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.
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
-
Page Rank on Moz compared to Ahrefs
So there seems to be a huge philosophical difference behind how Moz and Ahrefs calculates page rank (PA). On Moz, PA is very dependent on a site's DA. For instance, any new page or page with no backlinks for a 90DA site on Moz will have around 40PA. However, if a site has around 40 DA, any new page or page with no backlinks will have around 15PA PA. Now if one were to decide to get tons of backlinks to this 40 DA/15PA page, that will raise the PA of the page slightly, but it will likely never go beyond 40PA....which hints that one would rather acquire a backlink from a page on a high DA site even if that page has 0 links back to it as opposed to a backlink from a page on a low DA site with many, many backlinks to it. This is very different from how Ahrefs calculates PA. For Ahrefs, the PA of any new page or page with no backlinks to it will have a PA of around 8-10ish....no matter what the DA of the site is. When a page from a 40DA site begins acquiring a few links to it, it will quickly acquire a higher PA than a page from a 90DA site with no links to it. The big difference here is that for Ahrefs, PA for a given page is far more dependent on how many inbound links that page has. On the other hand, for Moz, PA for a given page is far more dependent on the DA of the site that page is on. If we were to trust Moz's PA calculations, SEOrs should emphasize getting links from high DA sites....whereas if we were to trust Ahref's PA calculations, SEOrs should focus less on that and more on building links to whatever page they want to rank up (even if that page is on a low DA site). So what do you guys think? Do you agree more with Moz or Ahref's valuation of PA. Is PA of a page more dependent on the DA or more dependent on it's total inbound links?
Algorithm Updates | | ButtaC1 -
Sudden drop in rankings and indexed pages!
Over the past few days I have noticed some apparent major changes. Before I explain, let me say this: Checking my analytics and WMT: There is an increase in traffic (even via google organic) There is no drop in impressions or clicks There is no drop in indexed pages in GWT Having said that; When I check my indexed pages using site:www.mywebsite.com, I see only 30 results as opposed to the 120K that I was seeing before (it was steadily climbing). The indexed pages have increase 3 fold in the past year, because of the increase in pages, updates, and products on the site. I see a sudden drop in rankings for major keywords that had been steadily rising. For example, I had some major keywords that were on page 7-8, not they are on page 20+ or not at all. Also, the page that used to show in the rankings has changed. I have only done white-hat guest blogging in the past year for link building, on a small scale (maybe 20-30 links in a year). They only other change recently, is that we are: Posting products on Houzz and Pinterest daily adding our site to all local directories (white pages, Yelp, citysearch, etc.) My site got hit by Penguin more than a year ago, but we have done everything right since, and our traffic via organic results has more than doubled since the Penguin release. What the hell is going on? Should I be concerned?
Algorithm Updates | | inhouseseo0 -
Not sure whether to update existing page or create a new one
Hello guys, So far I have found this Q&A to be very helpful. I have a couple of product pages on my website which rank very low in the search results. This was because in the past they were not at all optimized in terms of title, description, etc. I would like to now optimize these pages, get some inbound links to them, etc. I'm not sure whether to do this with the existing product pages or create new ones. I'm afraid that if I optimize the current pages, the low ranking from before will carry over. Would it be better to start fresh? Thank you, Pravin
Algorithm Updates | | goforgreen0 -
Why does Google say they have more URLs indexed for my site than they really do?
When I do a site search with Google (i.e. site:www.mysite.com), Google reports "About 7,500 results" -- but when I click through to the end of the results and choose to include omitted results, Google really has only 210 results for my site. I had an issue months back with a large # of URLs being indexed because of query strings and some other non-optimized technicalities - at that time I could see that Google really had indexed all of those URLs - but I've since implemented canonical URLs and fixed most (if not all) of my technical issues in order to get our index count down. At first I thought it would just be a matter of time for them to reconcile this, perhaps they were looking at cached data or something, but it's been months and the "About 7,500 results" just won't change even though the actual pages indexed keeps dropping! Does anyone know why Google would be still reporting a high index count, which doesn't actually reflect what is currently indexed? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | CassisGroup0 -
Google and Wikipedia
Ok, I love Wikipedia as much as the next guy but the amount of weight that google puts on this site is getting crazy. My search terms that I am going after are "speakers" and "loudspeakers" Can somebody tell me why wikipedia needs the top 8 -10 spots for those terms? is that really a good search result for users of google? More of a rant then a question I know. I just needed to get that off my chest!.
Algorithm Updates | | kevin48030 -
Is it normal to receive 2 mails from Google?
I filed a reconsideration request that was answered in less than a week. Subsequently I was told that no manual penalty was in place but various algorithm factors might be causing my heavy drops in ranking. Then I got a second email which was even more specific. This was great, really heartening stuff and a total surprise as it was very helpful. Is it normal to receive 2 emails from Google with such clear information? I have been very pleased by the comments they have made as it has shown me that they're more customer focused than I had been led to believe by all the research I had done pre reconsideration request. Has anyone else had a clear outline of what they needed to fix and has their site subsequently rebounded post fixing?
Algorithm Updates | | swimwithfishes0 -
Related Searches in Google
Hello, We're helping a client remove/minimize some negative information about their brand in Google's search results. Just curious about your take on if the related searches that appear at the bottom of Google search results can in any way be influenced or if it is more a combination of so many factors that any one person or organization wouldn't be able to change very easily? I've heard the related results could be influenced if enough queries generated overtake the "negative" queries done initially but I feel like that is venturing into black hat land a bit. thanks -Mike
Algorithm Updates | | mattmainpath0 -
Index Page lost rankings? Please Help!
This morning I ranked highly (Page 1 UK Google) for over 50 keyword search terms for my website http://www.careworx.co.uk This afternoon my rankings have bottomed out and dropped pages? I have not been de-indexed it appears and many of my sub-pages are still highly ranked. Would anybody know what has happened? I know of Google Panda but I would've seen results drop before now so I'm very concerned. Don't seem to have lost any links etc and am careful to balance SEO with a mix of techniques to keep Google happy and again, have not been de-indexed. Can anybody offer advice please, or let me know how I can rectify this.
Algorithm Updates | | andystep0