Homepage gone from Google Results

  • Resolved digi57

    (@digi57)


    7 years, 9 months ago

    I developed a website where the post post-type and a custom post-type don’t have to be indexed and I don’t want the single post pages or archives to be viewed. It’s a single page website with front-page.php being the home page file and the posts are used for managing content and a schedule only.

    I replaced an established website that was ranked 1st when the site owner’s name was googled. Now it is gone from all search results. Here’s the url: https://www.comedianjoelist.com/

    I think I know why: I had a sitemap which in retrospect I don’t think I needed. There was no need to output a roadmap to all the posts I don’t want anyone to see! But while the sitemap was being outputted, I didn’t have a home page with the static front-page setting with the blank home page selected. Therefore https://www.comedianjoelist.com wasn’t in the sitemap and I think google just no longer thinks it exists. When I go to the url site:comedianjoelist.com I see all the posts, pages and old posts that existed on the previous site but no home page.

    So my question is… how do I undo what I broke? Should I output a sitemap that now includes the home page url or turn off the sitemap and wait for Google to crawl again?

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Plugin Author Sybre Waaijer

    (@cybr)

    Hi @digi57,

    Unfortunately, you can’t undo what’s broken in SERP. But you can progress towards fixing it ??

    I see the following in Google, which indicates that there ever was pagination:

    SERP

    The issue might be leaning towards bad backlinks, or did you recently set up or overhauled this website?

    Nevertheless, it’s a good thing that the page has a canonical URL towards the home page (a fix brought with TSF 2.7.0). Because there’s no page 2 ??
    See trac ticket 37505 for more information.

    Alas, I digress…

    You should follow these two steps:

    1. Remove bad links from the sitemap

    I advise against turning off the sitemap. The main reason being that if you’d ever were to add more pages, the process of ranking them will be sped up whilst maintaining one.

    In the sitemap, I see a multitude of links that redirect to the homepage. This is both redundant and low-quality. Those pages do exist, otherwise they wouldn’t be in the sitemap.
    You can easily set them to “concept”, or mark them for “noindex”.

    Only when that’s done, proceed to step two.

    2. Request re-crawling, or do nothing

    Either-or:
    – Either do nothing and wait for it to automatically be resolved in ~1 month.

    – Or if you haven’t signed up for Google Webmasters yet, please do so.
    When connected, you’ll see if there are security issues, among other things.

    What’s most importantly, is to go to Crawl -> Fetch As Google, and plainly hit the “Fetch and Render” button. When done, you should see a button “Request Indexing”, and hit that.

    Within a few days this issue should then be resolved.

    Best of luck! If you require any more assistance, feel free to ask! Cheers ??

    Thread Starter digi57

    (@digi57)

    Thanks for the quick reply!

    This is what I did:

    1. I reset all the SEO Framework settings.
    2. I created a page called “Home” with nothing on it and set the Static Front Page to that empty page (this created the home url in the sitemap)
    3. I did not add the sitemap to Search Console
    4. I Applied NOINDEX to all archives and search pages

    One day later the home page was back to the top of search results when searching his first and last name! YES!!!

    I believe the route of my problem was NOT having the Reading setting set to a static front page, even though it’s blank as my front-page.php has all the code.

    Yes I overhauled the site resently so any pages that are not the home page and any posts that aren’t show dates or my CPT are from the old site and no longer exist. No make sure everything leads to the home page, I have a 404-to-301 redirect.

    And the show dates that are indexed I have redirecting because there is no single.php. I don’t want anyone to see those single post pages.

    To prevent this in the future, I installed a plugin that applies NOINDEX to all uncategorized posts (which is all of them).

    How to I remove them from the sitemap?

    Plugin Author Sybre Waaijer

    (@cybr)

    Hi @digi57,

    You can simply remove the items from the sitemap as described earlier:
    Either set the redundant posts/pages to “noindex” within the Post/Page SEO metabox, or change the status to “concept” (above the “update” button).

    The sitemap cache should automatically be flushed upon updating any post.

    Cheers ??

    Plugin Author Sybre Waaijer

    (@cybr)

    Hi @digi57,

    I see that the homepage is back as it should be on Google ?? Awesome!

    If you still have questions, feel free to ask. Cheers!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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