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
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
-
Website homepage temporarily getting removed from google index
hi, website: www.snackmagic.com The home page goes out of google index for some hours and then comes back. We are not sure why our home page is getting de-indexed temporarily. This doesn't happen with other pages on our website. This has been happening intermittently in the gap of 2-3 days. Any inputs will be very useful for us to debug this issue Thanks
Technical SEO | | manikbystadium0 -
Pages not indexed
Hey everyone Despite doing the necessary checks, we have this problem that only a part of the sitemap is indexed.
Technical SEO | | conversal
We don't understand why this indexation doesn't want to take place. The major problem is that only a part of the sitemap is indexed. For a client we have several projects on the website with several subpages, but only a few of these subpages are indexed. Each project has 5 to 6 subpages. They all should be indexed. Project: https://www.brody.be/nl/nieuwbouwprojecten/nieuwbouw-eeklo/te-koop-eeklo/ Mainly subelements of the page are indexed: https://www.google.be/search?source=hp&ei=gZT1Wv2ANouX6ASC5K-4Bw&q=site%3Abrody.be%2Fnl%2Fnieuwbouwprojecten%2Fnieuwbouw-eeklo%2F&oq=site%3Abrody.be%2Fnl%2Fnieuwbouwprojecten%2Fnieuwbouw-eeklo%2F&gs_l=psy-ab.3...30.11088.0.11726.16.13.1.0.0.0.170.1112.8j3.11.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..4.6.693.0..0j0i131k1.0.p6DjqM3iJY0 Do you have any idea what is going wrong here?
Thanks for your advice! Frederik
Digital marketeer at Conversal0 -
Should you use google url remover if older indexed pages are still being kept?
Hello, A client recently did a redesign a few months ago, resulting in 700 pages being reduced to 60, mostly due to panda penalty and just low interest in products on those pages. Now google is still indexing a good number of them ( around 650 ) when we only have 70 on our sitemap. Thing is google indexes our site on average now for 115 urls when we only have 60 urls that need indexing and only 70 on our sitemap. I would of thought these urls would be crawled and not found, but is taking a very long period of time. Our rankings haven't recovered as much as we'd hope, and we believe that the indexed older pages are causes this. Would you agree and also would you think removing those old urls via the remover tool would be best option? It would mean using the url remover tool for 650 pages. Thank you in advance
Technical SEO | | Deacyde0 -
Hybrid page showing in Google search results
Hello Mozzers We have two pages showing on page 1 of Google for the search term 'inset day sessions' This url is the correct page which we want site visitors to see. http://www.laughology.co.uk/teacher-workshop-s-inset-days/inset-days The other page page seems to be a strange hybrid of how the page used to look and the new content we have included. It's a mess and we don't want visitors clicking on this link. There is no menu link to this page on the site, but it is showing as a link In SH404sef http://www.laughology.co.uk/schools/teacher-workshop-s-inset-days/ What is the best way to deal with this? Thanks Ian nKOHYbn
Technical SEO | | Substance-create0 -
Site indexed by Google, but (almost) never gets impressions
Hi there, I have a question that I wasn't able to give it a reasonable answer yet, so I'm going to trust on all of you. Basically a site has all its pages indexed by Google (I verified with site:sitename.com) and it also has great and unique content. All on-page grades are A with absolutely no negative factors at all. However its pages do not get impressions almost at all. Of course I didn't expect it to be on page 1 since it has been launched on Dec, 1st, but it looks like Google is ignoring (or giving it bad scores) for some reason. Only things that can contribute to that could be: domain privacy on the domain, redirect from the www to the subdomain we use (we did this because it will be a multi-language site, so we'll assign to each country a subdomain), recency (it has been put online on Dec 1st and the domain is just a couple of months old). Or maybe because we blocked crawlers for a few days before the launch? Exactly a few days before Dec 1st. What do you think? What could be the reason for that? Thanks guys!
Technical SEO | | ruggero0 -
Advice on improve this content page for seo and google
Hi, i use joomla and i am looking for some help to find out what i should be doing to make my content pages better for seo and google. I would be grateful if people would look at the following page as an example http://www.in2town.co.uk/trip-advisor/top-american-ski-resorts-for-over-50s and let me know what i should be doing to make it better for seo and for google so people can find the page. I am using the above page as an example so i can learn from it. I would be grateful if people could look at the source code for the page to see if there is anything that should be in their that is not and if i should be looking at any joomla plugins for the content pages to improve the seo of the page. Any help to improve my seo for my content pages would be great. many thanks
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Secondary Pages Indexed over Primary Page
I have 4 pages for a single product Each of the pages link to the Main page for that product Google is indexing the secondary pages above my preferred landing page How do I fix this?
Technical SEO | | Bucky0 -
Should I allow index of category / tag pages on Wordpress?
Quite simply, is it best to allow index of category / tag pages on a Wordpress blog or no index them? My thought is Google will / might see it as duplicate content? Thanks, K
Technical SEO | | SEOKeith0