Help with pages Google is labeling "Not Followed"
-
I am seeing a number of pages that I am doing 301 redirects on coming up under the "Not Followed" category of the advanced index status in google webmasters. Google says this might be because the page is still showing active content or the redirect is not correct. I don't know how to tell if the page is still showing active content, and if someone can please tell me how to determine this it would be greatly appreciated. Also if you can provide a solution for how to adjust my page to make sure that the content is not appearing to be active, that would be amazing. Thanks in advance, here is a few links to pages that are experiencing this:
-
Hi Joshua -
If someone is linking to the www version then it doesnt pass as much juice as it would if it wasnt redirected (theres lots of info on this on the internet with varied options). Overall, most SEO's agree that an inbound link that points directly to a page without being 301 redirected has more of a positive SEO effect.
With that being said, in your case Google Webmaster Tools may be detecting this double redirect error simply because there is an external website somewhere linking to the 'www' version. You can find this using OSE or using the WMT by going to CRAWL ERRORS and looking for the sunny-isles url. Clicking on it (if its there) will show who is linking to you and from where.
BTW - when did you do the redirects, and how long since you noticed the new url wasnt indexed (and was the old URL indexed?)
-
The 301 will preserve some of the authority passed through from the www version of the link.
One note - Google sometimes has a rough time with consecutive 301s. Normally it's only a problem if there are several in a row. Here you have two. You might consider reducing that to 1...?
-
MIght as well, yes.
-
Hello Ian,
Thanks for your help as well. Question for you, I current have not set a preferred version in my google webmasters account. Do you think I should go ahead and establish the non www version as my setting?
Thanks.
-
Hello Ian,
Thanks for your help as well. Question for you, I current have not set a preferred version in my google webmasters account. Do you think I should go ahead and establish the non www version as my setting?
Thanks.
-
Hi Jared,
Thank you very much for answering my question. So if someone is linking to me from another site, but uses the www version of a url does it not help my seo?
And if this is the case, what do you recommend I do?
Thanks.
-
Hi Joshua,
It looks like you're redirecting from the 'www' version to the non 'www' version. The 301 redirect is set up just fine.
2 things to check first:
- In Google Webmaster Tools, do you have the preferred domain set to the 'www' version? That might cause this confusion.
- In robots.txt, you're blocking Google Image Bot from crawling that folder. Once, I saw an instance where that screwed up Googlebot as well, and removing the disallow fixed the problem.
Ian
-
The link you referenced has 'www' in it, is that how the link is targeted on your website? If so, its probably the double redirect that is causing the issue. Since WP is set to 'non-www' - every time there is a call for the www version of a url, WP automatically 301 redirects it to the non-www version. There is nothing wrong with this.
Its when there is a call for a 'www' version of a URL that has also been redirected, as the one you cited has, where a double redirect now takes place:
http://www.luxuryhome..../sunnyilses.html
to the 'non-ww' version:
http://luxuryhome.../sunnyisles.html
then from there to the new html file version:
http://luxuryhome.../sunny-isles.html
The header check shows a normal www to non-www redirect first (WP is doing this), and then the 301 redirect that changes the sunnyisles to sunny-isles. Both server responses seem OK so the redirects themselves seem to be working. What you want to make sure of is:
Any internal links linking to the old sunnyisles.html page do not contain 'www'. (And in any event, these links should be changed to point to the new page anyway).
Any inbound links from external sources do not reference the 'www' version.
It would be helpful if we cound see the htaccess file as well.
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
-
Google Search Console Showing 404 errors for product pages not in sitemap?
We have some products with url changes over the past several months. Google is showing these as having 404 errors even though they are not in sitemap (sitemap shows the correct NEW url). Is this expected? Will these errors eventually go away/stop being monitored by Google?
Technical SEO | | woshea0 -
Website ranking on Google dropping for unknown reason while rankings are improving on Bing. Please help!
one of my websites www.resumeble.com is showing a constant drop in rankings. Earlier the website was ranking for major keywords like resume writing services etc. I used Ahrefs site audit to find issues. According to Ahrefs there was a huge issue of duplicate pages, which is now resolved by proper canonical tag insertion. The site is built on Angular. Fetch report in Google shows perfect code and Sitemap is also perfect. Manual action reporting in webmaster shows no warning. Please suggest what steps should I take to fix this issue.
Technical SEO | | mayyaa40 -
Google not index main keyword on homepage in 2 countries same language, rest of pages no problem
Hello, Two the same websites, two countries, same language http://www.lavistarelatiegeschenken.nl / http://www.lavistarelatiegeschenken.be The main keyword "relatiegeschenken" in top 10 of netherlands (steady position for 2 years) and in ** belgium** not in top 15****0 the main keyword "relatiegeschenken| but other keywords good positions, thats so strange I didn't understand and now every thing turned around suddenly: Now the main keyword "relatiegeschenken suddenly " not anymore in top 10 in the netherslandsits gone and other kewyords still good positions , now **main keyword suddenly in top 10 of belgium 2 years was not **other pages still ok. It are exactly the same websites and the same language. So double content But my programmer told me in google webmaster tools settings are right, so no problem with double content ? I really dont understand first main keyword in netherland in top 10 and in belgium not, now changed, now in belgium top 10 and not findable in the netherland on the main keyword. Maybe problem in code ? Maybe problems in code because websites are identical and active in two different countries wit same language ? No message about a penalty message in WMT, no spam links week i delete two strong but according to Linkdetox a bad links. I can not find a solution but its really important keyword that my customer want back in top 10 in netherland, like it was. All other positions and visitors are the same. Befor i have had this with belgium site, also main keyword google not index homepage. But suddenly no google show in belgium in top 10 Its turned around Kind regards, Marcel
Technical SEO | | Bossie720 -
Using http: shorthand inside canonical tag ("//" instead of "http:") can cause harm?
HI, I am planning to launch a new site, and shortly after to move to HTTPS. to save the need to change over 5,000 canonical tags in pages the webmaster suggested we implement inside the rel canonical "//" instead of the absolute path, would that do any damage or be a problem? oranges-south-dakota" />
Technical SEO | | Kung_fu_Panda0 -
Will a Robots.txt 'disallow' of a directory, keep Google from seeing 301 redirects for pages/files within the directory?
Hi- I have a client that had thousands of dynamic php pages indexed by Google that shouldn't have been. He has since blocked these php pages via robots.txt disallow. Unfortunately, many of those php pages were linked to by high quality sites mulitiple times (instead of the static urls) before he put up the php 'disallow'. If we create 301 redirects for some of these php URLs that area still showing high value backlinks and send them to the correct static URLs, will Google even see these 301 redirects and pass link value to the proper static URLs? Or will the robots.txt keep Google away and we lose all these high quality backlinks? I guess the same question applies if we use the canonical tag instead of the 301. Will the robots.txt keep Google from seeing the canonical tags on the php pages? Thanks very much, V
Technical SEO | | Voodak0 -
We have set up 301 redirects for pages from an old domain, but they aren't working and we are having duplicate content problems - Can you help?
We have several old domains. One is http://www.ccisound.com - Our "real" site is http://www.ccisolutions.com The 301 redirect from the old domain to the new domain works. However, the 301-redirects for interior pages, like: http://www.ccisolund.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators do not work. This URL should redirect to http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators but as you can see it does not. Our IT director supplied me with this code from the HT Access file in hopes that someone can help point us in the right direction and suggest how we might fix the problem: RewriteCond%{HTTP_HOST} ccisound.com$ [NC] RewriteRule^(.*)$ http://www.ccisolutions.com/$1 [R=301,L] Any ideas on why the 301 redirect isn't happening? Thanks all!
Technical SEO | | danatanseo0 -
Google doesn't rank the best page of our content for keywords. How to fix that?
Hello, We have a strange issue, which I think is due to legacy. Generally, we are a job board for students in France: http://jobetudiant.net (jobetudiant == studentjob in french) We rank quite well (2nd or 3rd) on "Job etudiant <city>", with the right page (the one that lists all job offers in that city). So this is great.</city> Now, for some reason, Google systematically puts another of our pages in front of that: the page that lists the jobs offers in the 'region' of that city. For example, check this page. the first link is a competitor, the 3rd is the "right" link (the job offers in annecy), but the 2nd link is the list of jobs in Haute Savoie (which is the 'departement'- equiv. to county) in which Annecy is... that's annoying. Is there a way to indicate Google that the 3rd page makes more sense for this search? Thanks
Technical SEO | | jgenesto0 -
Having both <title>and <meta name="title"...> on a web page?</title>
Hi All, Client of mine using reversed Meta Tags format in their website and Honestly i never saw such Meta Tags formats. In my opinion having 2 Title tags and wrong reversed description tag is not correct and the needs to be removed, and other tags need to be changed,too But they said that it probably doesn't make a difference because they don't think it affects search engine results and won't remove it just based on opinion. Because weird thing is Search Engines are apparently able to index them. So should i persist on correcting them or just hope for the best and ignore it?!?!?! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | DigitalJungle0