Domain Authority Dropped and Indexed Pages Went Down on Google?
-
Hi there,
We run an e-commerce site on Shopify.
Our Domain Authority was 28 at the start of our campaign in May of this year. We also had 610 indexed pages on Google. We did some SEO work which included:
- Renaming Images for SEO
- Adding in alt tags
- Optimizing the meta title to "Product Name - Keyword - Brand Name" for products
- Optimizing meta descriptions
- Transition of Hubspot blog to Shopify (it was on a subdomain at Hubspot previously)
- Fixing some 404s
- Resubmitting site map after the changes
Now it is almost at the 3-month mark and it looks like our Domain Authority has gone down 4 points to 24. The # of indexed pages has gone to down to 555. We made sure all our SEO updates weren't spammy or keyword-stuffed, but took a natural and helpful-sounding approach. We followed guidelines. So there shouldn't be any penalty right?
I checked site traffic and it does not coincide with the drop. Our site traffic remains steady. I also looked at "site:" as well as conducted some test searches for the important pages (i.e. main pages, blog pages, and product pages) and they still come up on Google. So could it only be non-important pages being deindexed?
My questions are:
-
Why did both the Domain Authority and # of indexed pages go down?
-
Is there any way to see which pages were deindexed?
-
I checked Google Search Console, but couldn't find it.
Thank you!
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
-
Can a duplicate page referencing the original page on another domain in another country using the 'canonical link' still get indexed locally?
Hi I wonder if anyone could help me on a canonical link query/indexing issue. I have given an overview, intended solution and question below. Any advice on this query will be much appreciated. Overview: I have a client who has a .com domain that includes blog content intended for the US market using the correct lang tags. The client also has a .co.uk site without a blog but looking at creating one. As the target keywords and content are relevant across both UK and US markets and not to duplicate work the client has asked would it be worthwhile centralising the blog or provide any other efficient blog site structure recommendations. Suggested solution: As the domain authority (DA) on the .com/.co.uk sites are in the 60+ it would risky moving domains/subdomain at this stage and would be a waste not to utilise the DAs that have built up on both sites. I have suggested they keep both sites and share the same content between them using a content curated WP plugin and using the 'canonical link' to reference the original source (US or UK) - so not to get duplicate content issues. My question: Let's say I'm a potential customer in the UK and i'm searching using a keyword phrase that the content that answers my query is on both the UK and US site although the US content is the original source.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JonRayner
Will the US or UK version blog appear in UK SERPs? My gut is the UK blog will as Google will try and serve me the most appropriate version of the content and as I'm in the UK it will be this version, even though I have identified the US source using the canonical link?2 -
Javascript content not being indexed by Google
I thought Google has gotten better at picking up unique content from javascript. I'm not seeing it with our site. We rate beauty and skincare products using our algorithms. Here is an example of a product -- https://www.skinsafeproducts.com/tide-free-gentle-he-liquid-laundry-detergent-100-fl-oz When you look at the cache page (text) from google none of the core ratings (badges like fragrance free, top free and so forth) are being picked up for ranking. Any idea what we could do to have the rating incorporated in the indexation.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | akih0 -
Why is Google no longer Indexing and Ranking my state pages with Dynamic Content?
Hi, We have some state specific pages that display dynamic content based on the state that is selected here. For example this page displays new york based content. But for some reason google is no longer ranking these pages. Instead it's defaulting to the page where you select the state here. But last year the individual state dynamic pages were ranking. The only change we made was move these pages from http to https. But now google isn't seeing these individual dynamically generated state based pages. When I do a site: url search it doesn't find any of these state pages. Any thoughts on why this is happening and how to fix it. Thanks in advance for any insight. Eddy By the way when I check these pages in google search console fetch as google, google is able to see these pages fine and they're not being blocked by any robot.txt.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eddys_kap0 -
Pages getting into Google Index, blocked by Robots.txt??
Hi all, So yesterday we set up to Remove URL's that got into the Google index that were not supposed to be there, due to faceted navigation... We searched for the URL's by using this in Google Search.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
site:www.sekretza.com inurl:price=
site:www.sekretza.com inurl:artists= So it brings up a list of "duplicate" pages, and they have the usual: "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more." So we removed them all, and google removed them all, every single one. This morning I do a check, and I find that more are creeping in - If i take one of the suspecting dupes to the Robots.txt tester, Google tells me it's Blocked. - and yet it's appearing in their index?? I'm confused as to why a path that is blocked is able to get into the index?? I'm thinking of lifting the Robots block so that Google can see that these pages also have a Meta NOINDEX,FOLLOW tag on - but surely that will waste my crawl budget on unnecessary pages? Any ideas? thanks.0 -
Guest Blogging Results - domain authority vs. page authority -
I have been guest blogging on various websites. The web pages that display my guest posts have zero page authority but a great domain authority of 60/100 or more. 2 links I developed are noted below as examples: http://www.evancarmichael.com/Small-Business-Consulting/8101/How-To-Hire-Extraordinary-Salespeople.html https://www.biggerpockets.com/blogs/4195/blog_posts/28772-4-essentials-for-rental-property-owners Am I wasting my time with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | superZj
Thank you!0 -
Using Webmaster Tools to Redirect Domain to Specific Page on Another Domain
Hey Everyone, we redirected an entire domain to a specific URL on another domain (not the homepage). We used a 301 Redirect, but I'm also wondering if I should use the Google Webmaster Tools "Change of Address" section to redirect. There is no option to redirect the old domain to the specific URL on the new domain within the "Change of Address" section. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | M_D_Golden_Peak0 -
Wordpress blog in a subdirectory not being indexed by Google
HI MozzersIn my websites sitemap.xml, pages are listed, such as /blog/ and /blog/textile-fact-or-fiction-egyptian-cotton-explained/These pages are visible when you visit them in a browser and when you use the Google Webmaster tool - Fetch as Google to view them (see attachment), however they aren't being indexed in Google, not even the root directory for the blog (/blog/) is being indexed, and when we query:site: www.hilden.co.uk/blog/ It returns 0 results in Google.Also note that:The Wordpress installation is located at /blog/ which is a subdirectory of the main root directory which is managed by Magento. I'm wondering if this causing the problem.Any help on this would be greatly appreciated!AnthonyToTOHuj.png?1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tone_Agency0 -
Tool to calculate the number of pages in Google's index?
When working with a very large site, are there any tools that will help you calculate the number of links in the Google index? I know you can use site:www.domain.com to see all the links indexed for a particular url. But what if you want to see the number of pages indexed for 100 different subdirectories (i.e. www.domain.com/a, www.domain.com/b)? is there a tool to help automate the process of finding the number of pages from each subdirectory in Google's index?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0