Difficulty with Indexing Pages - Desperate for Help!
-
I have a website with product pages that use the same URL, but load different data based on what's passed to them with GET. I am using a Wordpress website, but all of the page information is retrieved from a database using PHP and displayed with PHP.
Somehow these pages are not being indexed by Google.
I have done the following:
1. Created a site map pointing to each page.
2. Defined URL parameters in Search Console for these type of pages.
3. Created a product schema using schema.org, and tested it without errors.
I have requested re-indexing repeatedly and these pages and images on the pages are still not being indexed! Does anybody have any suggestions?
-
Hey, David Butler . . . you are probably the only person who has looked at this issue, so I want to thank you again for your input.
I wanted to follow up about this. Since I am using Wordpress for the website, I used Wordpress's rewrite_rule function.
After confirming that it was working correctly, I deleted the old sitemaps and created new ones, then submitted them to Google.
Shortly after this, the pages were successfully indexed.
So from this experience I get the impression that using URL parameters doesn't necessary work -- I certainly am not going to use them in the future.
I am going to mark this issue as resolved.
-
Hi jacleaves,
I'm interested to see how this works out for you!
Please post an update after you've finished your work
Cheers,
David
-
Hey, David Butler,
I am at a loss when it comes to canonical tags -- I am trying to understand how to use them. However, in this case I thought it was set up correctly.
To better explain the website . . . all of the product pages use the same URL, which is http://amishdirectplaysets.com/playset-details/.
I programmed the pages to retrieve info from a database and display specific product information based on the parameters passed to them (?mfgID=A-1&catID=4). I cannot change the URL's to be anything different, as they are not actually different pages.
What I had read is that the canonical url should not include the URL parameters, so that is why they were just going to the same page. I created URL parameters in Google Search Console because I thought that would take care of this issue. However it is not.
So . . . what I have done (after reading your post) is gone ahead and changed the canonical URL to include the URL parameters.
Is that how I'm supposed to handle it in this type of a situation?
I am updating this response . . . after further investigation I can take care of changing the URL to something more search-engine friendly by using mod rewrite. I'll test it out.
-
Hi jacleaves,
The problem here is with your canonical tags (more info on canonical tags here).
This page: http://amishdirectplaysets.com/playset-details/?mfgID=A-1&catID=4
Has a canonical tag pointing to: http://amishdirectplaysets.com/playset-details/
The same thing is happening on all of your product pages.
I would change all of your product pages to use "SEO-friendly" URLs and have a self-referring canonical tag.
Eg. your example page: http://amishdirectplaysets.com/playset-details/?mfgID=A-1&catID=4
Would become: http://amishdirectplaysets.com/playset-details/a-1-standard-climber-vinyl-playset
And the canonical tag would point to: http://amishdirectplaysets.com/playset-details/a-1-standard-climber-vinyl-playsetCheers,
David
-
Hi Matthew,
Thanks for your quick response!
Here's one page:
http://amishdirectplaysets.com/playset-details/?mfgID=A-1&catID=4
My issue is none of the individual product pages are being indexed.
In response to your starting suggestions:
1. I am not blocking any resources.
2. I am not using noindex.
3. Page is being rendered successfully.
One more thing . . . I mis-spoke about how the content is generated. The content on this page is generated by PHP and NOT Javascript. So that is a non-issue. (I corrected this in my initial question.)
I appreciate your feedback. Please let me know if you are able to determine what else I could be missing!
-
Hi jacleaves!
Without your website URL it will be difficult to diagnose the problem as there are a few potential technical issues here. My main worries would be whether you're blocking indexation somehow and the fact you're displaying your content using JavaScript.
I'd start here:
- Check you're not blocking crawlers in your robots.txt file
- Check you're not using the noindex tag
I'd also try using fetch and render in Google Search Console (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6066468?hl=en) for your site pages to see how Google sees them. If googlebot isn't seeing your content, that's a strong hint there's a JavaScript crawling problem.
Also, strap yourself in and read this - https://www.elephate.com/blog/ultimate-guide-javascript-seo/ - it's THE guide for JavaScript SEO.
Let us know how you get on and we'll go from there!
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
-
Drop in Indexed pages
Hope everyone is having an Awesome December! I first noticed a drop in my index in the beginnings of November. My site drop in indexed pages from 1400 to 600 in the past 3-4 weeks. I don't know the cause of it, and would like the community to help me figure out why my indexing has dropped. Thank you for taking time out of your schedule to read this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BSC0 -
Help! The website ranks fine but one of my web pages simply won't rank on Google!!!
One of our web pages will not rank on Google. The website as a whole ranks fine except just one section...We have tested and it looks fine...Google can crawl the page no problem. There are no spurious redirects in place. The content is fine. There is no duplicate page content issue. The page has a dozen product images (photos) but the load time of the page is absolutely fine. We have the submitted the page via webmaster and its fine. It gets listed but then a few hours later disappears!!! The site has not been penalised as we get good rankings with other pages. Can anyone help? Know about this problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
Blocking Certain Site Parameters from Google's Index - Please Help
Hello, So we recently used Google Webmaster Tools in an attempt to block certain parameters on our site from showing up in Google's index. One of our site parameters is essentially for user location and accounts for over 500,000 URLs. This parameter does not change page content in any way, and there is no need for Google to index it. We edited the parameter in GWT to tell Google that it does not change site content and to not index it. However, after two weeks, all of these URLs are still definitely getting indexed. Why? Maybe there's something we're missing here. Perhaps there is another way to do this more effectively. Has anyone else ran into this problem? The path we used to implement this action:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jbake
Google Webmaster Tools > Crawl > URL Parameters Thank you in advance for your help!0 -
Product with two common names: A separate page for each name, or both on one page?
This is a real-life problem on my ecommerce store for the drying rack we manufacture: Some people call it a Clothes Drying Rack, while others call it a Laundry Drying Rack, but it's really the same thing. Search volume is higher for the clothes version, so give it the most attention. I currently have 2 separate pages with the On-Page optimization focused on each name (URL, Title, h1, img alts, etc) Here the two drying rack pages: clothes focused page and laundry focused page But the ranking of both pages is terrible. The fairly generic homepage shows up instead of the individual pages in Google searches for the clothes drying rack and for laundry drying rack. But I can get the individual page to appear in a long-tail search like this: round wooden clothes drying rack So my thought is maybe I should just combine both of these pages into one page that will hopefully be more powerful. We would have to set up the On-Page optimization to cover both "clothes & laundry drying rack" but that seems possible. Please share your thoughts. Is this a good idea or a bad idea? Is there another solution? Thanks for your help! Greg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GregB1230 -
Certain Pages Not Being Indexed - Please Help
We are having trouble getting a bulk of our pages indexed in google. Any help would be greatly appreciated! The Following Page types are being indexed through escaped fragment: http://www.cbuy.tv/#! http://www.cbuy.tv/celebrity#!65-Ashley-Tisdale/fashion/4097-Casadei-BLADE-PUMP/Product/175199 <cite>www.cbuy.tv/celebrity/155-Sophia-Bush#!</cite> However, all our pages that look like this, are not being indexed: http://www.cbuy.tv/#!Type=Photo&id=b1d18759-5e52-4a1c-9491-6fb3cb9d4b95&Katie-Holmes-Hot-Pink-Pants-Isabel-Marant-DAVID-DOUBLE-BREASTED-Wool-COAT-Maison-Pumps-Black-Bag
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CBuy0 -
Site less than 20 pages shows 1,400+ pages when crawled
Hello! I’m new to SEO, and have been soaking up as much as I can. I really love it, and feel like it could be a great fit for me – I love the challenge of figuring out the SEO puzzle, plus I have a copywriting/PR background, so I feel like that would be perfect for helping businesses get a great jump on their online competition. In fact, I was so excited about my newfound love of SEO that I offered to help a friend who owns a small business on his site. Once I started, though, I found myself hopelessly confused. The problem comes when I crawl the site. It was designed in Wordpress, and is really not very big (part of my goal in working with him was to help him get some great content added!) Even though there are only 11 pages – and 6 posts – for the entire site, when I use Screaming Frog to crawl it, it sees HUNDREDS of pages. It stops at 500, because that is the limit for their free version. In the campaign I started here at SEOmoz, and it says over 1,400 pages have been crawled…with something like 900 errors. Not good, right? So I've been trying to figure out the problem...when I look closer in Screaming Frog, I can see that some things are being repeated over and over. If I sort by the Title, the URLs look like they’re stuck in a loop somehow - one line will have /blog/category/postname…the next line will have /blog/category/category/postname…and the next line will have /blog/category/category/category/postname…and so on, with another /category/ added each time. So, with that, I have two questions Does anyone know what the problem is, and how to fix it? Do professional SEO people troubleshoot this kind of stuff all of the time? Is this the best place to get answers to questions like that? And if not, where is? Thanks so much in advance for your help! I’ve enjoyed reading all of the posts that are available here so far, it seems like a really excellent and helpful community...I'm looking forward to the day when I can actually answer the questions!! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | K.Walters0 -
Help! Why did Google remove my images from their index?
I've been scratching my head over this one for a while now and I can't seem to figure it out. I own a website that is user-generated content. Users submit images to my sites of graphic resources (for designers) that they have created to share with our community. I've been noticing over the past few months that I'm getting completely dominated in Google Images. I used to get a ton of traffic from Google Images, but now I can't find my images anywhere. After diving into Analytics I found this: http://cl.ly/140L2d14040Q1R0W161e and realized sometime about a year ago my image traffic took a dive. We've gone back through all the change logs and can't find where we made any changes to the site structure that could have caused this. We are stumped. Does anyone know of any historical Google updates that could have caused this last year around the end of April 2010? Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shawn810 -
Too many on page links - product pages
Some of the pages on my client's website have too many on page links because they have lists of all their products. Is there anything I should/could do about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlightAnalytics0