Trying to figure out why one of my popular pages was de-indexed from Google.
-
I wanted to share this with everyone for two reasons. 1. To try to figure out why this happened, and 2 Let everyone be aware of this so you can check some of your pages if needed.
Someone on Facebook asked me a question that I knew I had answered in this post. I couldn't remember what the url was, so I googled some of the terms I knew was in the page, and the page didn't show up. I did some more searches and found out that the entire page was missing from Google.
This page has a good number of shares, comments, Facebook likes, etc (ie: social signals) and there is certainly no black / gray hat techniques being used on my site. This page received a decent amount of organic traffic as well.
I'm not sure when the page was de-indexed, and wouldn't have even known if I had't tried to search for it via google; which makes me concerned that perhaps other pages are being de-indexed. It also concerns me that I have done something wrong (without knowing) and perhaps other pages on my site are going to be penalized as well.
Does anyone have any idea why this page would be de-indexed? It sure seems like all the signals are there to show Google this page is unique and valuable. Interested to hear some of your thoughts on this.
Thanks
-
I did the fetch as google and everything looks normal. I also do not have any erros that have anything to do with this page.
It's very strange. It seems to have happen all of a sudden.
-
Go to do your Webmaster Tools and do a "Fetch as Google" on the page. Also check for any errors while you're there.
Is it possible that you had a noindex tag on the page at least temporarily in the past?
-
Thanks for your message. I've already checked that, and the site was in face de indexed.
-
Hello
I've had a few pages fall off the radar, however these pages weren't de-indexed, they just didn't show up for the keywords they used to. Try site:www.yourdomain.com/page/ to see if the page has actually been de-indexed.
The only conclusion I could come to with regards why my pages that fell off a cliff was the ratio of natural to commercial anchor text. I had more than 50% of anchor texts to those pages from exact keyword anchor texts.
Inner pages need brand and natural anchor text profiles also, not just the home page (so yourdomain.com/page, www.yourdomain.com/page, http://www.yourdomain.com/page).
Hope this helps.
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
-
Google's Presentation Yesterday
We hired a new website/marketing company that is a Preferred Google Partner (one of two in Charlotte according to them) and they hosted a presentation by Google at the Google Fiber office in Charlotte yesterday. As expected, there were lots of self-promotion by Google, accompanied with a plethora of data they created to support their PPC Marketing. It was an impressive performance with Molly Dince and Celena Fergusson, presenting Google Marketing Solutions: "Making the Web Work For You" and the keynote speaker Tim Reis, Director of Performance Agencies at Google: speaking on "Mobile Micromoments: Why Your Biggest Opportunities Are In The Smallest Moments" They ended with 15 minutes of Q&A and my question was answered with "I don't know" which I found surprising. So, here it is Thursday morning and I'm asking the same question to my Moz Family for some feedback: "Since the removal of Ads from the right column of a SERP, what percentage of Google traffic comes from Ads vs. the Organics?" I look forward to your comments. TY,
Algorithm Updates | | KevnJr
KJr0 -
Site not indexed on Google UK after 4 days?
Hello!
Algorithm Updates | | digitalsoda
Wonder if anyone can help with this one? I have an ecommerce site www.doggydazzles.co.uk which went live on Friday and was submitted to Google via webmaster tools on saturday morning, but I can't find any trace of it in a google search?
I'm a bit stuck with this as its never happened to any of my other sites.
Can anyone help please or make suggestions as to what I can do to get ranked quicker? Thanks0 -
Home page rank for keyword
Hi Mozers I have traded from my website balloon.co.uk for over 10 years. For a long while the site ranked first for the word 'balloon' across the UK on google.co.uk (first out of 41 million). Around the time Penguin launched the site began to drop and currently sits on about page 5. What's confusing is that for a search on 'balloons' ('s' on the end of balloon) it ranks 2nd in the location of Birmingham where I'm based. That's 2nd in the real search rather than a map local search. But - if I search 'balloon' from the location of Birmingham my contact page ranks 5th: http://www.balloon.co.uk/contact.htm but the home page ranks nowhere. So - it's gone from ranking 1st nationally to ranking nowhere with my contact page ranking above the home page (which is a generic word domain). Any ideas?
Algorithm Updates | | balloon.co.uk0 -
Google Site Links question
Are Google site links only ever shown on the top website? Or is it possible for certain queries for the site in position #2 or #3 or something to have site links but the #1 position not have them? If there are any guides, tips or write ups regarding site links and their behavior and optimization please share! Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | IrvCo_Interactive0 -
Wordpress Canonical Tag Pointing to Same Page
So I noticed on a few of my clients wordpress tags (via moz) that there are canonical tags on URLs, pointing to that same URL. What is the point of that, and is it harming the website? Is this being done automatically via a plugin? Should I remove the canonical tags or leave as is?
Algorithm Updates | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Google Page Rank not improving
Hi All, I have a site live with a homepage rank of 5, Ever since relaunching (on the same domain) 6 months ago the inner page rank has remained at NA. Its crawled pretty consistently, Can anyone think of a reason this may be happening? www.glowm.com
Algorithm Updates | | thebluecubeuk0 -
Same page but appearing in Google with different titles
I have a page ranking on position 1 for a key phrase. The key phrase is the title of the page as well. I'll use a mock key phrase to aid my question - "Teeth and Gums" So the page is ranking number 1 for "Teeth and Gums" and "Teeth and Gums" is the meta title. However, I went ahead and did a new search adding an additional keyword to the original search. When I did a new search adding an additional keyword to the original search, Google has done something weird.. Let's say the search is "Dentistry - Teeth and Gums", Google has ranked my page again as number 1 but changed the title. The title in the search result is now "Dentistry - Teeth and Gums" How and why? It's kinda like Google PPC's keyword insertion but the title hasn't got anything weird like {KeyWord: Dentistry}. It's just "Teeth and Gums" Has this happened to you guys? Any ideas?
Algorithm Updates | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Has there been a Google change in the last 24 hours?
We have come in this morning to find our site (paydayuk.co.uk) has suddenly disappeared from their SERPs, we have consistently been ranking in the top 5 for a wide range of search terms but now do not even appear for our brand name of Payday UK where we have been first for many months. Our site is still indexed and we have made no changes for a while as any SEO work is waiting on completion of a CMS system. Looking in https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!categories/webmasters/crawling-indexing--ranking and there seem to be a lot of people having the same issues but as of yet no answers. I'd also like to add we don’t use black hat techniques so we really don’t understand why we have been penalised. Can anyone help please?
Algorithm Updates | | Sarbs0