Index dropped 20 pages at once since yesterday
-
Hi community,
I just realized that my indexed pages dropped from the amount of 95 to 75 and I don't know why. I did some title tag arrangements because we are launching with our first product (before that it was just a blog). I did these changes 1 week ago and fetched to google the homepage and some subdomains.
Thanks for your help.
Kind regards
Marco
-
Excellent news - glad it has all returned
-Andy
-
Everything is back to normal.
Thanks again, Andy.
-
No problem at all
-
Andy, thanks so much for that piece of quality content!
-
I think this might explain your issue...
Gary Illyes @methode
Bad news: we might have a problem with reporting the number of indexed URLs in the SC Sitemaps feature. Good news: we're looking into it
Soooo, it looks like the number of indexed pages in Webmaster Tools (Search Console) is being reported incorrectly.
That would explain what you are seeing
-Andy
-
Thanks a lot Andy,
maybe it has something to do with "fetching as google", which I did around 1 week ago with they main homepage as I changed some major keywords (titel tag) and moved them to other sites (blog categories etc) when I added our first product/collection.
Nevermind - time will tell
Thanks again!
-
You aren't disturbing Marco
It really isn't uncommon to see discrepancies like this. I see them every day! A 25% drop like this suggests to me that Google is perhaps doing a little bit of a reshuffling.
I would wait just a bit to see if the number of pages starts to increase as there isn't an awful lot else you can do - it sounds like it has all been done.
-Andy
-
That is what I did around 7 days ago, so before the drop of index.
-
Try to identiy pages that has more links and use "fetch as google" and chose to re-crawl the URL.
-
Thanks for the tip - I will do that. But I don't understand how this has something to do with this issue. At the moment all search engines show my sites ranking (so probably indexed). Just Search Console is giving me some wrong(?) information. I don't think there can be a discrepancy in a way that Google Search Console shows me de-indexing in advance of google serp.
Cheers
-
did you also verify your site under bing/yahoo webmaster tools. if not yet i suggest you do you will be surprised how faster and how effective is bing yahoo indexation. wait for couples of days en perform the site: www.domain.com you will see how index differ with google
-
Hi,
thanks for your help. "site:domain"-check in bing and yahoo show the exact same as google. So all the pages are currently in serps.
-
do similar check on bing and yahoo. they are much more effective and speedy than google but problem is market share that google have
-
Hi Andy,
sorry for disturbing, but I just did a check with "site:paleotogo.de" in google search and it found all pages.
In Search Console it tells me my blog has 54 out of 75 indexed (this was the sudden drop I spoke about earlier). But when I look further into the blog sitemap it shows me all 75 pages when I count them.
What is happening here? I really don't understand
Cheers, Marco
-
No problem at all. Just update here if it hasn't rectified itself soon and we can take another look
-Andy
-
Thanks for your help, Andy - really appreciate it. Hope everything will turn out well.
Just realized I forgot to mention the page it is about: www.paleotogo.de
-
Ah sorry, I missed that bit Marco.
When Google drop pages from the index, it can be for a whole host of reasons. However, Google never indexed 100% of pages (or very, very rarely). If you were at 95% and now at 75%, then this would suggest to me that Google has either lost some level of trust in the pages or you will just have to wait until the pages are re-indexed and Google has decided what to do with them again.
I would be tempted to wait for a little bit as over time, you should see pages being re-indexed again. If you have already re-submitted the sitemap, just make sure there is no problem with that - rebuild it and then re-submit if you haven't already, just to be sure.
-Andy
-
Hi Andy,
it's not about the drop of a specific keyword, it's about the drop of indexed pages going from 100% indexed to around 75% indexed.
Cheers
Marco
-
Hi Moosa,
thanks for your help! I did a resubmit 2 hours ago and just checked again, but it didn't index all of the pages (20 left again).
Strange.
-
Hi Marco,
It all depends on what you were tracking as phrases before, and now after you have made the changes. If you were tracking for the phrase "Red Sneakers" and changed the title to "Blue Sneakers" then you would expect to see a drop with your original phrase. Have you updated your tracking to compensate for the changes?
-Andy
-
Ideally just by changing the title tags the index should not be dropped but if this is something you have noticed, you can always update your sitemap.xml and resubmit it to Google and in the next crawl it should be indexed again.
Hope this helps!
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
-
Ranking dropped after change single page url, should I change it back?
I was making updates to the content on the following page, and a few days later dropped from #2 SERP ranking to 50+. Things I checked: Yes, 301 redirect was implemented right away. After publishing, I manually requested indexing in search console. Right after publishing I re-submitted the sitemap manually and Google said they had not crawled it in 9 days. My question: should I change the URL back to the old one, or give it a little more time (especially since I re-submitted sitemap) Original URL: https://www.travelinsurancereview.net/plans/travel-medical/ New URL: https://www.travelinsurancereview.net/plans/travel-medical-insurance/
On-Page Optimization | | DamianTysdal0 -
For an e-commerce product category page that has several funnels to specific products, for SEO purposes does it matter whether the category page's overview content is above or below those funnels?
We manage an e-commerce site. On a category page, there are several funnels to specific products. We moved the category overview content below those funnels to make it easier for users to quickly get to products. Seems more user friendly to me, but could that move of the main content to the lower part of the page be a negative ranking factor?
On-Page Optimization | | PKI_Niles0 -
Hiding elements of the page
Hi, Does hiding elements of the page have a negative effect on SEO? The reason I ask is I am using a Wordpress theme however in options if I disable a certain element of the theme that is printed on the page it simply hides it from the user using CSS but it still exists in the code. Could the search engine see this as bad? E.g. like you are trying to keyword stuff by hiding keywords in the page? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | mdeluk1 -
Product Page Links
I have a product category page at https://www.hurtlegear.com.au/s1000rr/ which currently has 38 products on it. Problem is, all the product titles start with the name of the text: "bmw s1000rr" (because that's what they are) - so that means there are 38 anchored internal links on that page, all starting with the same keyword. You can see how that might look to the Google crawler. Recently that page dropped from around 15 to outside the top 100, and Moz tells me that the page is keyword stuffed with "bmw s1000rr" (no suprise) so I'm guessing that may be the reason the page has disappeared out of the SERPs. I don't really want to change all the product titles (then they wouldn't make sense) so I'm just wondering if there is any way around this? Is there some way of telling Google that this is a product category page and therefore to ignore the anchor text in all of those product links? Can/should the links have some kind of markup on them? Or is the page beyond help? Basically I'm looking at a way of keeping the product titles as they are, but avoiding a page penalty from Google somehow. I'm a bit of a newbie, any suggestions would be most appreciated. Cheers, Graeme
On-Page Optimization | | graeme720 -
What if Paginated Pages all have PageRank?
Paginated Pages, page 2,3,4 etc.... they aren't supposed to have a PageRank, right? If they are only linked to from themselves, only the original page, Page 1, is supposed to be showing PageRank? I'm trying to double check that I am handling this right. I'm not using canonical, or noindex or any of that... just using rel next and prev, which I thought would be fine. Thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | MadeLoud0 -
Followed seomoz advice for on page tweaks but dropped
Hi all We followed seomoz advice regarding on-page tweaks for this page: http://www.compactlaw.co.uk/agency-agreement.html Dropped 10 places by Google UK. Obviously could be a coincidence, but any on-page critique very gladly received. (But also seem to have been dropped by Google across the board in the past week or so. Usual trouble of trying to find causes. But specific page advice would be a start and much appreciated.) Regards P
On-Page Optimization | | dexm100 -
Handling Deleted Pages
The backstory: My site has a fantasy sportsbook where users can place "bets" on pretty much anything. Each game has a unique matchup page, where the odds are displayed and any conversation about the game takes place. Example here. About 95% of the games are automatically graded, but I have to manually grade the rest. Therefore, as soon as every game starts I check to see if any users have made a pick on it, and if not I delete it because it reduces my workload. The problem: About 15% of my search-driven traffic is queries for games that no longer exist, which makes sense because nobody bets on the super obscure games and these games are very easy to rank for. I am currently redirecting them to my 404 page but I'm worried that all of these hits are hurting my reputation with the big G. Would it be better to noindex all of these pages at first and take the noindex away as soon as I'm positive that the game will stay?
On-Page Optimization | | PatrickGriffith0 -
Home page ranking dropped below internal pages
The index page for a site I manage has dropped significantly - internal pages rank above it. It's a new site, 2 months old but was ranking at 1st. Any suggestions as to how I can debug this?
On-Page Optimization | | OptioPublishing0