Last Google Update : why I needed a break!
Hello WA friends!
It's been a while since I have been on my WA account and, that's because I needed a break. Like many, I was hit so hard by the last Google update. My traffic dropped and though that was difficult, I stayed resilient and told myself that the storm would pass and that I wasn't the only one going through it. I spent a lot of time modifying my posts, fixing site speed, and fixing errors in Google Search. I then tried to write posts according to Google's recommendations.
But then, I hit the bottom and got so discouraged when my last post wasn't being indexed at all. I spent so much time trying to understand why??? After that, I finally stopped trying to get it indexed and moved on to writing another post but it took me months to finally publish it. I thought to myself: why bother if it isn't going to be indexed?
Plus now that you can directly add product links to IG, and Pinterest, I started to re-focus on growing my social accounts. My Pinterest account is growing fast again (almost 800K views!!) and I believe that thanks to that my website traffic is going back up!
I decided I would take care of my website after my holiday. Back from vacation, I was afraid to go on Google search to check if my last post was indexed and to my big surprise, it was!! That meant that fixing the errors worked! I had spent so much time and energy but I knew back then that it wasn't wasted because I was learning a lot along this storm. That positive mindset kept me going.
Bottom line: don't give up, and keep on learning!
Now a new Google update is coming but now I am ready mentally!
Hope this post helps you if you are struggling! :)
Recent Comments
12
Hi Anne-Caroline
Great persistence!
Now here is a little on indexing. I apologise if you know this already... many don't.
When the first google Bot finds a page or post, it saves it to it's own database. That is done to avoid overloading servers. Then the saved page is added to a queue for an index checking bot to check it out, when the URL gets to the front of the queue. At this point the URL is added to the GSC "Crawled currently not indexed" list for feedback to the writer.
If people just leave it in the list, eventually the indexing bot will get around to finding it in the saved version queue and will either index it or flag a problem with the page. The length of time it takes for this is apparently anything between a day and a month. Ranking come later.
If the URL gets indexed, the GSC list is updated to show that the URL is now indexed and after a few days (I don't know how long) the URL is removed from the "Crawled currently not indexed" list.
You might have noticed when checking out some URLs in the list that they show as already indexed.
Now, the thing is, that if someone clicks the REQUEST INDEXING button in GSC the effect is to remove the URL from wherever it is in the queue, and moves it to the back of the queue!
So if the same URL has the request indexing button clicked every day then the URL never gets to the front of the queue.
;-)
Richard
Glad to hear things are working for you!👍👍
I hope your rankings in the Google SERPs are looking good, too! 😎
Frank 🎸
Hi Anne!
After you post content, you can use your Google Search Console's URL inspection feature to submit your pages and posts for indexing. Since you have other content already been indexed, you should see your new content indexed in less than 24 hours.
I submitted a post yesterday and it was indexed within hours.
I hope that helps!
See more comments
Great to hear from you again Anne!
We all feel a little down when things aren't going as planned (well I do anyway) and throwing in the towel is a serious possibility!!
Just stick with it my friend... other options for our content to be found are out there!!
Keep on keeping on no matter what!! :-)