Oh crap.... Just got de-indexed
-
Hey fam.
So I'm a content creator and halfway SEO for a Locksmith company here in Oregon. As probably a lot of you know, the Locksmith industry is known for being super spammy. This company was no different. In 2009 they had like 50 urls for 5 metros. All ranking on page one or close.
Well, when I came on I helped them clean up this mess and get honest. It's been quite a journey but we have 301'd almost every Url back to their one and only brand domain.
We use wp-engine (whom I love) and we have never had an issue redirecting anything. But last week, we were finally ready to redirect one of their highest ranking domains back to a proper landing page on the main site. Everything looked clean and we were literally ranking number one in that metro.
Then we get this email:
| Hello Meier,
Your SSL/TLS certificate order for locksmithplusincbendor.com had a domain validation error, so we could not successfully set up your certificate for lpibend.
The most common cause for this error is that your domain is not pointed to the correct WP Engine install or IP address. To fix this error and prevent it in the future, we recommend using a CNAME record for your domain instead of an A record.
If you have further questions about configuring your domain, please start a chat in the User Portal and a support tech will be glad to help. |
and the next day we just disappeared from all rankings. I called wp-engine, they said they fixed a problem with the cdn the ssl.
I requested reindexing in search console.
Is there anything else I can do? How long should we expect to be out of the game?
Thank you so much gang, it's pretty embarring to have this happen, I can't even begin to explain how livid they are with me.
-
It depends.
If it was deindexed for many days its possible that rankings will not be exactly the same.
If the time off is not that much it will probably return with no harm.All this taking in consideration that the redirects, https and all that stuff is correctly done.
-
Hi Meier,
I've just googled that site and IT IS INDEXED! Check the attached image.
What bad day you've had. That's a journey none of us SEO's want to have.
Best luck
GR.
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
-
Why would my total number of indexed pages stop increasing?
I have an ecommerce marketplace that has new items added daily. In search consoloe my pages have always gone up almost every week. It hasn't increased in 5 weeks. We haven't made any changes to the site and the sitemap looks good. Any ideas on what I should look for?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Drop in Indexed pages
Hope everyone is having an Awesome December! I first noticed a drop in my index in the beginnings of November. My site drop in indexed pages from 1400 to 600 in the past 3-4 weeks. I don't know the cause of it, and would like the community to help me figure out why my indexing has dropped. Thank you for taking time out of your schedule to read this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BSC0 -
Weird Indexation Issue
On this webpage, we have an interactive graphic that allows users to click a navigational element and learn more about an anatomical part of the knee or a knee malady. For example, a user could click "Articular Cartilage" and they will land on this page: http://www.neocartimplant.com/knee-anatomy-maladies/anatomy/articular-cartilage The weird thing is whether you perform a Google Search for the above URL or for a string of text on that URL (i.e. "Articular cartilage is hyaline cartilage (as opposed to menisci, which consists of fibrocartilage) on the articular surfaces, or the ends, of bones. This thin, smooth tissue lines both joint surfaces where the bones come together to form the knee. ") the following page ranks: http://www.neocartimplant.com/anatmal/knee-anatomy-maladies/anatomy/articular-cartilage.php I have two questions: 1 - Any idea on how the Googlebot is getting to that page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | davidangotti
2 - How should I get the Googlebot to index the correct page (http://www.neocartimplant.com/knee-anatomy-maladies/anatomy/articular-cartilage)? Thanks in advance for your help!0 -
"No Index" Extensions
Hi there, We run an e-commerce website and we are aware of our duplicate page content/title problems. We know about the "rel canonical" tag and the "no index" tag but I am more interested in the latter. We use a CMS called Magento. Now, Magento has an extension that allows you to use the "no follow" and "no index" tag on products. Google has indexed many of our pages and I wanted to know if applying the "no index" tag on duplicate pages will instruct Google to remove the duplicate url's it has already indexed. I know the tag will tell Google not to index a page but what if I apply it to a product already indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iBags0 -
More Indexed Pages than URLs on site.
According to webmaster tools, the number of pages indexed by Google on my site doubled yesterday (gone from 150K to 450K). Usually I would be jumping for joy but now I have more indexed pages than actual pages on my site. I have checked for duplicate URLs pointing to the same product page but can't see any, pagination in category pages doesn't seem to be indexed nor does parameterisation in URLs from advanced filtration. Using the site: operator we get a different result on google.com (450K) to google.co.uk (150K). Anyone got any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidLenehan0 -
Site Search Results in Index -- Help
Hi, I made a mistake on my site, long story short, I have a bunch of search results page in the Google index. (I made a navigation page full of common search terms, and made internal links to a respective search results page for each common search term.) Google crawled the site, saw the links and now those search results pages are indexed. I made versions of the indexed search results pages into proper category pages with good URLs and am ready to go live/ replace the pages and links. But, I am a little unsure how to do it /what the effects can be: Will there be duplicate content issues if I just replace the bad, search results links/URLs with the good, category page links/URLs on the navi. page? (is a short term risk worth it?) Should I get the search results pages de-indexed first and then relaunch the navi. page with the correct category URLs? Should I do a robots.txt disallow directive for search results? Should I use Google's URL removal tool to remove those indexed search results pages for a quick fix, or will this cause more harm than good? Time is not the biggest issue, I want to do it right, because those indexed search results pages do attract traffic and the navi. page has been great for usability. Any suggestions would be great. I have been reading a ton on this topic, but maybe someone can give me more specific advice. Thanks in advance, hopefully this all makes sense.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IOSC1 -
Duplicate Content/ Indexing Question
I have a real estate Wordpress site that uses an IDX provider to add real estate listings to my site. A new page is created as a new property comes to market and then the page is deleted when the property is sold. I like the functionality of the service but it creates a significant amount of 404's and I'm also concerned about duplicate content because anyone else using the same service here in Las Vegas will have 1000's of the exact same property pages that I do. Any thoughts on this and is there a way that I can have the search engines only index the core 20 pages of my site and ignore future property pages? Your advice is greatly appreciated. See link for example http://www.mylvcondosales.com/mandarin-las-vegas/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AnthonyLasVegas0 -
Webpages look like they have been de-indexed
Hi there, My webpages seem that they have been de-indexed, I have no page rank anymore for my webpages, my homepage which was a PR4, is now saying N/A, plus lots of my rankings have dropped, what check should I been making to identify that this is the case? Kind Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780