Problems with Google Indexing

  • Resolved strifemit

    (@strifemit)


    7 years, 8 months ago

    Hi
    I followed the instructions fot the last update and now I have serious concerns because so little of my website is being indexed.

    I was http://www.bestepeople.com and this has been changed to http://www.communicationandyou.com. Anything to the old bestepeople is now redirected to communicationandyou. The problem is now I can see according to google I have almost nothing indexed. I have followed all the rules and ensured the SEO data is up to date (although I now can see the description has reduced). I will correct this. However my website is useless if most of it isn’t indexed.

    What do I need to do to change this please?

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Plugin Author Sybre Waaijer

    (@cybr)

    7 years, 8 months ago

    Hello 🙂

    The title of your homepage appears correctly in Google; this means that either your site wasn’t affected, or that the fix applied worked correctly.

    Many of the pages of http://www.bestepeople.com/ have yet to be found to redirect or point a canonical URL to your new domain. This means there’s duplicated content and Google will favor the old domain for the time being. Google will, however, resolve this automatically when it sees the new canonical URLs or redirects on the old domain.

    I recommend setting a 301 redirect for all pages of the old domain to the new domain; this will prevent visitors linking to the old domain in the future. Make sure that the old pages redirect to their corresponding new pages, not to the new home page.

    In any case, this is a waiting game for now. The new pages will appear slowly on Google; likewise, the old pages will disappear slowly too.
    You can speed up this process by requesting a priority crawl of the old domain’s pages, Google will follow the canonical URLs (or redirects) and take notes:
    https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6065812?hl=en

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by Sybre Waaijer. Reason: rectified incorrect statements
    Thread Starter strifemit

    (@strifemit)

    7 years, 8 months ago

    Thanks for the quick reply Sybre. I guess it’s a wait although it has already been a while. I failed to work out how to do the 301. I also failed to get it to do a priority crawl.

    Plugin Author Sybre Waaijer

    (@cybr)

    7 years, 8 months ago

    No problem 🙂

    For the directory/page redirect, you might find this .htaccess rule useful; beware, it’ll lock out your admin pages:

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^OLDDOMAIN\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://NEWDOMAIN.com [R=301,L]

    The priority crawl is set whenever you ask Google to perform an URL inspection, there you can request indexing. See the link to Google’s support page above on how to do this.

    Thread Starter strifemit

    (@strifemit)

    7 years, 8 months ago

    Hi I am a little slow. Do you mean add this:

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^bestepeople\.com$ [NC]
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://communicationandyou.com [R=301,L]

    To this:

    php_flag log_errors On

    php_value error_log /home/strifemi/public_html/error_log

    AddType image/webp .webp
    <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine Off
    </IfModule>
    # BEGIN WordPress
    <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
    </IfModule>

    # END WordPress

    And then what do I do? And do I remove it afterwards?

    Plugin Author Sybre Waaijer

    (@cybr)

    7 years, 8 months ago

    Don’t worry! 🙂

    Make a backup of your old .htaccess’ contents.

    From what you sent me, the file should look a bit like this:

    # PHP logging
php_flag log_errors On
php_value error_log /home/strifemi/public_html/error_log

# Is this needed?
AddType image/webp .webp

# Redirect to new domain
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^bestepeople\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://communicationandyou.com [R=301,L]
</IfModule>

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

    Cheers!

    Edit: When it’s in place, it should be there “permanently”; that’s what a 301 should do. If there are no backlinks of value, and when Google stops indexing the old site, then you’re safe to remove the redirects and even the domain.

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by Sybre Waaijer. Reason: more info
Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

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