Massive jump in pages indexed (and I do mean massive)
-
Hello mozzers,
I have been working in SEO for a number of years but never seen anything like a jump in pages indexed of this proportion (image is from the Index Status report in Google Webmaster Tools: http://i.imgur.com/79mW6Jl.png
Has anyone has ever seen anything like this?
Anyone have an idea about what happened?One thing that sprung to mind might be that the same pages are now getting indexed in several more google country sites (e.g. google.ca, google.co.uk, google.es, google.com.mx) but I don't know if the Index Status report in WMT works like that.
A few notes to explain the context:
- It's an eCommerce website with service pages and around 9 different pages listing products.
- The site is small - only around 100 pages across three languages
- 1.5 months ago we migrated from three language subdomains to a single sub-domain with language directories. Before and after the migration I used hreflang tags across the board. We saw about 50% uplift in traffic from unbranded organic terms after the migration (although on day one it was more like +300%), especially from more language diversity.
- I had an issue where the 'sort' links on the product tables were giving rise to thousands of pages of duplicate content, although I had used the URL parameter handling to communicate to Google that these were not significantly different and only to index the representative URL. About 2 weeks ago I blocked them using the robots.txt (Disallow: *?sort). I never felt these were doing us too much harm in reality although many of them are indexed and can be found with a site:xxx.com search.
- At the same time as adding *?sort to the robots.txt, I made an hreflang sitemap for each language, and linked to them from an index sitemap and added these to WMT. I added some country specific alternate URLs as well as language just to see if I started getting more traffic from those countries (e.g. xxx.com/es/ for Spanish, xxx.com/es/ for Spain, xxx.xom/es/ for Mexico etc). I dodn't seem to get any benefit from this.
- Webmaster tools profile is for a URL that is the root domain xxx.com. We have a lot of other subdomains, including a blog that is far bigger than our main site. But looking at the Search Queries report, all the pages listed are on the core website so I don't think it is the blog pages etc.
- I have seen a couple of good days in terms of unbranded organic search referrals - no spike or drop off but a couple of good days in keeping with recent improvements in these kinds of referrals.
- We have some software mirror sub domains that are duplicated across two website: xxx.mirror.xxx.com and xxx.mirror.xxx.ca. Many of these don't even have sections and Google seemed to be handling the duplication, always preferring to show the .com URL despite no cross-site canonicals in place.
Very interesting, I'm sure you will agree!
THANKS FOR READING!
-
Thanks for your considered response Adam. It is indeed quite possible that the jump is the non-English pages suddenly being indexed/reported as indexed in this WMT account. If there was to be a 'switch over' of the pages from one sub domain to the root domain, we would indeed have expected to see a jump like that.
It does still seem odd that (1) it came a long time after the migration and (2) the impressions and clicks (as reported in WMT) have not seen a similar jump, neither when the migration took place or in the last week. The 50% increase in clicks from unbranded organic I mentioned was a genuine increase, as our Analytics previously covered all three language sub-domains anyway.
On a side note, regarding the seperate subdomains, I was quite surprised to see how well the hreflang tags worked across sub domains before the migration. It was arguably better handled by Google before the migration to a single domain (more/better sitelinks for branded searches anyway). I think a lot of our uplift in clicks came from new pages and better on site optimization, and that the effect of consolidating the domains was not actually that big (in terms of clicks from unbranded organic). I think that the subdomain/directory debate is not quite as cut and dried as people think.
I must say, I love the hreflang tags - they are one of the most underrated tools in SEO in my opinion. Just don't forget that canonical tag or they don't work!
Thanks again for your reply!
-
Due to the information we have this response is obviously going to be some educated speculation. You said 1.5 months ago that you changed the structure in how you present your language options to the user and I think this has a great deal to do with the index pages your seeing.
If you check out Rand's SEO slideshare (http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/introduction-to-seo-5003433) from slides 39-47 you'll see his discussion on the importance of site structure in the eyes of Google. While translated content may be all the same to the user, the search engines take the structure to mean different matters of intent.
For example, sub-domain information is often taken to be duplicated translate purpose only content. It's also often categorized as a separate site.
When you went from sub-domains to language directories you went from three separate sites to one site with flow-down accessible information. In Google's eyes you just expanded your website with new fresh and valuable information. While some of the indexed pages may drop off I think this structural change is the main reason you've had such a pick up in indexing and hopefully it plays well for your on your international SEO campaign!
Cheers,
Adam
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
-
Important pages are being 302 redirected, then 301 redirected to support language versions. Is this affecting negatively the linking juice distribution of our domain?
Hi mozzers, Prior to my arrival, in order to support and better serve the international locations and offering multiple language versions of the same content the company decided to restructure its URLs focused on locale urls. We went from
International SEO | | Ty1986
https://example.com/subfolder to https://example.com/us/en-us/new-subfolder (US)
https://example.com/ca/en-us/new-subfolder (CAN)
https://example.com/ca/fr-ca/new-subfolder (CAN)
https://example.com/de/en-us/new-subfolder (Ger)
https://example.com/de/de-de/new-subfolder (Ger) This had implications on redirecting old URLs to new ones. All important URLs such as https://example.com/subfolder were
302 redirected to https://example.com/us/en-us/subfolder and then 301 redirected to the final URL. According to the devs: If you change the translation to the page or locale, then a 302 needs to happen so you see the same version of the page in German or French, then a 301 redirect happens from the legacy URL to the new version. If the 302 redirect was skipped, then you would only be able to one version/language of that page.
For instance:
http://example.com/subfolder/state/city --> 301 redirect to {LEGACY URL]
https://example.com/subfolder/state/city --> 302 redirect to
https://example.com/en-us/subfolder/state/city --> 301 redirect to
https://example.com/us/en-us/new-subfolder/city-state [NEW URL] I am wondering if these 302s are hurting our link juice distribution or that is completely fine since they all end up as a 301 redirect? Thanks.1 -
Why are some regions/countries not indexing correctly?
Hi All, Recently I've added different regions (website.com/se/ etc) to Google search console and pointed them to their relevant countries, but only half are working when I search from a regions IP with a VPN and use the correct Google search ( Google.se etc ). Will this correct over time? or is something else causing them not to be indexed up correctly? Thanks in advance <colgroup><col width="81"><col width="104"></colgroup>
International SEO | | WattbikeSEO
| Country | Appear in SERP 17/12/2018 |
| AU | TRUE |
| CZ | TRUE |
| DK | TRUE |
| HK | TRUE |
| IE | TRUE |
| IT | TRUE |
| KR | TRUE |
| NL | TRUE |
| NZ | TRUE |
| SE | TRUE |
| SG | TRUE |
| US | TRUE |
| ZA | TRUE |
| AE | FALSE |
| AT | FALSE |
| CH | FALSE |
| CN | N/A |
| DE | FALSE |
| EE | FALSE |
| ES | FALSE |
| FI | FALSE |
| FR | FALSE |
| GB | FALSE |
| GR | FALSE |
| JP | FALSE |
| NO | FALSE |
| PL | FALSE |
| RU | FALSE |
| SI | FALSE |
| TR | FALSE |0 -
Website relaunched: Both old pages and new pages indexed
Hi all, We have recently made major changes to our website and relaunched it. We have changed URLs of some pages. We have redirected old URLs to new before taking website live. When I check even after one week, still the same old and new pages also indexed at Google. I wonder why still old pages cache is there with Google. Please share your ideas on this. Thanks
International SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Which pages to put hreflang on?
Hi, we are running a site which is a directory consisting of numbers of phone spammers. It contains descriptions, comments and so on. We are currently present in 9 countries. The websites all have the same structure, but, of course, the spam numbers in each country are different ones. If I want to tell Google that our website is available is several locations/languages, do I only put my hreflang tag on the start page then? Thanks
International SEO | | Roverandom
Thomas0 -
Web Site Migration - Time to Google indexing
Soon we will do a website migration .com.br to .com/pt-br. Wi will do this migration when we have with lower traffic. Trying to follow Google Guidelines, applying the 301 redirect, sitemap etc... I would like to know, how long time the Google generally will use to transfering the relevance of .com.br to .com/pt-br/ using redirect 301?
International SEO | | mobic0 -
Google does not index UK version of our site, and serves US version instead. Do I need to remove hreflanguage for US?
Webmaster tools indicates that only 25% of pages on our UK domain with GBP prices is indexed.
International SEO | | lcourse
We have another US domain with identical content but USD prices which is indexed fine. When I search in google for site:mydomain I see that most of my pages seem to appear, but then in the rich snippets google shows USD prices instead of the GBP prices which we publish on this page (USD price is not published on the page and I tested with an US proxy and US price is nowhere in the source code). Then I clicked on the result in google to see cached version of page and google shows me as cached version of the UK product page the US product page. I use the following hreflang code: rel="alternate" hreflang="en-US" href="https://www.domain.com/product" />
rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB" href="https://www.domain.co.uk/product" /> canonical of UK page is correctly referring to UK page. Any ideas? Do I need to remove the hreflang for en-US to get the UK domain properly indexed in google?0 -
Hreflang tag on every page?
Hello Moz Community, I'm working with a client who has translated their top 50 landing pages into Spanish. It's a large website and we don't have the resources to properly translate all pages at once, so we started with the top 50. We've already translated the content, title tags, URLs, etc. and the content will live in it's own /es-us/ directory. The client's website is set up in a way that all content follows a URL structure such as: https://www.example.com/en-us/. For Page A, it will live in English at: https://www.example.com/en-us/page-a For Page A, it will live in Spanish at https://www.example.com/es-us/page-a ("page-a" may vary since that part of the URL is translated) From my research in the Moz forums and Webmaster Support Console, I've written the following hreflang tags: /> For Page B, it will follow the same structure as Page A, and I wrote the corresponding hreflang tags the same way. My question is, do both of these tags need to be on both the Spanish and English version of the page? Or, would I put the "en-us" hreflang tag on the Spanish page and the "es-us" hreflang tag on the English page? I'm thinking that both hreflang tags should be on both the Spanish and English pages, but would love some clarification/confirmation from someone that has implemented this successfully before.
International SEO | | DigitalThirdCoast0 -
Low Index: 72 pages submitted and only 1 Indexed?
Hi Mozers, I'm pretty stuck on this and wondering if anybody else can give me some heads up around what might be causing the issues. I have 3 top level domains, NZ, AU, and USA. For some od reason I seem to be having a real issue with these pages indexing and also the sitemaps and I'm considering hiring someone to get the issue sorted as myself or my developer can''t seem to find the issues. I have attached an example of the sitemap_au.xml file. As you can see there is only 1 page that has been indexed and 72 were submitted. Basically because we host all of our domains on the same server, I was told last time our sitemaps were possibly been overwritten hence the reason why we have sitemap_au.xml and its the same for the other sitemap_nz.xml and sitemap_us.xml I also orignially had sitemap.xml for each. Another issue I am having is the meta tag des for each home page in USA and AU are showing the meta tag for New Zealand but when you look into the com and com.au code meta tag description they are all different as you can see here http://bit.ly/1KTbWg0 and here http://bit.ly/1AU0f5k Any advice around this would be so much appreciated! Thanks Justin new
International SEO | | edward-may0