Google dropping pages from SERPs even though indexed and cached. (Shift over to https suspected.)
-
Anybody know why pages that have previously been indexed - and that are still present in Google's cache - are now not appearing in Google SERPs?
All the usual suspects - noindex, robots, duplication filter, 301s - have been ruled out. We shifted our site over from http to https last week and it appears to have started then, although we have also been playing around with our navigation structure a bit too.
Here are a few examples...
Example 1:
- Live URL: https://www.normanrecords.com/records/149002-memory-drawings-there-is-no-perfect-place
- Cached copy: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.normanrecords.com/records/149002-memory-drawings-there-is-no-perfect-place
- SERP (1): https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=memory+drawings+there+is+no+perfect+place
- SERP (2): https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=memory+drawings+there+is+no+perfect+place+site%3Awww.normanrecords.com
Example 2:
- SERP: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=deaf+center+recount+site%3Awww.normanrecords.com
- Live URL: https://www.normanrecords.com/records/149001-deaf-center-recount-
- Cached copy: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.normanrecords.com/records/149001-deaf-center-recount-
These are pages that have been linked to from our homepage (Moz PA of 68) prominently for days, are present and correct in our sitemap (https://www.normanrecords.com/catalogue_sitemap.xml), have unique content, have decent on-page optimisation, etc. etc.
We moved over to https on 11 Aug. There were some initial wobbles (e.g. 301s from normanrecords.com to www.normanrecords.com got caught up in a nasty loop due to the conflicting 301 from http to https) but these were quickly sorted (i.e. spotted and resolved within minutes). There have been some other changes made to the structure of the site (e.g. a reduction in the navigation options) but nothing I know of that would cause pages to drop like this.
For the first example (Memory Drawings) we were ranking on the first page right up until this morning and have been receiving Google traffic for it ever since it was added to the site on 4 Aug.
Any help very much appreciated! At the very end of my tether / understanding here...
Cheers,
Nathon
-
Sorry denverish, I have been really busy lol
Point number 3 refers to "pinging" your website, to let the search engines know your site has been updated. There are a few spammy ones out there, but I would try using:
http://pingomatic.com/
or
https://pingler.com/Pinging is a process by which you can inform major Search Engines and RSS direcotries(Google,Bing,Yahoo,Technorati etc) that you have updated content/URL's in your blog/Website. Pinging can also help in getting website changes indexed quickly.
-
Hi David, did you see Nathon's most recent response? Just checking.
-
Hi David,
Thanks for your response!
Yup, our sitemaps are recreated and resubmitted every day, and those pages have both been fetched (and rendered) in GWT. Not sure exactly what you mean by point 3 though??
-
Even though the 301's are all in place, have you notified Google of the changes? Might be why you are seeing them disappear
1. Sitemap recreation and resubmission
2. Resubmit via Webmaster tools using "fetch as Google"
3. Ping website for new pages
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
-
Google is indexing our old domain
We changed our primary domain from vivitecsolutions.com to vivitec.net. Google is indexing our new domain, but still has our old domain indexed too. The problem is that the old site is timing out because of the https: Thought on how to make the old indexing go away or properly forward the https?
Technical SEO | | AdsposureDev0 -
Pagespeed drop on https
Hi all, Since I have moved from http to https my pagespeed has dropped. My hosting company/ programmer say this is normal but I am not happy with the results. Before: mobile 69 desktop 89 Now: Mobile: 52 desktop 69 Anybody experience with this issue? All help is welcome! Thank You in advance Tymen
Technical SEO | | Tymen0 -
Why seomoz.org still in Google index?
I searched in Google, the number of URLs indexed left in the seomoz.org domain since it changed to moz.comI am surprised that after all this time more than 15,000 URLs indexed:https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=site%3Aseomoz.org%20inurl%3Aseomoz.org If I clicked on any of the results it will be redirect (301) to the new domain, so it is working, but Google still keep these URLs in the index.
Technical SEO | | Yosef
What could be the reason?Will not cause duplicated content issue on moz.com?0 -
CDN Being Crawled and Indexed by Google
I'm doing a SEO site audit, and I've discovered that the site uses a Content Delivery Network (CDN) that's being crawled and indexed by Google. There are two sub-domains from the CDN that are being crawled and indexed. A small number of organic search visitors have come through these two sub domains. So the CDN based content is out-ranking the root domain, in a small number of cases. It's a huge duplicate content issue (tens of thousands of URLs being crawled) - what's the best way to prevent the crawling and indexing of a CDN like this? Exclude via robots.txt? Additionally, the use of relative canonical tags (instead of absolute) appear to be contributing to this problem as well. As I understand it, these canonical tags are telling the SEs that each sub domain is the "home" of the content/URL. Thanks! Scott
Technical SEO | | Scott-Thomas0 -
Google Impressions Drop Due to Expired SSL
Recently I noticed a huge drop in our clients Google Impressions via GWMT from 900 impressions to 70 overnight on October 30, 2012 and has remained this way for the entire month of November 2012. The SSL Cert had expired in mid October due to the notification message for renewal going to the SPAM folder and being missed. Is it possible for an SSL expiry to be related to this massive drop in daily impressions which in-turn has also effected traffic? I also can't see any evidence of duplicate pages (ie. https and http) being indexed but to be honest I'm not the one doing the SEO therefore haven't been tracking this. Thanks for your help! Chris
Technical SEO | | MeMediaSEO0 -
Home page deindexed by google
when I search my website on google by site:www.mydomain.com I have found my domain with www has been de-indexed by google, but when I search site:mydomain.com, my home page--**mydomain.com **show up on the search results without www, put it simple, google only index my domain without www, I wonder how to make my domain with www being indexed, and how to prevent this problem occure again.
Technical SEO | | semer0 -
Wrong page ranking even after fixes. Why?
Howdy, I've read a number of posts on this issue and followed all the advice I could find. My issue is this: several of our targeted keywords have the wrong page ranking which results in a loss of conversion and high bounce rate. I use the site:mydomain.com operator to see how the pages are ranking which I find really useful. One of our targeted keywords is 'wedding stationery' and the page which should rank is shop.confetti.co.uk/branch/wedding-stationery however this page ranks 3rd on our domain. I've done the following: Optimised the correct page De-optimised the ranking pages Added links from the incorrectly ranking page to the page I want to rank using keyword anchor text Added internal links to the page I want to rank from high Page Authority pages using keyword anchor text Here is a link to the SERP which shows the ranking for our domain for the 'wedding stationery' search term. I made the changes a couple of weeks ago. Any advice or explanations as to what is causing this would be greatly received. Thanks in advance, Brendan.
Technical SEO | | Confetti_Wedding0 -
Pages not being found in serp
Hi I'm helping a collegue with his website. For what ever reason the pages in the Solutions Menu are not being found in the search result for keywords related to the pages. (Homepage mainly comes up in the search result). Does anyone have any advise to why this may be happening? *To give you a bit of a background understanding, previously all the menu content was copied (which I made him change), he also had hidden text on some pages (i made him remove, white text on white background) plus the url structure changed as well. Persoanlly I think he is over using , links, internal linking is not great & the general content is not great in the menu. Your Thoughts are welcomed, thank you.
Technical SEO | | Socialdude0