Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Disappearing and reappearing in google index
-
Hello.
I made a lot of car accident lawyer city pages. They probably weren't as unique as they should have been.
Suddenly, they all disappeared from the rankings and I freaked out. Then, two days later, they all returned.
Is this a bad sign? Should I be worried? Why would they drop out of the rankings and come back in?
Let me know, thanks.
-
At any given time Google has lots of different indexes. They are always testing different algos and using different vintages of data. All of this happens on thousands of severs at multiple data centers worldwide. So, if your pages are relatively new then they might be in and out of the the search results that you see depending upon which of the many servers responds to your query. The newer the pages, the more volatile they might be. The weaker your website, the longer it will take them to stabilize in the search results.
That is a partial answer to your question. (Read the book "In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives" by Steven Levy. Very interesting, helps you be a better SEO because you will understand how they think and work a little better.)
I made a lot of car accident lawyer city pages. They probably weren't as unique as they should have been.
If you did this Google will probably index them and start displaying all of them. Then, if Google decides that some of these pages are not as unique as they would like, some of them will be filtered from the search results. To find out of this is happening go to the very end of the search results and on the last page you might see something like.....
"In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 10 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."If your page can be found in the "repeat the search.... " then you will know that Google thinks that the page is too similar to other pages on the web (on your site or on other sites) and they have filtered your page from the search results.
If you have lots of these pages then google might think that you have a low quality website and their Panda algo will get you. That will demote the rankings of almost all of your pages for almost all of their relevant queries and your traffic will drop suddenly.
If you really make them mad with this stuff they might consider your site to be even lower than low quality - meaning spam - and deindex lots of your pages or your entire site.
So, that is the stuff that can happen. Don't publish a lot of cookie cutter pages or just change place names and insert synonyms. Google has been slapping people for that stuff for at least ten years.
Also see here and here for good responses to similar questions asked by you and answered by Patrick Delehanty.
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
-
Review snippets not shown on google search results
Hi, In Moz it shows that we have a review snippet for a keyword/page, but it is not shown on google SERP. Can anyone explain why it isnt shown on Google search results, and what we should do in order to get it shown ?
On-Page Optimization | | jensatlieto0 -
Finding issue on Gtmetrix speed test and google speed test
Hey, when i have tested my website https://www.socprollect-mea.com/ on GT metrix. When i test morning, it shown page speed of 3.8 seconds and in noon it shown 2 seconds and later i check, it is defeclecting. speed on the Google page speed test as well. What kind of error is this and does anyone have the solution for this issue?
On-Page Optimization | | nazfazy0 -
Google Webmaster Guideline Change: Human-Readable list of links
In the revised webmaster guidelines, google says "[...] Provide a sitemap file with links that point to the important pages on your site. Also provide a page with a human-readable list of links to these pages (sometimes called a site index or site map page)." (Source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en) I guess what they mean by this is something like this: http://www.ziolko.de/sitemap.html Still, I wonder why they say that. Just to ensure that every page on a site is linked and consequently findable by humans (and crawlers - but isn't the XML sitemap for those and gives even better information)? Should not a good navigation already lead to every page? What is the benefit of a link-list-page, assuming you have an XML sitemap? For a big site, a link-list is bound to look somewhat cluttered and its usefulness is outclassed by a good navigation, which I assume as a given. Or isn't it? TL;DR: Can anybody tell me what exactly is the benefit of a human-readable list of all links? Regards, Nico
On-Page Optimization | | netzkern_AG0 -
Can lazy loading of images affect indexing?
I am trying to diagnose a massive drop in Google rankings for my website and noticed that the date of the ranking and traffic drop coincides with Google suddenly only indexing about 10% of my images, whereas previously it was indexing about 95% of them. Wondering if addition of lazy load script to images (so they don't load from the server until visible in the browser) could cause this index blocking?
On-Page Optimization | | Gavin.Atkinson1 -
Is it convinient to use No-Index, Follow to my Paginated Pages?
I have a website http://www.naukrigulf.com and it has a lot of Paginated pages on its SERP and most of paginated pages are getting indexed in Google SERP. Is it beneficial to use No-Index, Follow to keep the link equity to main (first page), although we have already used rel=next and rel=prev. If Answer is "yes" is their any harm by using no-index, follow with rel=next, rel=prev.
On-Page Optimization | | vivekrathore0 -
My Meta Description changes when i use different keyword in google search.
Hello everyone, I have a question for the community. I have a website with several articles and news that i manage. I set specific meta descriptions for every page but when i search in google it gives me back different meta descriptions depending on the keyword that i use to search. What i notice is that google looks in my page for the most relevant part of the text that combines with my keyword and gives me back that result. I thought that this only happen when i have an empty meta description. Anyone felt the same ? Best Ricardo www.meuportalfinanceiro.pt
On-Page Optimization | | Adclick0 -
Does Google index dynamically generated content/headers, etc.?
To avoid dupe content, we are moving away from a model where we have 30,000 pages, each with a separate URL that looks like /prices/<product-name>/<city><state>, often with dupe content because the product overlaps from city to city, and it's hard to keep 30,000 pages unique, where sometimes the only distinction is the price & the city/state.</state></city></product-name> We are moving to a model with around 300 unique pages, where some of the info that used to be in the url will move to the page itself (headers, etc.) to cut down on dupe content on those unique 300 pages. My question is this. If we have 300 unique-content pages with unique URL's, and we then put some dynamic info (year, city, state) into the page itself, will Google index this dynamic content? The question behind this one is, how do we continue to rank for searches for that product in the city-state being searched without having that info in the URL? Any best practices we should know about?
On-Page Optimization | | editabletext0 -
Changing page titles and google penalties?
I just recently learned that changing your page title earns you a google penalty. Unfortunately i learned this after playing around with my page titles a bit to get the most optimal page titles. Does anybody know how long this google penalty lasts? is it forever? or just temporary?
On-Page Optimization | | A Former User0