Link Removal Request Sent to Google, Bad Pages Gone from Index But Still Appear in Webmaster Tools
-
|
On June 14th the number of indexed pages for our website on Google Webmaster tools increased from 676 to 851 pages. Our ranking and traffic have taken a big hit since then.
The increase in indexed pages is linked to a design upgrade of our website. The upgrade was made June 6th. No new URLS were added. A few forms were changed, the sidebar and header were redesigned. Also, Google Tag Manager was added to the site.
My SEO provider, a reputable firm endorsed by MOZ, believes the extra 175 pages indexed by Google, pages that do not offer much content, may be causing the ranking decline.
My developer submitted a page removal request to Google via Webmaster tools around June 20th. Now when a Google search is done for site:www.nyc-officespace-leader.com 851 results display. Would these extra pages cause a drop in ranking?
My developer issued a link removal request for these pages around June 20th and the number in the Google search results appeared to drop to 451 for a few days, now it is back up to 851. In Google Webmaster Tools it is still listed as 851 pages. My ranking drop more and more everyday.
At the end of displayed Google Search Results for site:www.nyc-officespace-leader.comvery strange URSL are displaying like:www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/wp-content/plugins/...
If we can get rid of these issues should ranking return to what it was before?I suspect this is an issue with sitemaps and Robot text. Are there any firms or coders who specialize in this? My developer has really dropped the ball.
Thanks everyone!! Alan
|
-
Hi Marie:
Thanks for your quite detailed response to my question. Some of the possibilities you mention probably don't apply for the following reasons:
1. None of the URLs' changed, so it cannot be that.
2. Page titles did not change, so it's not that.
3. As for unnatural links, these have existed for several years. In fact we succeeded in getting 28 our of 100 removed and made a disavow request for Google for the other 80 toxic links. While the link profile is weak it is not worse than what it was before.
When the upgrade was launched in early June Wordpress was upgraded to the latest version. I wonder if at that time some issue did not develop with robot txt or no-index. I find it very curious if that a removal request was made for the 175 URLs on June then the number of indexed pages went down for a few days and now they are back to 851.
My developer may be a little bit shy about accepting responsibility about this issue. Is there any source, a Guru or sorts that could check the Wordpress installation to see if that is the source of the 175 appearing on Google that should not be there? Someone way to eliminate any doubt about what is causing this issue?
Thanks, Alan
-
The extra pages possibly could negatively affect your site in the eyes of Panda...but there are many other possibilities.
Regarding the url removal tool, it will only work permanently if the pages either have a noindex tag (best) or are blocked by robots.txt. Perhaps that is the issue?
Any time that rankings drop after a design upgrade I would look first of all to on site issues such as accidental noindexing, accidental blocking by robots.txt. Have your urls changed at all? If so, then the appropriate redirects need to be put in place. Also, have all your page titles stayed the same? I recently saw a site that thought it was pummelled by Panda. It turned out that during a redesign their home page title changed from a keyword rich good title to "Home".
You've also got a good number of unnatural links and this can affect your rankings as well. Here are some examples:
http://niresource.com/detail/Business/Business_Travel/
http://www.londovor.com/Business/Real-Estate/?s=A&p=1161
I'm guessing that the solution is probably not as simple as just removing those pages from the index unfortunately.
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
-
Drop in Indexed pages
Hope everyone is having an Awesome December! I first noticed a drop in my index in the beginnings of November. My site drop in indexed pages from 1400 to 600 in the past 3-4 weeks. I don't know the cause of it, and would like the community to help me figure out why my indexing has dropped. Thank you for taking time out of your schedule to read this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BSC0 -
When does Google index a fetched page?
I have seen where it will index on of my pages within 5 minutes of fetching, but have also read that it can take a day. I'm on day #2 and it appears that it has still not re-indexed 15 pages that I fetched. I changed the meta-description in all of them, and added content to nearly all of them, but none of those changes are showing when I do a site:www.site/page I'm trying to test changes in this manner, so it is important for me to know WHEN a fetched page has been indexed, or at least IF it has. How can I tell what is going on?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood0 -
Why would one of our section pages NOT be indexed by Google?
One of our higher traffic section pages is not being indexed by Google. The products that reside on this section page ARE indexed by Google and are on page 1. So why wouldn't the section page be even listed and indexed? The meta title is accurate, meta description is good. I haven't received any notices in Webmaster Tools. Is there a way to check to see if OTHER pages might also not be indexed? What should a small ecom site do to see about getting it listed? SOS in Modesto. Ron
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yatesandcojewelers0 -
Outbound link to PDF vs outbound link to page
If you're trying to create a site which is an information hub, obviously linking out to authoritative sites is a good idea. However, does linking to a PDF have the same effect? e.g Linking to Google's SEO starter guide PDF, as opposed to linking to a google article on SEO. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | underscorelive0 -
Does Google index more than three levels down if the XML sitemap is submitted via Google webmaster Tools?
We are building a very big ecommerce site. The site has 1000 products and has many categories/levels. The site is still in construccion so you cannot see it online. My objective is to get Google to rank the products (level 5) Here is an example level 1 - Homepage - http://vulcano.moldear.com.ar/ Level 2 - http://vulcano.moldear.com.ar/piscinas/ Level 3 - http://vulcano.moldear.com.ar/piscinas/electrobombas-para-piscinas/ Level 4 - http://vulcano.moldear.com.ar/piscinas/electrobombas-para-piscinas/autocebantes.html/ Level 5 - Product is on this level - http://vulcano.moldear.com.ar/piscinas/electrobombas-para-piscinas/autocebantes/autocebante-recomendada-para-filtros-vc-10.html Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Removing a Page From Google index
We accidentally generated some pages on our site that ended up getting indexed by google. We have corrected the issue on the site and we 404 all of those pages. Should we manually delete the extra pages from Google's index or should we just let Google figure out that they are 404'd? What the best practice here?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dbuckles0 -
400 errors and URL parameters in Google Webmaster Tools
On our website we do a lot of dynamic resizing of images by using a script which automatically re-sizes an image dependant on paramaters in the URL like: www.mysite.com/images/1234.jpg?width=100&height=200&cut=false In webmaster tools I have noticed there are a lot of 400 errors on these image Also when I click the URL's listed as causing the errors the URL's are URL Encoded and go to pages like this (this give a bad request): www.mysite.com/images/1234.jpg?%3Fwidth%3D100%26height%3D200%26cut%3Dfalse What are your thoughts on what I should do to stop this? I notice in my webmaster tools "URL Parameters" there are parameters for:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James77
height
width
cut which must be from the Image URLs. These are currently set to "Let Google Decide", but should I change them manually to "Doesn't effect page content"? Thanks in advance0 -
Google indexing flash content
Hi Would googles indexing of flash content count towards page content? for example I have over 7000 flash files, with 1 unique flash file per page followed by a short 2 paragraph snippet, would google count the flash as content towards the overall page? Because at the moment I've x-tagged the roberts with noindex, nofollow and no archive to prevent them from appearing in the search engines. I'm just wondering if the google bot visits and accesses the flash file it'll get the x-tag noindex, nofollow and then stop processing. I think this may be why the panda update also had an effect. thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Flapjack0
