Google Webmaster Tools -> Sitemap suddent "indexed" drop
-
Hello MOZ,
We had an massive SEO drop in June due to unknown reasons and we have been trying to recover since then.
I've just noticed this yesterday and I'm worried. See: http://imgur.com/xv2QgCQ
Could anyone help by explaining what would cause this sudden drop and what does this drop translates to exactly?
What is strange is that our index status is still strong at 310 pages, no drop there: http://imgur.com/a1sRAKo
And when I do search on google site:globecar.com everything seems normal see: http://imgur.com/O7vPkqu
Thanks,
-
I found the problem guys, I had made a change in the sitemap that messed up everything. It's all back to normal now. Thanks guys for your support!
-
That is what I was looking for, thank you.
-
I think this is the information everyone is looking for, https://www.seroundtable.com/google-sitemap-index-count-drop-is-a-bug-20608.html It seems there is a bug in GWT with sitemaps.
-
I am having this exact problem, it started on July 14th. For some reason my indexed has dropped even though I have no sitemap errors. Have you received any answers?
-
Totally agree with Andy.
Make sure your XML sitemaps don't contain any errors, and if something like this happens you should closely watch your organic traffic as well. If there's a big drop in your organic traffic you can start worrying
-
That isn't an 'SEO' drop as such, this is related to your sitemap errors. Doing a site: wont show the same numbers as you see as being shown on the sitemap itself.
Rebuild your sitemap, correct the errors and then see what state it is in.
-Andy
-
Hey,
First of all you don't need to worry about. Be calm and find out the root cause.
Usually when this happen, we investigate things in bit depth. I can't give you the accurate answer before seeing the details. Please checkout the below pointers and let us know your thoughts.
- Your marketing activities followed the same pace? May be, your competitors outranked you by producing more valuable links and pages.
- Did you check the analytics? It'd be better for us if you could share the analytics traffic graph.
- Have you done any major changes to your website in terms of design, technical things, content, URLs, shift to another platform etc?
- Have you just recovered from any penalty in recent past? Check your WMT again.
- Did you agency/team build new links in this time period? If yes, examine them.
Find out the best possible answer of above points and I'm sure you will get the clearer picture of this mishap.
Hope this helps!
Umar
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
-
"No Information Available" Error for Homepage in Google
Hi Everyone, Been racking my brain around this one. Not sure why it is happening. Basically Google is showing the "www" version of the homepage, when 99% of the site is "non-www". It also says "No Information Available". I have tried submitting it through GSC, but it is telling me it is blocked through the Robots.txt file. I don't see anything in there that would block it. Any ideas? shorturl.at/bkpyG I would like to get it to change to the regular "non-www" and actually be able to show information.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vetofunk0 -
Website dropped out from Google index
Howdy, fellow mozzers. I got approached by my friend - their website is https://www.hauteheadquarters.com She is saying that they dropped from google index over night - and, as you can see if you google their name, website url or even site: , most of the pages are not indexed. Home page is nowhere to be found - that's for sure. I know that they were indexed before. Google webmaster tools don't have any manual actions (at least yet). No sudden changes in content or backlink profile. robots.txt has some weird rule - disallow everything for EtaoSpider. I don't know if google would listen to that - robots checker in GWT says it's all good. Any ideas why that happen? Any ideas what I should check? P.S. Just noticed in GWT there was a huge drop in indexed pages within first week of August. Still no idea why though. P.P.S. Just noticed that there is noindex x-robots-tag in headers... Anyone knows where this can be set?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DmitriiK0 -
Https & http urls in Google Index
Hi everyone, this question is a two parter: I am now working for a large website - over 500k monthly organic traffic. The site currently has both http and https urls in Google's index. The website has not formally converted to https. The https began with an error and has evolved unchecked over time. Both versions of the site (http & https) are registered in webmaster tools so I can clearly track and see that as time passes http indexation is decreasing and https has been increasing. The ratio is at about 3:1 in favor of https at this time. Traffic over the last year has slowly dipped, however, over the last two months there has been a steady decline in overall visits registered through analytics. No single page appears to be the culprit, this decline is occurring across most pages of the website, pages which traditionally draw heavy traffic - including the home page. Considering that Google is giving priority to https pages, could it be possible that the split is having a negative impact on traffic as rankings sway? Additionally, mobile activity for the site has steadily increased both from a traffic and a conversion standpoint. However that traffic has also dipped significantly over the last two months. Looking at Google's mobile usability error's page I see a significant number of errors (over 1k). I know Google has been testing and changing mobile ranking factors, is it safe to posit that this could be having an impact on mobile traffic? The traffic declines are 9-10% MOM. Thank you. ~Geo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Geosem0 -
Adding magento shop to webmaster tools
Hi Guys This week is launch week so I'm just finishing off a few things ready for launch. Quick question for e-commerce guys. When adding the new site to webmaster tools, should we be adding each store i.e trespass.com, trespass,com/us and trespass.com/row as seperate sites or one site trespass.com but with 3 xml sitemaps? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Trespass0 -
What are the ranking factors for "Google News"? How can we compete?
We have a few sport news websites that are picked up by Google News. Once in a blue moon, one of our articles ranks for a great keyword and shows in one of the 3 listings that Google News has in SERPS. Any tips on how we can we optimise more of our articles to compete in these 3 positions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | betnl0 -
After reading of Google's so called "over-optimization" penalty, is there a penalty for changing title tags too frequently?
In other words, does title tag change frequency hurt SEO ? After changing my title tags, I have noticed a steep decline in impressions, but an increase in CTR and rankings. I'd like to once again change the title tags to try and regain impressions. Is there any penalty for changing title tags too often? From SEO forums online, there seems to be a bit of confusion on this subject...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Felix_LLC0 -
Experience with Google Disawow Tool and discovering bad back-links
Hi Community, is there any experience to tell here about the disawow tool from Google? Any review? It have helped revocer sites beaten by Penguin or penalized after WMT Unnatural Link building message? Which tools and methods you use to find bad back-links to submit for the disawow tool? Thanks for your feedback,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Braumueller0 -
So what exactly does Google consider a "natural" link profile?
As part of my company's ongoing SEO effort we have been analyzing our link profile. A colleague of mine feels that we should be targeting at least 50% branded anchor text. He claims this is what search engines consider "natural" and we should not go past a threshold of 50% optimized anchor text to make sure we avoid any penalties or decrease in rankings. 50% brand term anchor text seems too high to me. I pointed out that most of our competitors who outrank us have a much greater percentage of optimized links. I've also read other industry experts state that somewhere in the range of 30% branded anchor text would be considered natural. What percent of branded vs. optimized anchor text do you feel looks "natural" and what do you base your opinion on?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DeannaTallman0