Page missing from Google index
-
Hi all,
One of our most important pages seems to be missing from the Google index.
A number of our collections pages (e.g., http://perfectlinens.com/collections/size-king) are thin, so we've included a canonical reference in all of them to the main collection page (http://perfectlinens.com/collections/all).
However, I don't see the main collection page in any Google search result. When I search using "info:http://perfectlinens.com/collections/all", the page displayed is our homepage. Why is this happening?
The main collection page has a rel=canonical reference to itself (auto-generated by Shopify so I can't control that).
Thanks!
-
In general, for link value to transfer either through 301s or canonicals, the content of the page needs to be nearly identical. See Cyrus' post for more. And canonicals are not always followed by Google, they are just a "hint", so it's unlikely you'll pass much value that way.
-
Dan, thanks for that response! I wasn't aware that our homepage had a canonical reference to our category page. On closer examination, I found that our category page in return had a canonical reference to our homepage. Messed up!
I've fixed that, and now resubmitted that page to Google using Search Console. Hopefully that will fix our issues.
Just one last question - why do you prefer noindex over canonical? If I had some backlinks to a thin category page (e.g., /collections/twin), wouldn't it be better to 'transfer' those benefits to our main category page (/collections/all) using canonical references?
Thanks again
-
Hello
Ahh ok, missed that detail.
I created a quick video for you ---> http://screencast.com/t/IKkEikyr
I think this is a bit of a complicated situation which will be tough to diagnose and fix in a Q&A thread. I would suggest catalog the different settings of your site in a spreadsheet like I show in the video.
Essentially, the canonical settings are just "suggestions" for Google and not "directives" so they will ignore them if they think they have been set in error.
I would start by clearly defining the end result you want (what pages should be crawled, and what should be indexed) and work backwards from there to apply the right settings.
I would probably try to use noindex, robots.txt etc before resorting to a canonical.
-
Hi Dan,
Thanks for your response. The page that you see when you type in our category page is in fact, our home page. e.g., when I do info:page A, or cache: page A, the result is for page B. Why is this happening if page A does not have a canonical reference or a redirect of any kind to B?
Thanks.
-
FYI - to check if a page is indexed try typing site:http://perfectlinens.com/collections/all into the Google search bar, or cache:http://perfectlinens.com/collections/all into your browser.
-
Hi There!
That page is in fact indexed and cached for me! Can you check again? And let me know?
-Dan
-
Patrick, thank you for your response.
1. The reason we're using canonical references on those pages is because they are almost identical copies of each other. In the future, we'll create some content on them and they can then stand by themselves.
2. But the original question remains - why is the main page (http://perfectlinens.com/collections/all) missing from the Google index? It's been on the site for a long time, it's one of our most important pages, it's in our sitemap, and robots.txt is not blocking it.
Thank you for your other tips though - I appreciate them, and will put them on our to-do list.
-
Hi there
First, those pages (size-king) should be canonicalized to their own pages, not canonicaling back to the "all" pages. This could be a potentially bad customer experience and you could be missing out on a LOT of organic traffic if some of those product pages are targeting high volume, low competition keywords / variations.
I would work on expanding the content on those product pages and implementing Schema. You have a lot of opportunities to be implementing these tags which will also help your search visibility.
Lastly, depending on when you implemented these canonical tags and your sitemap, Google and other search engines could still be indexing them. When did you upload your sitemap / implement canonical tags? Also, have you submitted these sitemaps to Google and Bing? I recommend you do so if you didn't!
And always make sure your robots.txt and meta tags aren't inadvertently blocking key pages from search! This is an often overlooked area in SEO!
But more than anything - work on that content for your product, canonical tag them to their pages, and add schema. It will make a world a difference!
Hope this helps! Good luck!
Patrick
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
-
Why does Google's search results display my home page instead of my target page?
Why does Google's search results display my home page instead of my target page?
Technical SEO | | h.hedayati6712365410 -
How preproduction website is getting indexed in Google.
Hi team, Can anybody please help me to find how my preproduction website and urls are getting indexed in Google.
Technical SEO | | nlogix0 -
Problems with to many indexed pages
A client of our have not been able to rank very well the last few years. They are a big brand in our country, have more than 100+ offline stores and have plenty of inbound links. Our main issue has been that they have to many indexed pages. Before we started we they had around 750.000 pages in the Google index. After a bit of work we got it down to 400-450.000. During our latest push we used the robots meta tag with "noindex, nofollow" on all pages we wanted to get out of the index, along with canonical to correct URL - nothing was done to robots.txt to block the crawlers from entering the pages we wanted out. Our aim is to get it down to roughly 5000+ pages. They just passed 5000 products + 100 categories. I added this about 10 days ago, but nothing has happened yet. Is there anything I can to do speed up the process of getting all the pages out of index? The page is vita.no if you want to have a look!
Technical SEO | | Inevo0 -
Google+ Contibutor to: Link To Main Domain or Content Page?
Which is the best practice for the link to claim authorship for a guest post? I have tried both the main domain URL in the "contributor to" section of my Google plus and the page URL where the post is and both show my picture when testing in the Structured Data Testing Tool. Which is best to use? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | WSIDW0 -
My blog homepage deindexed, other pages indexing, still traffic not changed.
Hello! Today when I check my blog site search on Google, I can't see my blog home page. Though all my posts and pages are still on the Google results. Today I published a test post, then it also indexed by the Google less than 3 minutes. Still I can't see any traffic changes. 10th of April (yesterday) when I perform a site search (site:mydomain.com), I saw my site on the Google search result. Today I installed the Ulitmate SEO plug-in and deactivated WordPress SEO plug-in. After a few hours I saw this issue. (I'm not saying this is the issue, I just mentioned it). In addition to that I never used any black hat SEO methods to improve my ranking. my site:- http://goo.gl/6mvQT Any help really appreciate!
Technical SEO | | Godad0 -
Home page indexed but not ranking...interior pages with thin content outrank home page??
I have a Joomla site with a home page that I can't get to rank for anything beyond the company name @ Google - the site works fine @ Bing and Yahoo. The interior pages will rank all day long but the home page never shows up in the results. I have checked the page code out in every tool that I know about and have had no luck....by all account it should be good to go...any thoughts/comments/help would be greatly appreciated. The site is http://www.selectivedesigns.com Thanks! Greg
Technical SEO | | DougHosmer0 -
Why is google not deindexing pages with the meta noindex tag?
On our website www.keystonepetplace.com we added the meta noindex tag to category pages that were created by the sorting function. Google no longer seems to be adding more of these pages to the index, but the pages that were already added are still in the index when I check via site:keystonepetplace.com Here is an example page: http://www.keystonepetplace.com/dog/dog-food?limit=50 How long should it take for these pages to disappear from the index?
Technical SEO | | JGar-2203710 -
Does Google index XML files?
Does Google or other search engines include XML files in their index? More specifically, I am wondering how Google knows the difference between an xml filetype and an RSS feed.
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0