Sitemap url's not being indexed
-
There is an issue on one of our sites regarding many of the sitemap url's not being indexed. (at least 70% is not being indexed)
The url's in the sitemap are normal url's without any strange characters attached to them, but after looking into it, it seems a lot of the url's get a #. + a number sequence attached to them once you actually go to that url. We are not sure if the "addthis" bookmark could cause this, or if it's another script doing it.
For example
Url in the sitemap: http://example.com/example-category/0246
Url once you actually go to that link: http://example.com/example-category/0246#.VR5a
Just for further information, the XML file does not have any style information associated with it and is in it's most basic form.
Has anyone had similar issues with their sitemap not being indexed properly ?...Could this be the cause of many of these url's not being indexed ?
Thanks all for your help.
-
Anders,
Thanks for the reply. I definitely agree a self referring canonical might just be a good extra addition on these product pages, so I'm definitely adding that to our list of to do's if it does not improve.
In terms of indexing pages - We have not restricted crawl frequency, we have it set to "allow google to determine the optimal crawl rate". No other warnings found within the search console either.
Thanks for your help.
-
I agree - i probably would ignore everything after the "#".
But have you tried added a <link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/page-url" /> to your pages and see if this will update it? Also: Add the sitemap to your robots.txt if not allready done.
Regarding indexing pages - have you restricted crawl frequency in Google Search Console, or is it set to be determined by GoogleBot? Any other warnings or messages in Search Console?
Best regards,
Anders -
Lesley,
Thanks for the confirmation on that one and the article. Since it doesn't seem like a lot of people on the site are using that address share function, I do not think it would do any harm to remove it.
At least we know the root cause of why it's doing it to the url's. Now the real question is...could it be getting in the way of indexing those url's ?...one would think not, as from what I've read, google would simply ignore what comes after the #.
Thoughts ?
Appreciate the help.
-
Patrick,
We'd prefer to keep the actual url's private, however I can provide further information to help hopefully allow the community to dissect this further:
- It's an E-commerce website, meaning many facets, filters, and possible duplicate content angles
- It seems many of the static pages (/products main page, /contact,etc) are indexed, however it seems the individual products are mostly not being indexed through the sitemap
- While the url's found in webmaster tools under "index" has also steadily been going down, it definitely doesn't correspond with the lack of pages indexed vs submitted within the sitemap
- We have checked robots.txt, and it is not blocking any important pages. (I also had them allow robots to crawl css and js so google could have full access)
- The individual product pages all have the "addthis" feature, meaning they all have a #. + number sequence added to the url's. However one would think this wouldn't be the cause of this lack of indexation ?
Thanks for your help.
-
Yes, add this is doing this to your url. I hate it, that is one reason why I do not use them.
Here is an article on how to remove them, http://support.addthis.com/customer/portal/articles/1013558-removing-all-hashtags-anchors-weird-codes-from-your-urls
-
Hi there
Could you provide you website's URL? It would help the community take a deeper look - thanks!
Good luck!
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
-
What's best practice for cart pages?
i don't mean e-commerce site in general, but the actual cart page itself. What's best practice for the links that customers click to add products to the cart, and the cart page itself? Also, I use vanity URLs for my cart links which redirect to the actual cart page with the parameters applied. Should I use use 301 or 302 redirects for the links? Do I make the cart page's canonical tag point back to the store home page so that I'm not accruing link juice to a page that customers don't actually want to land on from search? I'm kinda surprised at the dearth of information out there on this, or maybe I'm not looking in the right places?
Technical SEO | | VM-Oz0 -
Google's ability to crawl AJAX rendered content
I would like to make a change to the way our main navigation is currently rendered on our e-commerce site. Currently, all of the content that appears when you click a navigation category is rendering on page load. This is currently a large portion of every page visit’s bandwidth and even the images are downloaded even if a user doesn’t choose to use the navigation. I’d like to change it so the content appears and is downloaded only IF the user clicks on it, I'm planning on using AJAX. As that is the case it wouldn’t not be automatically on the site(which may or may not mean Google would crawl it). As we already provide a sitemap.xml for Google I want to make sure this change would not adversely affect our SEO. As of October this year the Webmaster AJAX crawling doc. suggestions has been depreciated. While the new version does say that its crawlers are smart enough to render AJAX content, something I've tested, I'm not sure if that only applies to content injected on page load as opposed to in click like I'm planning to do.
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
What's Worse - 404 errors or a huge .htaccess file
We have changed our site architecture pretty significantly and now have many fewer pages (albeit with more robust content and focused linking). My question is, what should I do about all the 404 errors (keep in mind, I am only finding these in Bing Webmaster tools, not Moz or GWT)? Is it worse to have all those 404 errors (hundreds), or to have a massive htaccess file for pages that are only getting hits by the Bing crawlbot. Any insight would be great. Thanks
Technical SEO | | CleanEdisonInc0 -
Blocked URL parameters can still be crawled and indexed by google?
Hy guys, I have two questions and one might be a dumb question but there it goes. I just want to be sure that I understand: IF I tell webmaster tools to ignore an URL Parameter, will google still index and rank my url? IS it ok if I don't append in the url structure the brand filter?, will I still rank for that brand? Thanks, PS: ok 3 questions :)...
Technical SEO | | catalinmoraru0 -
We can't figure out why competitors have better position(s) in Google
We are using MOZ analytics for some days now, and it really helps us with important information about our rankings.
Technical SEO | | wilcoXXL
I hope you guys can help us out with the following particular case; In google.nl (dutch) we rank position #18 with the following searchterm 'sphinx 345' one of our competitors rank position #3.
We used the MOZ On Page Grade tool to find out some details about the two pages:
Our page #18: http://goo.gl/cTsbmI
Competitor page #3: http://goo.gl/qk21sM Our page hits an A and Keyword usage for "sphinx 345" = 52
The competitors page hits an A too and Keyword usage for "sphinx 345" = 45 About the link structure; for our page there is no link data found in Open Site Explorer. The url exists about a year and a half now.
I'm also very sure we have many internal links to this url.
Does Google and other crawlers have a hard time to crawl our site?(it's a Magento site, our competitors do have custom-made e-commerce systems, maybe that has something to do with it?) As i were saying;we can't figure this out. I hope you guys can help to get us any further. Regards, Wilco0 -
Access To Client's Google Webmaster Tools
Hi, What's the best/easiest way for a client to grant access to his Google Webmaster Tools to me? Thanks! Best...Michael
Technical SEO | | 945010 -
How can I get a listing of just the URLs that are indexed in Google
I know I can use the site: query to see all the pages I have indexed in Google, but I need a listing of just the URLs. We are doing a site re-platform and I want to make sure every URL in Google has a 301. Is there an easy way to just see the URLs that Google has indexed for a domain?
Technical SEO | | EvergladesDirect0 -
Switching ecommerce CMS's - Best Way to write URL 301's and sub pages?
Hey guys, What a headache i've been going through the last few days trying to make sure my upcoming move is near-perfect. Right now all my urls are written like this /page-name (all lowercase, exact, no forward slash at end). In the new CMS they will be written like this: /Page-Name/ (with the forward slash at the end). When I generate an XML sitemap in the new ecomm CMS internally it lists the category pages with a forward slash at the end, just like they show up through out the CMS. This seems sloppy to me, but I have no control over it. Is this OK for SEO? I'm worried my PR 4, well built ecommerce website is going to lose value to small (but potentially large) errors like this. If this is indeed not good practice, is there a resource about not using the forward slash at the end of URLS in sitemaps i can present to the community at the platform? They are usually real quick to make fixes if something is not up to standards. Thanks in advance, -First Time Ecommerce Platform Transition Guy
Technical SEO | | Hyrule0