The Other Side of Google
The Other Side of Google
Recently, I posted on how fast GSC (Google Search Console) was now indexing my latest posts.
Within a couple of minutes.
One member responded to say that he'd found that a lot of his older posts had been de-indexed.
I wondered if that could have happened to me as well.
Today I found out.
I've created a topic cluster of nine blog posts on affiliate marketing for seniors in my Super Affiliate Challenge website, all of them indexed by GSC within minutes of publishing them.
I did a search for that topic on Bing to see if they'd appear there.
Didn't find any of them, but did find a heap of older blog posts on the same topic.
So decided to edit them to add internal links to the nine new posts. Might as well pass some of that link juice on, right?
After publishing the edits, I resubmitted them to Bing, but also to GSC.
That's when I discovered that most of them were not indexed on Google.
Though they would have been when they were originally published.
So... they've been de-indexed.
But not all of them. Here's the (even more) crazy part.
I had three blog posts, addressing a particular aspect of affiliate marketing for seniors.
They had the same title, with Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 appended respectively.
Part 2 was still indexed, but Parts 1 and 3 were not.
I've now resubmitted all of the de-indexed posts to GSC and the are being indexed at GSC's new, fast rate, so we'll see what happens.
What's going on with Google?
I doubt that even Google knows.
Recent Comments
87
Yeah, as I said before, my Africa site has deindexed lots of posts, even long form content of my own travels. And it is a roller coaster of a bit traffic/flatlined/a bit traffic..etc
I think you should probably wait, for them to ask gsc to all the time to index them.
Not worth the effort at the moment, and asking gsc a lot might even have a negative effect right now. ( not science, just my gut here)
i got some reindexed as well, but then a week later disappeared again during the update, I kind of gave up checking all posts each week :-(
I've encountered the same issue; Several of my February 2024 blogs were initially indexed on the first page but were later deindexed. I plan to revise the content and request reindexing to rectify this. Thanks.
Presumably you mean ranked on the first page. Indexed and ranked are two separate things (though a post or page must be indexed before it can be ranked).
I found at times some posts according to Google are crawled but not indexed.
I had according to them 13 posts on one site crawled but not indexed one was a category so not worried about that one but the other 12 are not indexed.
So I go to get them re-indexed as they state they can be indexed.
Then when I get to re-index the posts, I get the message from Google, they are already indexed on Google.
So why tell me they are not indexed yet they are? This is not the first time they are stuffed up guess they continue to do so to this day.
In fact, when I checked the posts two of them were on page 2 on Google yet they are not indexed on the first message by them LOL
They still can't get themselves right
Google Search (googlebot) was Google's first piece of software and solely responsible for catapulting them into success. The original programmers will be long gone and it's my belief that no one in Google any longer understands exactly how it works. So when they make changes, they always have unintended consequences.
True no original programmers are left the skills and experience are not the same nor as good
They still have no real clue what they are doing for the most part
Crawled but not indexed means that they are on that list... however, I have found that the list can be out of date/out of sync. If you take the url and ask Google to examine it, it may respond that it "is available to Google" or something like that.
I think what happens is that it indexes it but doesn't update the lists as often
Thanks Michael I understand what crawled but not indexed means.
The fact is as I stated to Phl that two examples I gave are already ranked and on page 2 on Google itself. The others are also ranked within Google search engines and even better with Bing and Yahoo but with Google not as high.
When you go to re-index a post or a page it should then tell you if it is available to be indexed with Google.
So when you request it to be re-indexed instead of it saying it is in the queue it tells you it is already on Google and below that shows you it is indexed.
You can't have a post or a page ranked on Google search engines unless it has been indexed first.
This is what I stated they still don't have a clue for the greater part on what they are doing and this is not the first time they have done this.
You can't state a page or a post in crawled and not Indexed and then when you ask for re-indexing they say it is already indexed.
They contradict each other.
That is why Google and their engineers, programmers or whoever is responsible still don't understand their own algorithms as both Phil and I stated they don't know the way the original programmers set Google algorithms properly.
This is why Google sucks for the most part as they themselves have no clue or don't understand their own algorithms themselves yet they can tell others how to do things right.
True unfortunately this is Google itself and should do better by now compared to smaller companies that have IT support etc.
Smaller, well-run companies are always more agile, especially when their software team comprises just one or two people.
I think you missed what I was saying. The two lists are out of sync. Check the date on the "crawled but not indexed" list and it is usually 3-5 days behind. Google will index your page quickly and leave it on this list for awhile until it updates the list.
See more comments
Sorry to hear that some of your older posts were also de-indexed Phil, but... happy to hear that it isn't just me!!!
I was up to about 66 de-indexed posts at one time... so I made a few tweaks, added some more internal links and requested indexing again.. (did you know you can only request indexing for 10 posts in a 24 hour period)?
So I got that figure from 66 back down to around 5, but when checked again yesterday, it's in the mid 20's again!!
Google certainly doesn't have her head screwed on properly at the moment, or.... is she just playing with us??
I think Google is suffering from the unintended consequences of making changes to a software app their engineers no longer fully understand.
It could be that as well Phil!
I've just finished requesting indexing for the first batch of posts that were de-indexed again....
I'll do another nine tomorrow!
I hope that the barbie went well my friend and enjoy a great start to the new week! :-)
The barbie was most enjoyable thanks. Very slightly hung over this morning.
Great to hear Phil and we all have morning's like that my friend (well I do anyway)!!