Homepage is deindexed in Google
-
Happened sometime on the 12th or 13th of Feb (is there a way to tell exactly besides referring to GA?).
I've been on the Google Webmasters Tools forums trying to nail this down - https://productforums.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!msg/webmasters/OgpmNCc3IFA/mmtgUilyXUUJI can only think that Google is viewing this as duplicate content from an internal page for example: http://mudlifeled.com/shop
Very frustrating because we were moving up on the first page for some good brand key words and traffic was climbing.
Now I've got my hands up and am at a loss to what I can do.
-
Glad I could help
-
Back in business! Thanks for the help Chris!
-
ok...think we are getting somewhere. When I typed this in google by accident: site://www.mudlifeled.com
The page shows up:
https://www.mudlifeled.com
Since I had the https page set to noindex - Google was not indexing it. But it still doesn't explain why the http was not indexed and why all of a sudden it is now deindexed when the way I had the site setup has been crawled like this for almost a year? Maybe Google saw enough backlinks to https and said: "hey - we want to use the https version instead. Too bad you have it set to noindex"?Now that I have the canonical displaying from https to http on all pages - I'm hoping it reverts back to the http version and I get my keyword rank back. As of right now - I'm not seeing it in G's SERPs. fingers crossed
-
It could have just needed some more time for the canonical to work, still a bit on the odd side of things..
-
Now the index is showing:
<cite class="_Rm">www.mudlifeled.com/?taxonomy=product_type&term=simple</cite>
as the first result of a site: lookup
ugh
-
Yeah me too
It seems others can see the home page with site:www.mudlifeled.com outside the USA. But not inside of the USA.
Everything is good from the the suggested link.
I'm banging my head against my desk...lol
-
I'm a little stumped, as it should be working (and is for me) you could try giving it a bit more time with that canonical to take affect. I've tried looking via a proxy and i can't see it in American search compared to the UK search.
did you try looking through here - http://moz.com/ugc/8-reasons-why-your-site-might-not-get-indexed
-
I'm not seeing the homepage yet :(. Though using the canonical method did jiggle some lower level pages back into the index. Yikes - this is weird. Any other suggestions?
-
Just an update: seems to be working now for me (I was unable to see homepage before)
-
No the canonical makes the robots surplus, it tells Google its a duplicate of where ever you pointed the tag to, this also means any links also sort of get redirected too (in a sense)
-
I ask because it seems that viewers can see the homepage outside the USA.
One of the first things I did when I took over the site in April of 2014 was claim both in webmasters tools.
I have made the canonical change as suggested. Should I keep the meta robots tag as well?
-
I am located in the UK, however I am also finding it odd.
Couple of things I'd look into is to claim both http & https in webmaster tools, rather than block the robots, change it for a canonical tag which tells Google you're preferred domain and also can help with your link juice flow.
Have to admit I'm in a bit of a pickle though..
-
Fetch is good. No errors with fetch or render.
The only update I made was from WooCommerce 2.2 to 2.3. This has not effected the output or markup of anything of importance.
Are you located in the USA?
-
No manual webspam actions found.
-
You can check here - https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools
your site >Search Traffic > Manual actions
-
From what I can tell - I have no manual penalty.
Is there a way to check this outside Webmasters Tools?
I'm not seeing the homepage at all in the index. I've checked on outside computers with myself not being logged into google here in Florida.
My analytic data is confirming that there is a definite drop of hits to the homepage. -
a canonical link would work better and mean you're not shooting your self in the foot so much see more here -
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en
how does fetch as Google work out for you? Did you also review what you were doing prior to this happening to see if a change you made has triggered this?
edit
One quick thought did you set up https redirects on the main homepage correctly and that's whats causing you an issue?
-
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the reply.
All HTTPS is blocked by design to keep from any possible duplicates with HTTP.
Michael Shinosky
-
Hi Keszi,
Thanks for the reply.
Being a WordPress site - I have not touched the format of the canonical tags since I took over managing the website in April of 2014.
Michael Shinosky
-
Your main site is index when I'm looking, you've blocked some of your pages with a noindex and nofollow tag in your meta robots which wont be helping you
e.g. https://www.mudlifeled.com/product-category/aurora-d-series/
try to remove the meta robots tag, (this overrides the robots.txt)
Good news your main page is indexed by Google, also if you do have to noindex a page at least it follow.
EDIT I also assume you don't have any sort of manual penalty and that you have checked
-
Hi Michael,
I am not quite sure, but I have a gut feeling telling me it has something to do with your canonical tags. When did you implement those? (cannot run a crawl now, but I will surely check it out in the evening).
Gr., Keszi
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
-
What could cause Google to not honor canonical URLs?
I have a strange situation on a website, when I do a Google query of site:example.com all the top indexed results appear to be queries that users can perform on the website. So any random term the user searches for on the website for some reason is causing the search result page to get indexed - like example.com/search/query/random-keywords However, the search results page has a canonical tag on it that points to example.com/search, but that doesn't seem to be doing anything. Any thoughts or ideas why this could be happening?
Technical SEO | | IrvCo_Interactive0 -
Deindexed homepage by Google
I just noticed that my homepage was de-indexed by google. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Jenny_H0 -
Homepage is deindexed in Google
We recently noticed that our primary page was de-indexed in Google. When looking in google search console there are no manual actions taken. We did add a few new banners to the site but I have no idea why this would have negatively affected that site. I did add a new page called https://enleaf.com/company/testimonials/ that had some duplicate testimonials that were also on the home page but have since removed that. Not sure where to go from here.
Technical SEO | | AChronister0 -
My Google Author Pic Disappeared
My Google author picture, which had been in place for a couple of years, disappeared from all SERP results recently. I checked, and rel=author attribution is valid on every post, as is the link to to the Google + authorship page (which contains a link back to the web site). When I test URL's in the structured data testing tool the picture appears. I'm out of troubleshooting ideas. Any suggestions welcome.
Technical SEO | | waynekolenchuk0 -
Site removed from Google Index
Hi mozers, Two months ago we published http://aquacion.com We registered it in the Google Webmaster tools and after a few day the website was in the index no problem. But now the webmaster tools tell us the URLs were manually removed. I've look everywhere in the webmaster tools in search for more clues but haven't found anything that would help me. I sent the acces to the client, who might have been stupid enough to remove his own site from the Google index, but now, even though I delete and add the sitemap again, the website won't show in Google SERPs. What's weird is that Google Webmaster Tools tells us all the page are indexed. I'm totally clueless here... Ps. : Added screenshots from Google Webmaster Tools. Update Turns out it was my mistake after all. When my client developped his website a few months ago, he published it, and I removed the website from the Google Index. When the website was finished I submited the sitemap, thinking it would void the removal request, but it don't. How to solve In webmaster tools, in the [Google Index => Remove URLs] page, you can reinclude pages there. tGib0
Technical SEO | | RichardPicard0 -
How do i show my link xls file to google?
i have removed lots of links and contacted lots of webmaster to clean up my link profile. I have a large xls file to send to google for them to see that we have done a lot to clean up the bad links. How would i show this file to google? is there a place where I can post it? or email ? thank you nick
Technical SEO | | orion680 -
Websites not being included on google from mobiles?
Hi, Just had a call from a guy saying that google have made a statement saying that it will be stopping people finding websites from mobule devices if they dont have a mobile domain name. Doesn anyone know anything about any Google statements or is this just rubbish?
Technical SEO | | Ant710 -
Google rankings tanked....Now what?
We just experience a drop in Google rankings, some pretty harsh, across all of the keywords we have been ranking greater than 50. I’m a noob at SEO, but a technical noob so I started doing my home work. I’ve seen references to the “google dance” and “Honeymoon”, but this hit seems to have effected competitors too. Everyone seems re-ranked with several junk directories jumping up more than I think they should. Has anyone else seen this? Is this more Google algorithm adjustment or a natural settling based on our new SEO attempts? In either case, what should we do next? I know there is a holistic approach and everything is important however, we need bang for the buck at this point to before we start bleeding. One or two next steps? Our industry is residential cleaning and the site is www.bitabliss.com Here is a little history:
Technical SEO | | BitABliss
The site that’s been running for about 2 years. We initially put up a very basic “throw something up” site without much thought of SEO except for some basics and a long tail approach with a blog, FaceBook and Twitter. We launched an updated site on Feb 23. with new theme and this time some, “on page” work to better hit the basics. The site structure was kept the same and we added on some more localized content in hopes to take advantage of local searches. Also, enter SEOMoz to get us tracking things (Yay MOZ). Until yesterday, we had been doing pretty well in some of our target cites even with the more basic site. When we launched the new site focusing on page titles, descriptions and page content, and a few directory attempts. We started to see some incremental growth. It seemed to me that this kind of growth meant that we were doing the right things and doing a better job than some of the other sites. Any way, yesterday we got smacked down. This seems too harsh for a for the slow increases we have seen over the last month. Any thoughts you have would be great appreciated. Thanks! -Shawn1