Google not indexing following a site re-direct
-
I am having an issue with Google not indexing my WordPress site.
My blog first appeared 18 months ago as http://colinrobbins.me , everything worked just fine.
On 24/08/2013 I changed the design template and purchase a custom design option.
On 28/08/2013 I change the primary domain to http://cybermatters.info and re-directed colnrobbins.me
On 30/08/2013 I purchase the No Add option.I used Google Web Master Tools (WMT) about that time, to request the site re-indexed. This seemed to go OK – and 40 of my 100ish pages are indexed (as can be seen here https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acybermatters.info).
However, for some reason Google has not updated its index since 29/08/2013, as can be seen by the cache date in Google, and by the fact any pages added after 29/08/2013 (e.g., http://cybermatters.info/2013/10/02/bye-bye-barney/) are not indexed.
Google has also not appeared to spot the redirects (as evidenced by https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acolinrobbins.me)
I have looked at WMT. There are no errors references. BUT…
Under Crawl / Sitemaps it shows a status of “pending” with 80 pages submitted and 25 indexed.
Crawl / Fetch as Google goes into a pending state, then after an hour fails – but no error codes.I’ve checked to robots.txt – all seems OK to me. I’ve followed the WordPress advice on http://en.support.wordpress.com/search-engines/
I have checked the site with the W3C Validator, and apart from some minor errors caused by the theme (Bueno) there does not seem to be any show stopping errors.
The content is unique, and in not sensitive / Bing has indexed it just fine.
I have tried the Google help forums (https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!mydiscussions/webmasters/-mqDmhww5Kg), with their advice tried some good suggestions, but have not made any progress.
One suggestion from that forum, is to look at the server logs. Is there any way I can do this on wordpress.com?
Any ideas / suggestions why Google does not like me?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
-
Hi there,
Thank you for including all of the details about this issue! I’m sorry you’re running into trouble with this. It looks like everything is in order and Google should be indexing your site. I’m checking with our team to see what might be causing the problem for you. I’ll let you know as soon as I have more information about it!
-
Hi there,
I wanted to give you a quick update on this issue. We haven’t resolved the problem yet, but we had a number of similar reports (so it’s not just you!) and we’re making progress as we investigate what caused it. I’ll let you know when I have more information. :)
-
Hi there,
This issue with sites not being indexed by Google should be resolved now. It may take a bit for Google to catch up with the indexing, but if you check your webmaster tools everything should be working now. Please let me know if you have any remaining questions or concerns about this!
-
Thank you, WMT seems to be OK now, and a few additional pages have been index by Google. Just a case of waiting now I hope.
Can you please let me know what the issue was – I posted my quesiton on another forum too, where I got a lot of help, and I’d like to give them an update.
Thank you.
-
Hi Colin – Awesome, I’m glad you’re set! In the process of upgrading systems, a record with our domain registrar (where we ourselves bought “wordpress.com” from) wasn’t updated as it should have been. For all “normal” visitors, the issue didn’t cause any problems, but Google’s crawler was more sensitive to it.
We worked directly with Google in resolving this, so there is no long-term impact to your sites, and everything is working as expected again now. :)
- The topic ‘Google not indexing following a site re-direct’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 