Disappeared from Google with in 2 hours of webmaster tools error
-
Hey Guys
I'm trying not to panic but....we had a problem with google indexing some of our secure pages then hit those pages and browsers firing up security warning, so I asked our web dev to have at look at it
he made the below changes and within 2 hours the site has drop off the face of google
“in web master tools I asked it to remove any https://freestylextreme.com URLs” “I cancelled that before it was processed”
“I then setup the robots.txt to respond with a disallow all if the request was for an https URL” “I've now removed robots.txt completely” “and resubmitted the main site from web master tools”
I've read a couple of blog posts and all say to remain clam , test the fetch bot on webmasters tools which is all good and just wait for google to reindex
do you guys have any further advice ?
Ben
-
Thanks for the responses guys , it was picked back up in around 4 hours and lost no rank thankfully orders crashed but are back to normal now ! I'm going to investigate the two versions of the site is a bit strange
again thanks for your help
-
Hi Ben,
It's now 2 days after your original question, and it looks like your back in the SERPs, at least from what I can tell. Hopefully you've made a full recovery.
It's difficult to understand exactly what damage was done by your dev in Webmaster Tools, but it's reasonable to assume that whatever it was caused the error.
One thing I did notice is that both the https and http version of your site resolve.
http://www.freestylextreme.com/ &
https://www.freestylextreme.com/Ideally, one would redirect to the other, or at a minimum have a rel canonical tag in place so that only one version is crawled.
I'd go ahead a put your robots.txt file back in place, and check yourself with Google webmaster tools to make sure everything is okay.
Best of luck!
-
Hi Ben
I understand the panic in such a situation. I truly do. I checked your website and the fact that you do not have a robots.txt. You also do not have any kind of noindex or anything like that in your code and you look like a strong established website.
Do you have an XML sitemap in your webmaster console ? I would suggest you build one and submit it if you don't already have it.
Other then that, I would also suggest to have a robots.txt even if it's blank. Rather then a 404 redirecting to your homepage. Give me 24-48hrs and in my opinion, you should be back.
I hope this helps.
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
-
403 Errors Issue
Hi, all! I've been working with a Wordpress site that I inherited that gets little to no organic traffic, despite being content rich, optimized, etc. I know there's something wrong on the backend but can't find a satisfactory culprit. When I emulate googlebot, most pages give me a 403 error. Also, google will not index many urls which makes sense and is a massive headache. All advice appreciated! The site is https://www.diamondit.pro/ It is specific to WP Engine, using GES (Global Edge Security) and WPWAF
Technical SEO | | SimpleSearch0 -
Google still listing pages from old domain after 2 change requests
Good Morning I put forward the following question in December 2014 https://moz.com/community/q/google-still-listing-old-domain as pages from our old domain www.fhr-net.co.uk were still indexed in Google. We have submitted two change request in WMT, the most recent was over 6 months ago yet the old pages are still being indexed and we can't see why that would be Any advice would be appreciated
Technical SEO | | Ham19790 -
Google Webmaster Tools : no data available
Hi guys I have a website which is 2 years old. Since 03/01/2013 I have no data in Google Webmaster Tools > Trafic > Search queries. The queries, the impressions and the clics dropped suddenly from one day to the next. I checked the rank of my keywords and the traffic of my site. They are stable and didn't move which means that they don't cause the problem. Has anybody had the same problem ? Is it Google Webmaster Tools bug ? Many thanks.
Technical SEO | | PFX1110 -
Webmaster Tools - Clarification of what the top directory is in a calender url
Hi all, I had an issue where it turned out a calender was used on my site historically (a couple of years ago) but the pages were still present, crawled and indexed by google to this day. I want to remove them now from the index as it really clouds my analysis and as I have been trying to clean things up e.g. by turning modules off, webmaster tools is throwing up more and more errors due to these pages. Below is an example of the url of one of the pages: http://www.example.co.uk/index.php?mact=Calendar,m1a033,default,1&m1a033year=2084&m1a033month=3&m1a033returnid=59&page=59?phpMyAdmin=xxyyzz The closest question I have found on the topic in Seomoz is: http://www.seomoz.org/q/duplicate-content-issue-6 I want to remove all these pages from the index by targeting their top level folder. From the historic question above would I be right in saying that it is: http://www.example.co.uk/index.php?mact=Calendar I want to be certain before I do a directory level removal request in case it actually targets index.php instead and deindexes my whole site (or homepage at the very least). Thanks
Technical SEO | | Mitty0 -
Google webmaster tools says access denied for 77 urls
Hi i am looking in google webmaster tools and i have seen a major problem which i hope people can help me sort out. The problem is, i am being told that 77 urls are being denied access. The message when i look for more information says the below Googlebot couldn't crawl your URL because your server either requires login to access the page, or is blocking Googlebot from accessing your site. the responce code is 403 here is a couple of examples http://www.in2town.co.uk/Entertainment-Magazine http://www.in2town.co.uk/Weight-Loss-Hypnotherapy-helped-woman-lose-3-stone i think the problem could be that i have sent them to another url in my httaccess file using the 403 re-direct but why would it bring up that google bot could not crawl them any help would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
How often should I upload a new sitemap in google webmasters?
So I have a real estate website that is regularly changing listings, photos, data. Every time a new listing is added it creates a page for that listing. My question is how frequently should I be recreating a new xml sitemap and uploading it to google webmasters? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | jackaveli0 -
How to show ratings on Google?
One thing I have noticed recently is "review ratings" appearing in the Google search results. I have attached a screenshot which shows an example of this. I think this is a really good feature and helps make a listing stand out in the SERPs, I would certainly be more likely to click this one. My question is how do you code for it so that Google will display it? The URL of the page in question is http://www.footy-boots.com/inter-milan-away-shirt-2011-2012-9430/ 4nXyk
Technical SEO | | ukss19840 -
Google Web Master Tools - Keyword Variants & misspelling
We have millions of urls and the technical expertise to write code to fix the spelling of keyword variants Google has discovered and shows us in Web Master tools. Since Google has recognized these as variants, is it worth our time to write code that will fix the spelling of obvious misses?
Technical SEO | | snoopcat0