Why are only a few of our pages being indexed
-
Recently rebuilt a site for an auctioneers, however it has a problem in that none of the lots and auctions are being indexed by Google on the new site, only the pages like About, FAQ, home, contact.
Checking WMT shows that Google has crawled all the pages, and I've done a "Fetch as Google" on them and it loads up fine, so there's no crawling issues that is standing out. I've set the "URL Parameters" to no effect too. Also built a sitemap with all the lots in, pushed to Google which then crawled them all (massive spike in Crawl rate for a couple days), and still just indexing a handful of pages.
Any clues to look into would be greatly appreciated.
-
Thanks for this. The /item-details/ are linked to from the Auction pages (e.g: https://www.wilkinsons-auctioneers.co.uk/auction-items/?id=13)
We've looked into the canonical issue and sorted that out, so fingers crossed on that being the issue. I'm only really familiar with canonical being a pain with ecommerce sites, but I know to keep an eye on it for others sites we have using parameters/custom pages.
-
Hi,
I took a quick look at your site, sitemap and index status and only 25 urls in Google, but very many more in the sitemap.
What I couldn't work out is where your /item-details/ urls in the sitemap are linked to from your website? I can't get to them through buying -> catalogue. It won't help indexing status if they aren't being linked to from anywhere.
The biggest issue you have however is the way canonicals are set up on the problem pages. If you go to this page:
https://www.wilkinsons-auctioneers.co.uk/item-details/?ID=2710
It has the following canonical (without the id):
rel='canonical' href='https://www.wilkinsons-auctioneers.co.uk/item-details/' />
If you search on Google, that canonical URL is indexed, so if you fix this by adding the id to the canonical they should start to appear in SERPS.
You have exactly the same problem on your auctions pages. e.g. https://www.wilkinsons-auctioneers.co.uk/auction-items/?id=13&pagenum=51
Another point that will help you rank is to use friendlier / more descriptive URLs for the items.
Hope that helps
George
-
Has the site recently moved to HTTPS:// and have you also reincluded the https:// version in webmaster tools. This may throw up a few errors.
I have also noticed that if you type in http://www you can still get to the site, might be worth a redirect in your htaccess file.
Maybe also add the following to your wordpress header -
Also check any settings in wordpress are not causing a no index issue.
Hope this helps
Tim
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
-
Home Pages of Several Websites are disappearing / reappearing in Google Index
Hi, I periodically use the Google site command to confirm that our client's websites are fully indexed. Over the past few months I have noticed a very strange phenomenon which is happening for a small subset of our client's websites... basically the home page keeps disappearing and reappearing in the Google index every few days. This is isolated to a few of our client's websites and I have also noticed that it is happening for some of our client's competitor's websites (over which we have absolutely no control). In the past I have been led to believe that the absence of the home page in the index could imply a penalty of some sort. This does not seem to be the case since these sites continue to rank the same in various Google searches regardless of whether or not the home page is listed in the index. Below are some examples of sites of our clients where the home page is currently not indexed - although they may be indexed by the time you read this and try it yourself. Note that most of our clients are in Canada. My questions are: 1. has anyone else experienced/noticed this? 2. any thoughts on whether this could imply some sort of penalty? or could it just be a bug in Google? 3. does Google offer a way to report stuff like this? Note that we have been building websites for over 10 years so we have long been aware of issues like www vs. non-www, canonicalization, and meta content="noindex" (been there done that in 2005). I could be wrong but I do not believe that the site would keep disappearing and reappearing if something like this was the issue. Please feel free to scrutinize the home pages to see if I have overlooked something obvious - I AM getting old. site:dietrichlaw.ca - this site has continually ranked in the top 3 for [kitchener personal injury lawyers] for many years. site:burntucker.com - since we took over this site last year it has moved up to page 1 for [ottawa personal injury lawyers] site:bolandhowe.com - #1 for [aurora personal injury lawyers] site:imranlaw.ca - continually ranked in the top 3 for [mississauga immigration lawyers]. site:canadaenergy.ca - ranks #3 for [ontario hydro plans] Thanks in advance! Jim Donovan, President www.wethinksolutions.com
Technical SEO | | wethink0 -
My SEO friend says my website is not being indexed by Google considering the keywords he has placed in the page and URL what does that mean?
My SEO friend says my website is not being indexed by Google considering the keywords he has placed in the page and URL what does that mean? We have added some text in the pages with keywords thats related the page
Technical SEO | | AlexisWithers0 -
Advice on whether we 301 redirect a page or update existing page?
Hi guys, any advice would be really appreciated. We have an existing page that ranks well for 'red widgets'. The page isn't monetised right now, but we're bringing in a new product onto our site that we optimised for 'blue widgets'. Unfortunately, not enough research was done for this page and we've now realised that consumers actually search for 'red widgets' when looking for the product we're creating as 'blue widgets'. The problem with this is that the 'red widgets' page is in a completely different category of our site than what it needs to be (it needs to be with 'blue widgets'). So, my question is; Should we do a 301 redirect from our 'red-widgets' page to our 'blue-widgets' page which we want to update and optimise the content on there for 'red-widgets'. Or, should we update the existing red-widgets page to have the right products and content on there, even thought it is in the wrong place of our site and users could get confused as to why they are there. If we do a 301 redirect to our new page, will we lose our rankings and have to start again, or is there a better way around this? Thanks! Dave
Technical SEO | | davo230 -
Big page of clients - links to individual client pages with light content - not sure if canonical or no-follow - HELP
Not sure what best practice here is: http://www.5wpr.com/clients/ Is this is a situation where I'm best off adding canonical tags back to the main clients page, or to the practice area each client falls under? No-following all these links and adding canonical? No-follow/No-index all client pages? need some advice here...
Technical SEO | | simplycary0 -
Backlinks Indexing
Is there a way of indexing my backlinks?? I have a lot backlinks but Google can't find them
Technical SEO | | CodePlus0 -
Yahoo and Bing do not index all pages
Only 20% of our pages are indexed by Bing and Yahoo although we have correctly submitted the sitemap to bing webmaster tools and other search engines index all our content. Do you have any suggestions?
Technical SEO | | AEM130 -
Duplicate Page Content Lists the same page twice?
When checking my crawl diagnostics this morning I see that I have the error Duplicate page content. It lists the exact same url twice though and I don't understand how to fix this. It's also listed under duplicate page title. Personal Assistant | Virtual Assistant | Charlotte, NC http://charlottepersonalassistant.com/110 Personal Assistant | Virtual Assistant | Charlotte, NC http://charlottepersonalassistant.com/110 Does this have anything to do with a 301 redirect here? Why does it have http;// twice? Thanks all! | http://www.charlottepersonalassistant.com/ | http://http://charlottepersonalassistant.com/ |
Technical SEO | | eidna220 -
Duplicate Pages Issue
I noticed a problem and I was wondering if anyone knows how to fix it. I was a sitemap for 1oxygen.com, a site that has around 50 pages. The sitemap generator come back with over a 2000 pages. Here is two of the results: http://www.1oxygen.com/portableconcentrators/portableconcentrators/portableconcentrators/services/rentals.htm
Technical SEO | | chuck-layton
http://www.1oxygen.com/portableconcentrators/portableconcentrators/1oxygen/portableconcentrators/portableconcentrators/portableconcentrators/oxusportableconcentrator.htm These are actaully pages somehow. In my FTP there in the first /portableconentrators/ folder there is about 12 html documents and no other folders. It looks like it is creating a page for every possible folder combination. I have no idea why you those pages above actually work, help please???0