Link Removal Request Sent to Google, Bad Pages Gone from Index But Still Appear in Webmaster Tools

[Kingalan1]

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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

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[Kingalan1]

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

[MarieHaynes]

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://rossettijorgensen.com/Arts/Sports/Arts/Comics__/Business/Computers_and_Internet/Emulators/Recreation/Business/Real_Estate/Agents_and_Agencies/

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.