for a good money term (we were #2) had a developer redo their entire site. He had noindex on every page when the new site went up.
When we saw the new site we sniffed the code, saw the noindex in there and laughed really hard.
A couple days later they dropped completely from the SERPs and we started getting all of their sales.
It took them a couple weeks to figure out what happened. But when they fixed it they popped right back into the SERPs at old rankings a couple days later.
We talk to these guys by phone occasionally. If they would have called us we would have told them how to fix it... but since they hired an expensive developer we didn't want to stick our noses in.
-
I've dealt with similar issues with robots.txt blocks of the entire site, as well as robots meta noindex tags. You should be fine now that you've taken the noindex tag off, and the old pages are redirecting. It may take longer for Google to update their index with the new URLs, but otherwise I don't think you need to worry too much. Maybe resubmit the sitemap and do another fetch on key pages.
Good luck!
-
Make sure you send in a sitemap and all should be well.
I've dealt with cases where certain pages were noindex but then removed. As long as you fixed all your errors, it should be back to normal. Think of a site going down intermittently, rankings don't get affected too much (I believe Matt Cutts confirmed this in a youtube video)
-
Hi Kristin
I have no experience of this happening, but I would suggest that you create a full sitemap and submit that to Google Webmaster tools asap.
Peter
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
-
Since implementing GDPR, has anyone seen website traffic plummet?
On December 1 and 2, I implemented a cookie banner on 5 of my Wix sites (https://www.sanitationsolutionsinc.com is one example) in order to be in compliance with GDPR, CCPA, and LGPD. Since then my traffic according to Wix Analytics and Google Analytics has plummeted. Anyone else have the same issue? How did you fix it?
Reporting & Analytics | | Jason_Taylor0 -
Do lots of event tracking via tag manager will it slow down my site?
Hi All, For my Ecommerce site I have done lots of tracking total I do have total 45 event tracking but many times one event, track many pages. So if visitors click on url or button then do my site speed affect because of these trackings? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | pragnesh96390 -
Looking for Third Party Tool Like Google Tag Manager
Hi All, Like google tag manager is there any tool or software or service available who can track my visitors each actions, events, clicks, after click what they do? But at same time like google tag manager it not slow down my site speed? I can say I am looking for tool which can main track different - different click on my pages. Any other suggestion pls share. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | pragnesh96390 -
Canonical Tags & GWT Parameters
A site I'm working on has canonical tags which I find to be accurate, regardless of tracking parameters or anything else added to the url. The tag looks like: And we have alot of parameters in Google Search Console that look like Parameter Crawl page Let Googlebot Decide destination Let Googlebot Decide filters Let Googlebot Decide Since all of our parameters follow a question mark, like http://www.examplesite.com/questions/avocados?source=ad12345 and all of our pages have canonical tags showing the representative url without the additional parameters, why wouldn't we just have the one parameter in GWT as Parameter Crawl ? Representative URL I ask because I find that Google analytics shows pages with parameters as landing pages in search, which has me concerned about Google seeing it as duplicate content. Thanks! Best... Darcy
Reporting & Analytics | | 945010 -
Main Website Redirects to Mobile Website, Mobile Website counts this as direct traffic, is there a way to tell what the source/medium is?
Hello, The situation is that someone is arriving on my main website https://www.example.com and being redirected to http://m.example.com. When this happens my analytics says that the traffic is all direct coming to my mobile site. However, I know people clicking on my google cpc, and some google organic users are hitting the main website and being redirected. Before we didn't have as good of a redirect on our main website so I could tell organic and cpc traffic coming in, now my main website has a huge drop in these categories because they are redirecting to mobile but I can't tell on my mobile how much traffic from each is going to the mobile site. Is there a way to fix this? Is it because my main website is https:// and mobile is a http:// (as I know that sometimes makes traffic direct) or is it a bigger problem that can't be resolved? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | oxfordseminars0 -
How does Google sort multiple websites in one GWT account?
Today I noticed one of our sub-domains listed in our Google Webmaster Tools Account moved from the 6th position to the 2nd position. Is there a reason for this (perhaps urls/sites listed at the top require the most attention)?
Reporting & Analytics | | Prospector-Plastics0 -
Why is a section of our website dropping in&out of Google SERPs?
In July 2011 we started a news section that has it's own 'subfolder' /news/ (http://www.chorder.com/news/new_gear/, http://www.chorder.com/news/gear_deals/ etc.) The whole news section is dropping in&out of Google SERP's since late October, as show in attached graph. All news texts are real deal, written by our own staff, linked from homepage. Any idea why this happens and how to prevent it? cmqky.png
Reporting & Analytics | | imventurer0 -
Do links tagged with Analytics UTM parameters has the same significance as once without any parameters?
If we add UTM parameters to inbound links, for tracking specific referral behavior, will those link have the same SEO significance as links without parameters?
Reporting & Analytics | | Usearch0