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.
Number of Indexed Pages are Continuously Going Down
-
I am working on online retail stores. Initially, Google have indexed 10K+ pages of my website. I have checked number of indexed page before one week and pages were 8K+. Today, number of indexed pages are 7680.
I can't understand why should it happen and How can fix it? I want to index maximum pages of my website.
-
Not to speak for Casey, but both those comments are definitely linked together. If Google thinks your content is thin or too similar to other content, it's going to index what it deems worthy or interesting to searchers. Retail sites often have this problem due to the conundrum of "how much can you really write about a table lamp" and that category and product pages often have similar content.
I'd focus on making your content on the pages more robust so Google seems it as awesome and indexs it.
-
My domain is active since 1 year. I want to know more about following two statement.
Most likely, all your pages aren't "worthy" of current indexing by Google
Make sure as well to REMOVE any questionable or thin content.
BTW: Thanks for your wish!
-
How new is the online retail store you are working with? I ask because what you have described is VERY common with new sites. It's normal to see indexed URL fluctuation counts, even large fluctuation counts, occur in the first few months of a site as Google works to index the URLs "appropriately."
It's also worth noting that in a post-Panda world Google has really TIGHTENED UP what they choose to index. If a majority of these URLs lack unique compelling content, are just aggregated content from other sources, or suffer duplicate content issues, that will certainly impact Google's decision to include them accordingly.
Unfortunately, what YOU value as good content doesn't matter much if Google doesn't share that opinion. I'd strongly recommend you review the pages that Google is NOT indexing and note similarities. Most likely, all your pages aren't "worthy" of current indexing by Google and as it slowly shifts down deeper into your pages it's making the determination as to which of your pages deserve listing consideration and which do not.
As to how to combat this...work to create QUALITY content that sets you specifically apart from your retail competitors. Make sure as well to REMOVE any questionable or thin content. This type of content can bring down an entire domain post-Panda.
Sorry I don't have better advice. Good luck with your retail site this holiday season!
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
-
URL structure - Page Path vs No Page Path
We are currently re building our URL structure for eccomerce websites. We have seen a lot of site removing the page path on product pages e.g. https://www.theiconic.co.nz/liberty-beach-blossom-shirt-680193.html versus what would normally be https://www.theiconic.co.nz/womens-clothing-tops/liberty-beach-blossom-shirt-680193.html Should we be removing the site page path for a product page to keep the url shorter or should we keep it? I can see that we would loose the hierarchy juice to a product page but not sure what is the right thing to do.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ashcastle0 -
Moving html site to wordpress and 301 redirect from index.htm to index.php or just www.example.com
I found page duplicate content when using Moz crawl tool, see below. http://www.example.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gozmoz
Page Authority 40
Linking Root Domains 31
External Link Count 138
Internal Link Count 18
Status Code 200
1 duplicate http://www.example.com/index.htm
Page Authority 19
Linking Root Domains 1
External Link Count 0
Internal Link Count 15
Status Code 200
1 duplicate I have recently transfered my old html site to wordpress.
To keep the urls the same I am using a plugin which appends .htm at the end of each page. My old site home page was index.htm. I have created index.htm in wordpress as well but now there is a conflict of duplicate content. I am using latest post as my home page which is index.php Question 1.
Should I also use redirect 301 im htaccess file to transfer index.htm page authority (19) to www.example.com If yes, do I use
Redirect 301 /index.htm http://www.example.com/index.php
or
Redirect 301 /index.htm http://www.example.com Question 2
Should I change my "Home" menu link to http://www.example.com instead of http://www.example.com/index.htm that would fix the duplicate content, as indx.htm does not exist anymore. Is there a better option? Thanks0 -
If Robots.txt have blocked an Image (Image URL) but the other page which can be indexed has this image, how is the image treated?
Hi MOZers, This probably is a dumb question but I have a case where the robots.tags has an image url blocked but this image is used on a page (lets call it Page A) which can be indexed. If the image on Page A has an Alt tags, then how is this information digested by crawlers? A) would Google totally ignore the image and the ALT tags information? OR B) Google would consider the ALT tags information? I am asking this because all the images on the website are blocked by robots.txt at the moment but I would really like website crawlers to crawl the alt tags information. Chances are that I will ask the webmaster to allow indexing of images too but I would like to understand what's happening currently. Looking forward to all your responses 🙂 Malika
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Malika11 -
How do you de-index and prevent indexation of a whole domain?
I have parts of an online portal displaying in SERPs which it definitely shouldn't be. It's due to thoughtless developers but I need to have the whole portal's domain de-indexed and prevented from future indexing. I'm not too tech savvy but how is this achieved? No index? Robots? thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Martin_S0 -
Best practice for removing indexed internal search pages from Google?
Hi Mozzers I know that it’s best practice to block Google from indexing internal search pages, but what’s best practice when “the damage is done”? I have a project where a substantial part of our visitors and income lands on an internal search page, because Google has indexed them (about 3 %). I would like to block Google from indexing the search pages via the meta noindex,follow tag because: Google Guidelines: “Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don't add much value for users coming from search engines.” http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769 Bad user experience The search pages are (probably) stealing rankings from our real landing pages Webmaster Notification: “Googlebot found an extremely high number of URLs on your site” with links to our internal search results I want to use the meta tag to keep the link juice flowing. Do you recommend using the robots.txt instead? If yes, why? Should we just go dark on the internal search pages, or how shall we proceed with blocking them? I’m looking forward to your answer! Edit: Google have currently indexed several million of our internal search pages.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HrThomsen0 -
Are there any negative effects to using a 301 redirect from a page to another internal page?
For example, from http://www.dog.com/toys to http://www.dog.com/chew-toys. In my situation, the main purpose of the 301 redirect is to replace the page with a new internal page that has a better optimized URL. This will be executed across multiple pages (about 20). None of these pages hold any search rankings but do carry a decent amount of page authority.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Visually0 -
There's a website I'm working with that has a .php extension. All the pages do. What's the best practice to remove the .php extension across all pages?
Client wishes to drop the .php extension on all their pages (they've got around 2k pages). I assured them that wasn't necessary. However, in the event that I do end up doing this what's the best practices way (and easiest way) to do this? This is also a WordPress site. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digisavvy0 -
Is 404'ing a page enough to remove it from Google's index?
We set some pages to 404 status about 7 months ago, but they are still showing in Google's index (as 404's). Is there anything else I need to do to remove these?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0