Single URL not indexed
-
Hi everyone!
Some days ago, I noticed that one of our URLs (http://www.access.de/karriereplanung/webinare) is no longer in the Google index.
We never had any form of penalty, link warning etc. Our traffic by Google is constantly growing every month. This single page does not have an external link pointing to it - only internal links.
The page has been indexed all the time. The HTTP status code is 200, there is no noindex or something in the code. I submitted the URL on GWMT to let Google send it to the index. It was crawled successfully by Google, sent to the index 5 days ago - nothing happened, still not indexed.
Do you have any suggestions why this page is no longer indexed? It is well linked internally and one click away from the home page. There is still the PR of 5 showing, I always thought that pages with PR are indexed.......
-
Hi Nick,
first of all, thanx for your responses.
I already did the "fetch as Googlebot" thing 5 days ago. The page was successfully crawled and has been sent to the index successfully, according to Google Webmaster Tools. But in these 5 days, nothing changed.
I like your suggestions with the extra text. We will add some and do the "fetch as Googlebot" again and see what happens.
And you are absolutely right when it comes to the "value" of this page. It didn't send that much traffic, just a little. It is no big deal for us if this page doesn't get back into the index - but as someone doing SEO I want to figure out the problem Google seems to have with this page - just to test and learn for future problems
-
Replying to myself because I just noticed something I was wrong about.
I thought that the first box at the top was an excerpt of the page it links to, but it looks like it IS actually unique.
So you probably don't need to add anything, though expanding on that text in the first box might be a good idea.
Try to get a link to that page and see if that helps.
-
The thing is those words do appear elsewhere on the site, and Google can probably figure out that what is on this particular page is excerpts and links to the originals.
This normally isn't a huge problem, though. Lots of sites and blogs have category and tag pages that fit that description and ARE indexed (though many are not).
Before messing around with adding text which you may not really need to add, try doing a Fetch as Googlebot of the page in Google Webmaster Tools and hit the submit button when the fetch is complete. It may be that the page just got dropped by accident. If it doesn't return to the index after a few days, try adding a little totally unique content. Just a sentence or two about what these links are should be enough. I have done this on a few sites with lots of thin tag or category pages and it doesn't take a lot of text to get them into the index.
Partner link pages are also typically thin, but they may be indexed anyway if the links are useful, or ignored if it is simply a link exchange page that doesn't really have any value other than swapping links (which isn't much value). Like most things related to Google search, there isn't always a specific thing that will make the difference.
What you may want to consider is whether or not you want or need that page to appear in search, and if you think it could or should actually rank well for anything. If it doesn't matter, I wouldn't be too concerned unless there are many pages on the site that are not indexed.
-
Quite strange - I see someone visiting this URL in the Google-Analytics real-time-report.
Traffic source is direct, and Google labels this site as "/empty". Any ideas why?
-
Hi Nick,
I knwo the page is not full of content - but if you count the words, they are almost 300. And we do not have pages with the same content or links on our domain.
It could be a solution to add more text, but what about pages with partner links, for example? They normally have no content and lots of external links - so they should also be seen an "thin pages"?!
-
It may be worth generating and submitting an XML sitemap, with this page relatively high up in the map, and submitting it to Google. This then might prompt Google to crawl the page and index it.
ScreamingFrog is a free tool that generates an XML sitemap for you, while there are also free generators out there as well with just a quick google search.
-
Hi Tom,
well, honestly, we do not have a sitemap...
And no, there are no other pages with similar content on our domain.
As you said it: quite odd!
-
It may have been dropped because it was seen as "thin" content. Since most of the page is excerpts from and links to other pages, it is likely being ignored - especially if there are other pages that have the same excerpts and links. If you can add unique, some descriptive text to the page, it may do better.
And about the PageRank: The PR you can see in the Toolbar or other PR checks is usually very out of date. It could be that prior to your page's disappearance, it had a high PR and really does not now. While the visible PR can be used to get a pretty good idea of how Google ranks a page, I wouldn't give it much thought. Plenty of low PR pages rank very well for whatever search terms they are targeting, and lots of high PR pages don't rank very well.
-
That is quite odd - checked all those things from my end and found the same, but still not indexed.
My only other check at this stage would be to ask if its in the .xml sitemap that you have submitted in Google Webmaster Tools? And whether or not this page features similar content to any other pages on your site?
You've probably checked both already, but thought I'd ask just to be sure.
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
-
Pages not indexed
Hey everyone Despite doing the necessary checks, we have this problem that only a part of the sitemap is indexed.
Technical SEO | | conversal
We don't understand why this indexation doesn't want to take place. The major problem is that only a part of the sitemap is indexed. For a client we have several projects on the website with several subpages, but only a few of these subpages are indexed. Each project has 5 to 6 subpages. They all should be indexed. Project: https://www.brody.be/nl/nieuwbouwprojecten/nieuwbouw-eeklo/te-koop-eeklo/ Mainly subelements of the page are indexed: https://www.google.be/search?source=hp&ei=gZT1Wv2ANouX6ASC5K-4Bw&q=site%3Abrody.be%2Fnl%2Fnieuwbouwprojecten%2Fnieuwbouw-eeklo%2F&oq=site%3Abrody.be%2Fnl%2Fnieuwbouwprojecten%2Fnieuwbouw-eeklo%2F&gs_l=psy-ab.3...30.11088.0.11726.16.13.1.0.0.0.170.1112.8j3.11.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..4.6.693.0..0j0i131k1.0.p6DjqM3iJY0 Do you have any idea what is going wrong here?
Thanks for your advice! Frederik
Digital marketeer at Conversal0 -
SEO URLs: 1\. URLs in my language (Greek, Greeklish or English)? 2\. Αt the end it is good to put -> .html? What is the best way to get great ranking?
Hello all, I must put URLs in my language Greek, Greeklish or in English? And at the end of url it is good to put -> .html? For exampe www.test.com/test/test-test.html ? What is the best way to get great ranking? I am a new digital marketing manager and its my first time who works with a programmer who doesn't know. I need to know as soon as possible, because they want to be "on air" tomorrow! Thank you very much for your help! Regards, Marios
Technical SEO | | marioskal0 -
International URL Structures
Hi everyone! I've read a bunch of articles on the topic, but I can't seem to be able to figure out a solution that works for the specific case. We are creating a site for a service agency, this agency has offices around the world - the site has a global version (in English/French & Spanish) and some country specific versions. Here is where it gets tricky: in some countries, each office has a different version of the site and since we have Canada for example we have a French and an English version of the site. For cost and maintenance reason, we want to have a single domain : www.example.com We want to be able to indicate via Search Console that each subdomain is attached to a different country, but how should we go about it. I've seen some examples with subfolders like this: Global FR : www.example.com/fr-GL Canada FR: www.example.com/fr-ca France: www.example.com/fr-fr Does this work? It seems to make more sense to use : **Subdirectories with gTLDs, **but I'm not sure how that would work to indicate the difference between my French Global version vs. France site. Global FR : www.example.com/fr France : www.example.com/fr/fr Am I going about this the right way, I feel the more I dig into the issue, the less it seems there is a good solution available to indicate to Google which version of my site is geo-targeted to each country. Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | sarahcoutu150 -
Woocommerce URL Structure Issue
Hi everyone ! To put you in context, I am doing an audit on an E-Commerce site selling auto parts with WooCommerce. I have some concerns regarding the url structure and here's why: Product category page url: /auto/drivetrain/cv-axle-shaft-assembly/
Technical SEO | | alexrbrg
Product page url included in the product category page: /product/acura-integra-cv-axle-shaft-90-01-honda-civic/ The way I see my situation is that the product page is considered by Google as an intern link and not as a page included in in the subfolder of the category page. 1. Am I right?
2. If yes, is there a solution to fix the issue with woocommerce to improve the category page ranking ? Thanks y'all !0 -
Usage of keywords in URL
Hi everyone, I'm trying to optimize our website and I'm not sure what's ideal for our URL structure. We have two products: one of them is focused on B2C & the other one on B2B.
Technical SEO | | Klouwers
Our homepage is focused on the B2C product. For our B2B product, I'm not sure what's ideal. The URL for our 'homepage' of the B2B product is ourdomain.com/software. We have different target groups for our B2B software, and therefore different pages on our website. Which URL would be best to use for the keyword personal trainer software?
1. ourdomain.com/software/personal-trainer-software
2. ourdomain.com/software/personal-trainer0 -
Tool to Generate All the URLs on a Domain
Hi all, I've been using xml-sitemaps.com for a while to generate a list of all the URLs that exist on a domain. However, this tool only works for websites with under 500 URLs on a domain. The paid tool doesn't offer what we are looking for either. I'm hoping someone can help with a recommendation. We're looking for a tool that can: Crawl, and list, all the indexed URLs on a domain, including .pdf and .doc files (ideally in a .xls or .txt file) Crawl multiple domains with unlimited URLs (we have 5 websites with 500+ URLs on them) Seems pretty simple, but we haven't been able to find something that isn't tailored toward management of a single domain or that can crawl a huge volume of content.
Technical SEO | | timfrick0 -
Blank Canonical URL
So my devs have the canonical URL loaded up on pages automatically, and in most cases this gets done correctly. However we ran across a bug that left some of these blank like so: Does anyone know what effect that would have? I am trying to provide a priority for this so I can say "FIX IT NOW" or "Fix it after the other 'FIX IT NOW' type of items". Let me know if you have any ideas. I just want to be sure I am not telling google that all of these pages are like the home page. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | SL_SEM0 -
Https indexed - though a no index no follow tag has been added
Hi, The https-pages of our booking section are being indexed by Google. We added But the pages are still being indexed. What can I do to exclude these URL's from the Google index? Thank you very much in advance! Kind regards, Dennis Overbeek ACSI Publishing | dennis@acsi.eu
Technical SEO | | SEO_ACSI0