Google Indexing Issues?

[PROFRBcom]

Has anyone had any issues getting new content indexed recently?

I have noticed in the 2 weeks that a number of our new articles are NOT being indexed. Ordinarily, our articles are indexed in a day or two.

I have manually submitted some of these pages, in some cases multiple times, using Google Search Console and yet the pages remain unindexed.

I have checked our sitemap.xml and the pages are listed, with high priority now as well. Google last read our sitemap the morning of this post, so that isn't the issue either.

Any thoughts?

(FYI, these are 1k-5k long articles, so it should not be a quality issue of any kind keeping them from being indexed).

[casionmark]

Have had this issue for a month or more. Often can’t get new pages indexed.

Also pages dropping off the index. I’ve re-submitted through search console and they’ve come back. But new articles just won’t index via site map or search console. I have seen others reporting this on forums. Not sure what to suggest.

[gm2891]

Put a text link from your homepage to the one you want to get indexed with an exact anchor of what that page is about.
And then submit your homepage for indexation in GSC.
If it worked fine, remove the link. Or leave it there, up to you.

[PROFRBcom]

Put a text link from your homepage to the one you want to get indexed with an exact anchor of what that page is about.
And then submit your homepage for indexation in GSC.
If it worked fine, remove the link. Or leave it there, up to you.

All these pages are linked from the homepage, which is common practice for us.
Two links actually, a sidebar text link, and a "blogroll" style post which shows the article summary, image, and link.

This is crazy.

[gil.langelaan]

You can try to put a one more internal link to this page and build an external link too.
Also you can try tools that may help to index this pages faster (add-url and etc.).

Now everything is okay but some time ago we had this issue. And I did the same I wrote above. It helped to get pages indexed.

[chaumi]

and build an external link too.

I can see how this might clinch it, but (and not knocking your idea, Gil)..it makes no logical sense...a new page wouldn't have any (legitimate) external links...and Google would know that...hence if it did work, it would just be proving what's likely to be the answer here......

There is something broken in indexing, and Google are not spilling the beans....

Or....

Maybe this is the new normal (for some sites/searches/whatever the algo has been told to do), and the game has changed (all be it maybe temporarily). There are some biggish reasons why potentially this might be the case, but let's reserve judgment until (and if) it all becomes clearer.

It would be very interesting to hear from anyone that has had new pages indexed within a day or two in the last couple of months. I know from my last 2 published.....1 took nearly 3 months to index, the other a month (and it had never been more than a couple of days before across multiple sites and a fair number of years).

[Former Member 14]

Gil used to post consistent, decent/helpful quality info. However, now his motivation seems to be posting for all the wrong reasons, what those reasons/purposes are, I'll leave you to figure out...

[dkennedy]

That's a great idea. I will try this on a client's site as I've been facing this problem as well.
But maybe i just need to be patient because the page is new and it was also just added to the sitemap.

[Matevzus]

We have the same issue with the new site not getting idexed. First we received errors, with some of the pages being marked as noindex and it is "in verification" for almost 2 months now.

Not sure about the solution unfortunately

[chaumi]

You have to be careful not to mix up scenarios here. Because they all might be different/getting treated differently.

So there is (re)indexing of an existing indexed page (with new / additional content). Current evidence suggests this is not a problem.

There is indexing of a new page on an authoritative/aged site (which has never had any indexing issues in the past, and what this thread is really about)

It may be different again for indexing of a new page on a fairly new site that hasn't had indexing issues before.

And then we have indexing of a new site and its pages. In this case, if it was set to noindex by mistake when initially published, I have seen before (personal experience, but just once) that Google seems to see the noindex request, take it as gospel, and then take a long long time to recognize that it has changed (in my example, well past 3 months...and things have changed, that may be a lot longer now).


For interest, I read in the last few days that Google may be implementing some sort of 'report an indexing issue' feature into GSC. If implemented, we'll have to wait/see how that actually pans out. You'd anticipate not very well/heavy delays, based on what we appear to know currently.

[rmeeuwsen]

It would be very interesting to hear from anyone that has had new pages indexed within a day or two in the last couple of months. I know from my last 2 published.....1 took nearly 3 months to index, the other a month (and it had never been more than a couple of days before across multiple sites and a fair number of years).

I've had two different sites in the last week that have had new pages indexed within a few days.
One site is 10 years old, the other is 20 years old.

I also have a new site started 7/14/2021 that has 53 indexed pages

(I'll share the urls if anyone is interested)

[PROFRBcom]

For what it is worth, I updated the homepage manually, which contains 2 links to each article (by default) while they are "fresh" news before they naturally roll off the homepage.

I then manually asked Google to crawl the page, and it did according to GSC.

Spot checked the non-indexed articles, news posts, etc.... no change.

Still perplexed.

And yes, this an aged domain with quite a bit of existing traffic, no recent traffic drops, and no prior history of indexing issues.

[Bartsbigbet]

We got the same indexing issue for many pages of our website. We try to link from homepage but it didnt work for most pages. A couple of days ago we tried to add all pages to the menu and they got finally indexed. We got over 500 pages and most of them are (well organised) in the menu now. I dont like this solution and im not sure what the negative side effects are but for now its working. We got 25% more impressions in GSC and most pages are indexed.

[chaumi]

we tried to add all pages to the menu and they got finally indexed - i'm not sure what the negative side effects are but for now its working.

Interesting.

There are different schools of thought around menus and how best to present from an SEO perspective. From a user perspective - debatable. No menu, very basic, basic, mega. Personally I've yet to see any real hard evidence that any one is better than another, as long as the structure is right in other ways. But it's a hard one to be sure of.

Of course in this case it may have been coincidence, and you menu'd them just at the point that G was deciding to index anyway (unless you drip fed and proved it as you went).

But equally it would seem possible that this is an answer.

Now they're indexed though - you could de-menu them if you're not sure that's how you want them presented. On all known logic they can't de-index from that.

[rmeeuwsen]

I thought that one of my quick indexes may have been a fluke.

But on Sept 3rd I make a short 107 word post called "Win An All-inclusive Luxury Trip to Super Bowl 56" and it was indexed on the 5th.

Today I went back and added 420 words to it.

?????

[chaumi]

I thought that one of my quick indexes may have been a fluke.

But on Sept 3rd I make a short 107 word post called "Win An All-inclusive Luxury Trip to Super Bowl 56" and it was indexed on the 5th.

Today I went back and added 420 words to it.

?????

r(golden-touch)meeuwsen!!!!! Are you ok to say what site that was on? feel free to pm if you prefer

If you think about it, it may not be a big surprise that a 107 worder would index. If it answers the query. And you could see scenarios where the answer to 'win a xxxx xxxxx xxxx xxx' could be adequately answered in 100ish words.

Might be more of a surprise (and worth taking apart) if it ranked high though.

[rmeeuwsen]

r(golden-touch)meeuwsen!!!!!

Yes, I wish I had a golden touch.

Would I share the link? - Dang right - https://casinoonlinegaming.com/bovad...r-bowl-56.html

Logic and google does not always seem to go together. To your point, it does answer a query.

I've been concentrating on writing much longer content. But I was alerted to this promotion when they added some RED HIGHLIGHTED TEXT on their affiliate site. It was related to a long review I am still writing. At the time their note was all that I could find, so I just rewrote what they told me and posted it with a banner (of all things) on top and a football image at the end.

While continuing to write the longer post, I found more information on their promotion (that was the added 400 words) - which I added right after the original post (and below the image).

I was highly surprised when the 'thin' content was indexed, whereas other people with larger content have not been indexed.

But I'll take 'high ranked content' that is 'slow to index' over "a quick index' that 'never ranks'.

Sometimes I think I am operating in bizarro world!

[chaumi]

"Sometimes I think I am operating in bizarro world!"

That is often the case in this game, but equally there is often some logic somewhere that explains events, or at least partially. Finding it (or trying to) is great fun I think .

So I'm guessing the top paragraph and 4 bullet points were the original indexed...and surely yes everything was in there that would have answered the query (maybe 'winner' 'winning' 'contest' 'competition' would have helped it along too).

It's mid way on page 2.....but will be interesting to see if it creeps higher in the next week (because most of those above are not specifically related).


I'm going to press on with the 'why are some pages not indexing (as quickly as they did) question...because (although some may be reading this and thinking 'what's your problem, mine indexes in 2 mins like it always has') I think something really is going on behind this and it could happen to anyone, at any time.


A small theory to be ruled out......rmeeuwsen.....your other pages that indexed, what was the content depth like on those? Deep? Average? Minor?

[rmeeuwsen]

I'm going to press on with the 'why are some pages not indexing (as quickly as they did) question...because (although some may be reading this and thinking 'what's your problem, mine indexes in 2 mins like it always has') I think something really is going on behind this and it could happen to anyone, at any time.


A small theory to be ruled out......rmeeuwsen.....your other pages that indexed, what was the content depth like on those? Deep? Average? Minor?

I’d be happy to share - so there is no guessing or imagining required.

https://casinoonlinegaming.com/bovad...h-bonuses.html

Age of site: 20 years
Number of words: 1,307
Topic: Not a very popular topic for reviews - rewards program
Note: 5 images, 7 heading, 5 tables

https://slotbonuses.info/slots-lv-ca...us-review.html

Age of site: 10 years
Number of words: 4,994
Topic: A very popular topic for reviews - bonuses, albeit ‘one off’ from a total casino review
Notes: All text and no images, 22 headings, 5 tables

Also of note, the posts were created using basic WordPress Gutenberg blocks (which I finally got around to learning, practising and using).


“Just When I Thought I Was Out, They Pull Me Back In” - Google keeps us all guessing.

[chaumi]

OK, so quite lengthy. That rules out my wild potential theory then!