Sudden drop in indexed pages

  • Resolved highlandmoss

    (@highlandmoss)


    8 months ago

    Hi,

    I had some website issues in the last week and during this time I have noticed our site index dropped a few hundred pages. I have managed to get a few back but unfortunately our product categories are one of the main ones now excluded which isn’t great.

    We have seen a big drop in sales since this happened so it does appear to be having a serious effect.

    The report issue is ‘page with redirect’

    Example url is: https://highlandmoss.com/product-category/house-plants/

    I have 130 pages with this issue. I am assuming this was caused by a permalinks issue. I tried the usual [wp-admin > permalinks > change nothing and hit save] method as part of debugging to ensure they were fine. Doesn’t usually cause a problem but this time it overruled my Permalinks Pro plugin and messed them up. I have since regenerated the permalinks but now have been stuck with this indexing issue for a good few days now.

    Looking through the list, the other pages are either deliberate (mostly based on your advice a few months ago) or pages I don’t need indexed anyway, so this is the only issue I really would like some help with.

    Is there anything I can do with SEO Framework to get this right?

    I can provide any details like reports, shared access to search console etc, but I will await your response before putting too much info out there publicly.

    Thank you!

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

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Author Sybre Waaijer

    (@cybr)

    Hi again!

    It appears you have removed the product category-base of the products, which will cause the products to redirect to the URL without a category-base. This is a feature TSF doesn’t provide, but it must’ve come from another plugin or by adding dots to the permalink settings (a bad practice).

    When accessing the /product-category/-based URLs, we’ll face a 301 redirect to the URL without the base. This is good, and it shouldn’t have a big impact on the ranking of the product categories.

    Since all old URLs are no longer indexable, there are naturally more unindexed pages. However, this shouldn’t have changed the number of indexed pages.

    If you wish me to examine the situation more closely, please send screenshots of the Google Search Console report. You may forward those confidentially via https://tsf.fyi/contact. Note that most of Google Search Console’s interface consists of buttons that reveal more information when clicked on — I found that many people don’t notice this feature of their site.

    Thread Starter highlandmoss

    (@highlandmoss)

    Hi, I made some changes and the numbers seem to have levelled out. Thank you so much for your reply.

    Plugin Author Sybre Waaijer

    (@cybr)

    That’s good to hear! Let me know if there’s anything else I can help you with.

    Have a lovely day ??

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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