Sudden Recent Drop in Impressions in GWT - WTF?
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I noticed this recent drop in impressions in Google Webmaster Tools. It started mid-February, and I know there was the page layout algorithm on the 6th, and I've heard mention of a Panda update around the 11th, so I started to wonder what was resposible. A manual penalty was just recently removed, too. As I dug deeper, I discovered other problems. For one a misredirected blog causing 404s, plus a redirected site whose duplicate pages were never removed from Google's index. There are also two exact match domains 301 redirected to the site, but there were no links or content prior to the redirect. In a site:operator search, one is showing a duplicate homepage.
When the wordpress.com blog was redirected, it was not redirected to the /blog subdirectory. Could the resulting 404s which go back as far as I can see in GWT (3 month limit) be the cause of this drop? We're talking about hundreds of blog pages and their links. FYI the main nav in /blog pointed to the old site until 2/7 when I pointed them to the existing domain (so hundreds, if not thousands of links were being redirected)
The million dollar question is: is it just the 301 redirect issue causing the problem here? It looks like I might just have exacerbated it when I fixed the nav menu links. Will fixing the redirect rescue the impressions?
My plan of attack includes killing the 301 redirects from the exact match domains with no backlinks, and removing the old site from Google's index from within GWT. Any yays or nays?
FYI, a 301 redirect of .index.html, default.asp, and non-www was done 1/8,
the reconsideration request was sent 1/24, manual penalty lifted 2/10. Index.html still redirects twice, going to www.site.com/index.html before resolving at .com. Same with default.asp. -
Here I am (partially) answering my own question...
i just this minute checked a fresh crawl report from Moz which shows that the no-index/follow I implemented in Wordpress SEO for pagination is very much to blame. (Though perhaps not entirely) I just checked Google Analytics for a parallel pattern in traffic, but I don't see one. I did seem stagnant compared to last month a few days ago, but it's up a little now. Being proactive was my motivation.
I would definitely still love some insight to my questions, as I am sure I am nowhere out of the woods on this site. I hope my acronym isn't keeping anyone at bay
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