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.
NO Meta description pulling through in SERP with react website - Requesting Indexing & Submitting to Google with no luck
-
Hi there,
A year ago I launched a website using react, which has caused Google to not read my meta descriptions. I've submitted the sitemap and there was no change in the SERP. Then, I tried "Fetch and Render" and request indexing for the homepage, which did work, however I have over 300 pages and I can't do that for every one. I have requested a fetch, render and index for "this url and linked pages," and while Google's cache has updated, the SERP listing has not. I looked in the Index Coverage report for the new GSC and it says the urls and valid and indexable, and yet there's still no meta description.
I realize that Google doesn't have to index all pages, and that Google may not also take your meta description, but I want to make sure I do my due diligence in making the website crawlable. My main questions are:
-
If Google didn't reindex ANYTHING when I submitted the sitemap, what might be wrong with my sitemap?
-
Is submitting each url manually bad, and if so, why?
-
Am I simply jumping the gun since it's only been a week since I requested indexing for the main url and all the linked urls?
-
Any other suggestions?
-
-
Hi David,
The Fetch and Render looked blank, but I know Google can still read the code since it picked up on the schema we added less than a week after we added it. I sent the javascript guides over to our developers, but I would still really appreciate you looking at the URL if possible. I can't find a way to DM you on here, so I've sent you a LinkedIn request. Feel free to ignore it if there's a better way to communicate

- JW
-
That is a interesting Question
-
Hi,
I would mostly look into the site itself, from what you've mentioned here I don't think that the problem is in your sitemap but more on the side or React. Are you using server side or client side rendering for the pages in React? That usually can have a big impact on how Google is able to see the different pages and pick up on content (including meta tags).
Martijn.
-
Hi DigitalMarketingSEO,
This sounds like it's Google having some issues with your React website.
There are plenty of good SEO for Javascript guides out there that I would recommending reading through:
https://www.elephate.com/blog/ultimate-guide-javascript-seo/
https://builtvisible.com/javascript-framework-seo/
https://www.briggsby.com/dealing-with-javascript-for-seoHow did the "Fetch and Render" look? Was Googlebot able to see your page exactly as a human user would?
Can you share the URL here (or PM me)? I've done a lot of work on JS sites and I'd be happy to take a quick look to see I can give some more specific advice.
Cheers,
David
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
-
How to prevent development website subdomain from being indexed?
Hello awesome MOZ Community! Our development team uses a sub-domain "dev.example.com" for our SEO clients' websites. This allows changes to be made to the dev site (U/X changes, forms testing, etc.) for client approval and testing. An embarrassing discovery was made. Naturally, when you run a "site:example.com" the "dev.example.com" is being indexed. We don't want our clients websites to get penalized or lose killer SERPs because of duplicate content. The solution that is being implemented is to edit the robots.txt file and block the dev site from being indexed by search engines. My questions is, does anyone in the MOZ Community disagree with this solution? Can you recommend another solution? Would you advise against using the sub-domain "dev." for live and ongoing development websites? Thanks!
Web Design | | SproutDigital0 -
Is it against google guidelines to use third party review sites as well as have reviews on my site marked up with schema?
So, i look after a site for my family business. We have teamed up with the third party site TrustPilot because we like the way it enables us to send out reviews to our customers directly from our system. It's been going great and some of the reviews have been brilliant. I have used a couple of these reviews on our site and marked them up with: REVIEW CONTENT We work in the service industry and so one of the problems we have found is that getting our customers to actually go online and leave a review. They normally just leave their comments on a job sheet that the workers have signed when they leave. So I have created a page on our site where we post some of the reviews the guys receive too. I have used the following: REVIEW TITLE REVIEW Written by: CUSTOMER NAME Type of Service:House Removal Date published: DATE PUBLISHED 10 / 10 stars I was just wondering I was told that this could be against googles guidelines and as i've seen a bit of a drop in our rankings in the last week or so i'm a little concerned. Is this getting me penalised? Should I not use my reviews referencing the ones on trust pilot and should i not have my own reviews page with rich snippets?
Web Design | | BearPaw881 -
Multiple websites for different service areas/business functions?
I'm wondering what the implications are for having multiple domains for different service areas of a company? I realize having multiple domains for one company can be troublesome because of the possibility of duplicate content, keyword cannibalization, and linkbuilding to multiple domains. But when the domains are for very different service offerings/unique business functions that each serve their own purpose (and have different positionings), is there a downside to having more than one domain? Any thoughts would be appreciated!
Web Design | | KevinBloom0 -
Privacy Policy: index it/? And where to place it?
Hi Everyone, Two questions, first: should you allow google to index your privacy policy? Second: for a service based site (not e-commerce, not selling anything) should you put the policy in the footer so it's site wide or just on the "contact us" form page? Best, Ruben
Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Does the order of meta data matter ?
There are three questions here. 1/ Does it matter in which order you list the meta tags.? Title , Description etc. 2/ Should these be bang at the top of the head section or is it irrelevant as long as they are there? Finally our generated site is written so that the output is in the following form:- Would it be better to suppress the id= tag or move it to the end. I have gut feel that this is detremental when it comes to some search engines but have not done any analysis.
Web Design | | Eff-Commerce0 -
Wordpress Plugin To Capture Form Completion Data, Before Visitor Hits "Submit"?
Greetings MOZ Community: Visitors frequently start to enter contact information in the forms on our website, but then chicken out and don't hit the submit button. I noticed this watching the recordings of visitor web site visits using Mouse Flow. Is there a Wordpress Plugin that would allow us to capture data entered in forms, where the visitor does not finally hit the "submit" button? Obviously this would be very, very valuable as this scenario occurs in one out of three or four instances. Thanks!!!
Web Design | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
How can a Pincode finder website be SEO optimised?
Guys, I wanted to build a simple Pincode finder website for India. The targeted visitors as is obvious will be from India. Alike other Pincode finder websites, the users in this case too will have to key in the location / area of whose pincode he is looking for and they will get Pincode from that very location / area. Other than this, users will also come to this website when they search for something like " <location name="">pincode</location>" on Google (for instance, users will search for something like "Hiranandani Gardens Powai Pincode") Along with data fethced from our sources via Indian postal departments and other data available in public domain, we shall be using data from Google Maps API too. My question in regards to the same is as follows: What should the page-structure / structure of the website be for ranking well on Google? What should be the URL structure? Other suggestions to rank well on Google in this regards? Competition: (You can search for the term "Hiranandani Gardens Powai Pincode" to know how these sites show data) http://www.getpincode.info http://www.pincode.net.in Pls. help...
Web Design | | ShalinTJ0 -
URLs with Hashtags - Does Google Index Them?
Hi there, I have a potential issue with a site whereby all pages are dynamically populated using Javascript. Thus, an example of an URL on their site would be www.example.com/#!/category/product. I have read lots of conflicting information on the web - some says Google will ignore everything after the hashtag; other people say that Google will now index everything after the hashtag. Does anybody have any conclusive information about this? Any links to Google or Matt Cutts as confirmation would be brilliant. P.S. I am aware about the potential issue of duplicate content, but I can assure you that has been dealt with. I am only concerned about whether Google will index full URLs that contain hashtags. Thanks all! Mark
Web Design | | markadoi840