Crawl and Indexation Error - Googlebot can't/doesn't access specific folders on microsites
-
Hi,
My first time posting here, I am just looking for some feedback on a indexation issue we have with a client and any feedback on possible next steps or items I may have overlooked.
To give some background, our client operates a website for the core band and a also a number of microsites based on specific business units, so you have corewebsite.com along with bu1.corewebsite.com, bu2.corewebsite.com.
The content structure isn't ideal, as each microsite follows a structure of bu1.corewebsite.com/bu1/home.aspx, bu2.corewebsite.com/bu2/home.aspx and so on.
In addition to this each microsite has duplicate folders from the other microsites so bu1.corewebsite.com has indexable folders bu1.corewebsite.com/bu1/home.aspx but also bu1.corewebsite.com/bu2/home.aspx the same with bu2.corewebsite.com has bu2.corewebsite.com/bu2/home.aspx but also bu2.corewebsite.com/bu1/home.aspx. Therre are 5 different business units so you have this duplicate content scenario for all microsites.
This situation is being addressed in the medium term development roadmap and will be rectified in the next iteration of the site but that is still a ways out.
The issue
About 6 weeks ago we noticed a drop off in search rankings for two of our microsites (bu1.corewebsite.com and bu2.corewebsite.com) over a period of 2-3 weeks pretty much all our terms dropped out of the rankings and search visibility dropped to essentially 0.I can see that pages from the websites are still indexed but oddly it is the duplicate content pages so (bu1.corewebsite.com/bu3/home.aspx or (bu1.corewebsite.com/bu4/home.aspx is still indexed, similiarly on the bu2.corewebsite microsite bu2.corewebsite.com/bu3/home.aspx and bu4.corewebsite.com/bu3/home.aspx are indexed but no pages from the BU1 or BU2 content directories seem to be indexed under their own microsites.
Logging into webmaster tools I can see there is a "Google couldn't crawl your site because we were unable to access your site's robots.txt file." This was a bit odd as there was no robots.txt in the root directory but I got some weird results when I checked the BU1/BU2 microsites in technicalseo.com robots text tool.
Also due to the fact that there is a redirect from bu1.corewebsite.com/ to bu1.corewebsite.com/bu4.aspx I thought maybe there could be something there so consequently we removed the redirect and added a basic robots to the root directory for both microsites.
After this we saw a small pickup in site visibility, a few terms pop into our Moz campaign rankings but drop out again pretty quickly. Also the error message in GSC persisted.
Steps taken so far after that
- In Google Search Console, I confirmed there are no manual actions against the microsites.
- Confirmed there is no instances of noindex on any of the pages for BU1/BU2
- A number of the main links from the root domain to microsite BU1/BU2 have a rel="noopener noreferrer" attribute but we looked into this and found it has no impact on indexation
- Looking into this issue we saw some people had similar issues when using Cloudflare but our client doesn't use this service
- Using a response redirect header tool checker, we noticed a timeout when trying to mimic googlebot accessing the site
- Following on from point 5 we got a hold of a week of server logs from the client and I can see Googlebot successfully pinging the site and not getting 500 response codes from the server...but couldn't see any instance of it trying to index microsite BU1/BU2 content
So it seems to me that the issue could be something server side but I'm at a bit of a loss of next steps to take.
Any advice at all is much appreciated!
-
Hello ImpericMedia,
If you can share the site with me (private message is OK) I'll look into it. If you don't want to do that, here are some things I would look at:
1. If you have verified that the Robots.txt file is not blocking the pages you want indexed, and the pages are still not indexed (or indexed with a message about the Robots.txt file) you should check for a Robots Noindex meta tag on the page. If the source code looks strange you may have to use the Chrome Inspect tool to see the fully rendered page.
2. If there are no blocking robots meta tags on the page you should check the HTTP response for an X-Robots header.
3. If there is no X-Robots header, it's probably because of the duplicate content and spammy(seeming) subdomain setup.
Sorry about the wait. If you include the site URL it will get other community member's curious enough to check it out next time.
I hope this helps. If not, feel free to message me.
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
-
Site structure: Any issues with 404'd parent folders?
Is there any issue with a 404'd parent folder in a URL? There's no links to the parent folder and a parent folder page never existed. For example say I have the following pages w/ content: /famous-dogs/lassie/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dsbud
/famous-dogs/snoopy/
/famous-dogs/scooby-doo/ But I never (and maybe never plan to) created a general **/famous-dogs/ **page. Sitemaps.xml does not link to it, nor does any page on my site. Is there any concerns with doing this? Am I missing out on any sort of value that might pass to a parent folder?0 -
How can I optimize pages in an index stack
I have created an index stack. My home page is http://www.southernwhitewater.com My home page (if your look at it through moz bat for chrome bar} incorporates all the pages in the index. Is this Bad? I would prefer to index each page separately. As per my site index in the footer What is the best way to optimize all these pages individually and still have the customers arrive at the top and links directed to the home page ( which is actually the 1st page). I feel I am going to need a rel=coniacal might be needed somewhere. Any help would be great!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VelocityWebsites0 -
Why isn't my uneven link flow among index pages causing uneven search traffic?
I'm working with a site that has millions of pages. The link flow through index pages is atrocious, such that for the letter A (for example) the index page A/1.html has a page authority of 25 and the next pages drop until A/70.html (the last index page listing pages that start with A) has a page authority of just 1. However, the pages linked to from the low page authority index pages (that is, the pages whose second letter is at the end of the alphabet) get just as much traffic as the pages linked to from A/1.html (the pages whose second letter is A or B). The site gets a lot of traffic and has a lot of pages, so this is not just a statistical biip. The evidence is overwhelming that the pages from the low authority index pages are getting just as much traffic as those getting traffic from the high authority index pages. Why is this? Should I "fix" the bad link flow problem if traffic patterns indicate there's no problem? Is this hurting me in some other way? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GilReich0 -
Can Google index PDFs with flash?
Does anyone know if Google can index PDF with Flash embedded? I would assume that the regular flash recommendations are still valid, even when embedded in another document. I would assume there is a list of the filetype and version which Google can index with the search appliance, but was not able to find any. Does anyone have a link or a list?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andreas.wpv0 -
How can I see all the pages google has indexed for my site?
Hi mozers, In WMT google says total indexed pages = 5080. If I do a site:domain.com commard it says 6080 results. But I've only got 2000 pages in my site that should be indexed. So I would like to see all the pages they have indexed so I can consider noindexing them or 404ing them. Many thanks, Julian.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | julianhearn0 -
How can this site rank post panda/penguin?
I am doing link building for an adult dating comparison website. One of the main competitors though, having checked their backlink profile have anchor text that is not varied at all. In fact many, many links that are all the same. How can they possibly rank in the post panda/penguin era? In fact they're at number 2! The site is an adult site and it www.f hypen buddy.co.uk if anyone wants to runa backlink check on OSE. Any help greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
Crawl errors in GWT!
I have been seeing a large number of access denied and not found crawl errors. I have since fixed the issued causing these errors; however, I am still seeing the in webmaster tools. At first I thought the data was outdated, but the data is tracked on a daily basis! Does anyone have experience with this? Does GWT really re-crawl all those pages/links everyday to see if the errors still exist? Thanks in advance for any help/advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo0 -
I'm facinated by SEO but the truth is, I don't have the time to do it. Who can I hire?
I'm facinated by SEO but the truth is, I don't have the time to do it. I trust the moz community more than some of those other SEO forums out there so I'm asking you all, where can I go to find a good SEO firm who's affordable enough for a small startup? The next part of the question is, what should I expect to pay for services that will really make a difference? Please don't spam this thread....I seriously just want an honest opinion as to where I can find some credible help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chaz880