@simplesearch Yep, you can still use UTM to test different URLs in your GMB profile against each other. For example, it might be valuable to see the difference between clicks on the website URL compared to the menu and reservation URLs (for a restaurant) in your Campaign data.

But using the UTM codes is not necessary to get the traffic to register as being from an organic source.

@anupjain Aw, you're fine! Pretty simply, the internal links part of OSE doesn't work - the tool's not really set up as a direct site crawler, so it's terrible at analyzing internal links.

So you can ignore that part. If you'd like to get some visibility on internal links, you're better off using a tool like Screaming Frog (the free version is fine if you want to check individual URLs).

I checked your site and you're doing just fine on internal links, but make sure you use absolute URLs in your links, not relative.

Disavowing links via Google Search Console will communicate your intentions to Google, but would not necessarily update Moz's spam score.

Instead, you'd need to actually get the offending links removed for them to update on Moz's spam score.

Here's a great Moz article with a bit more detail:

https://moz.com/help/link-explorer/link-building/spam-score

Hope this helps!

Mike

Hey John,

I actually think this might be an Analytics issue, or at least it's something you might want to investigate before jumping to the SEO conclusion. Check your site using Google Tag Assistant - it looks like there are three Analytics tags competing with each other right now.

If you happen to be using a property that's been dialed back recently, you might be seeing incorrect traffic numbers.

Check that your Analytics is correct first - you might be alright on SEO right now - I'm not immediately seeing anything else that would result in such a rapid traffic loss from organic search.

xkJQHfa

Hey there!

I can't really take credit for this, but I found a Moz post from a while ago that might be helpful to you:

https://moz.com/blog/how-to-allow-google-to-crawl-ajax-content

Rob also links to a more recent article that he wrote on the subject that offered another solution. Hope that helps!

Thanks!

Mike

Good question!

The m-dot pages might not actually be indexed at all. Check out this article, and specifically the section I'm quoting:

https://searchengineland.com/google-advice-switch-m-dot-domain-responsive-mobile-first-index-rollout-277446

"The rationale is that right now, Google has a desktop-first index. So Google doesn’t really index your m-dot; they just annotate the m-dot URLs, but there is no true indexing of your m-dot content..."

You might first want to double-check that Google is actually indexing the mobile site as you suspect, or simply marking up search results with the subdomain. Mobile-first has been a slow rollout, which might not have hit you yet! This might help you check if you have indeed been moved:

https://blog.seoprofiler.com/google-check-log-files-find-site-moved-mobile-first-index/

If they are indexing, then yes -  you'll have to make sure the URLs migrate appropriately to the new responsive site, and keep a close eye on mobile traffic changes in Search Console.

Hope this helps a bit!

Mike

Hey Elaine,

It looks very likely that 404ing a page would indeed remove the impact of spam links to those pages. I found an older article where Google said as much:

https://www.seroundtable.com/404-links-google-15427.html

Around the same time, John Mu said about the same thing:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!category-topic/webmasters/crawling-indexing--ranking/C-OoaJfb0Yg

Based on this, you shouldn't even need to disavow those links after 404ing the URLs. Hope this helps and good luck!

Mike

Howdy Mack_,

We get this a lot working with our clients, and unfortunately I'm not aware of a way to force more rapid recrawling of Yelp pages directly. However, we've had success doing the following:

• Make sure your site links to your Yelp page and resubmit your website via Google Search Console - good chance Google will crawl outside your website to hit that Yelp page.
• Add unique content to the Yelp profile - just adding some fresh photos and content could make your listing more search-valuable.
• Campaign for more reviews! Yelp has a crawl budget just like your website, so more valuable content will take priority for both Yelp and Google.

Hope that helps!

Thanks!

Mike

Hey Elaine,

It looks very likely that 404ing a page would indeed remove the impact of spam links to those pages. I found an older article where Google said as much:

https://www.seroundtable.com/404-links-google-15427.html

Around the same time, John Mu said about the same thing:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!category-topic/webmasters/crawling-indexing--ranking/C-OoaJfb0Yg

Based on this, you shouldn't even need to disavow those links after 404ing the URLs. Hope this helps and good luck!

Mike

Good question!

The m-dot pages might not actually be indexed at all. Check out this article, and specifically the section I'm quoting:

https://searchengineland.com/google-advice-switch-m-dot-domain-responsive-mobile-first-index-rollout-277446

"The rationale is that right now, Google has a desktop-first index. So Google doesn’t really index your m-dot; they just annotate the m-dot URLs, but there is no true indexing of your m-dot content..."

You might first want to double-check that Google is actually indexing the mobile site as you suspect, or simply marking up search results with the subdomain. Mobile-first has been a slow rollout, which might not have hit you yet! This might help you check if you have indeed been moved:

https://blog.seoprofiler.com/google-check-log-files-find-site-moved-mobile-first-index/

If they are indexing, then yes -  you'll have to make sure the URLs migrate appropriately to the new responsive site, and keep a close eye on mobile traffic changes in Search Console.

Hope this helps a bit!

Mike

Howdy Mack_,

We get this a lot working with our clients, and unfortunately I'm not aware of a way to force more rapid recrawling of Yelp pages directly. However, we've had success doing the following:

• Make sure your site links to your Yelp page and resubmit your website via Google Search Console - good chance Google will crawl outside your website to hit that Yelp page.
• Add unique content to the Yelp profile - just adding some fresh photos and content could make your listing more search-valuable.
• Campaign for more reviews! Yelp has a crawl budget just like your website, so more valuable content will take priority for both Yelp and Google.

Hope that helps!

Thanks!

Mike

Hey John,

I actually think this might be an Analytics issue, or at least it's something you might want to investigate before jumping to the SEO conclusion. Check your site using Google Tag Assistant - it looks like there are three Analytics tags competing with each other right now.

If you happen to be using a property that's been dialed back recently, you might be seeing incorrect traffic numbers.

Check that your Analytics is correct first - you might be alright on SEO right now - I'm not immediately seeing anything else that would result in such a rapid traffic loss from organic search.

xkJQHfa

@simplesearch Yep, you can still use UTM to test different URLs in your GMB profile against each other. For example, it might be valuable to see the difference between clicks on the website URL compared to the menu and reservation URLs (for a restaurant) in your Campaign data.

But using the UTM codes is not necessary to get the traffic to register as being from an organic source.