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So tech team found that redirecting via your dns vs your CDN is different - whilst SEO tools found that changes in domain name provider where ok - due to https its seen be google as man if the middle security hack!

So you would suggest holding off using any kind of structured data to inform Google that a (metered) paywall is in place?  If the option to exempt Googlebot is not available, should we proceed with structured data? I think my main thing is - I know structured data is imperative for hard paywalls, but I am not sure if it will be detrimental or harmful to add the paywall structured data when there is a METERED paywall in place. I want all the content o be indexed and ranked, and am not sure if metering is considered cloaking. Thank you!

Hey guys, I hate to 'bounce' but just wanted to add that all the pages that have this suffix of '- Maine Coons' don't have the same problem in any other search engine, it's just Google - which is the one that counts of course! I've tried editing the articles in question but most don't even reference 'Maine Coons' anywhere in the article so I really have no idea why Google is adding this. Any pointers appreciated! Also, the suffix can appear on the mobile SERP results but not on the desktop SERP results. Also, another thing that Google seems to do strange with our site - if you type in our domain (petskb) it doesn't come up anywhere in the SERP.  If you type our previous domains in, it's right at the top.

This is the best response. Others have cited using robots.txt, that's a bad idea IMO. Robots.txt will stop Google from crawling pages, Meta no-index directs Google not to index a page. If Google can't crawl a page (due to robots.txt) then they won't be able to 'find' the no-index directive. As Jordan says, no-index should come first. When all pages are de-indexed, then OP can begin to think about robots.txt as suggested by Rajesh. OP could also combine Meta no-index with status code 410 (gone) to make it a stronger signal - though this is inadvisable with OP's situation (where the site will remain live for users, but be gone from Google). In the end, Jordan's reply is the best one which has been left here A final note might be that, instead of editing the HTML of all OPs pages, OP could fire no-index though x-robots via the HTTP header (which is often more scaleable)

Hey mate, you asked a very good question I was also looking same as but now I would like to let here what I did in my life; AmazeInvent

Thank you Gaston. I get what you saying. It was helpful.

Thanks for the responses guys! I did specify numerous statuses because not all of them actually lead to broken links. For example, a lot of the links appearing as 'server not found' actually work. This link for example works, but is rendering the 'server not found' status by Broken Link Checker. (Actually, ever link from this source comes up with a 'server not found' status, but they all work.) https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/05/16/kentucky-takes-dea-to-court-over-illegal-hemp-seed-seizure Any insight?

Ideally these pages would be set to nofollow/noindex, so the 302 redirect is merely a way to avoid a user ending up with a 404 error page. I see no problem with this and can's imagine how it would negatively affect SEO in any way.

While a penalty is possible, if you do not see any "Manual Actions" within your Google Search Console account, this is likely a ranking change due to a recent algorithm update. I would check into Google Search Console & Google Analytics to see if search impressions and organic traffic have actually dropped any, and then look into your links to see if you have lost any.

As long as the URL of the product itself doesn't change (different category references in the URL string) then it's not going to cause any serious harm

Not a problem

Redirect chains occur when there is a series of two or more redirects between the initial URL and destination URL. You can check for redirect chains on up to 100 URLs using this HTTP status code checker. This will then show you where the redirect chains are and you will then be able to fix them.

True Google said this and a lot of tests out there proof that what Google says is not true for 100% but like I said, not a showstopper.

The purpose of the <base> tag is to set a base domain for linking to elements within it. Basically, what the base tag does is if you set your <base href="moz.com"> and you link within the document to "/community/q", then the link will take the user to "moz.com/community/q". There is no effect in SEO besides the fact that you will be creating backlinks to the base site for each element that is referred directly, without a URL. Daniel Rika - Dalerio Consulting https://dalerioconsulting.com/ info@dalerioconsulting.com

Thank you for your responses to 1-3. That gives me a lot of context for what we need to do to move forward. Regarding 4, which is still a the outstanding question. Ghost is a blog platform that we could install on the site in either a subfolder or a subdomain like blog.x.com or x.com/blog.

Agreed, but had to do my due diligence to ask Thanks for the feedback!

Algorithm updates/changes &/or re-indexing. Tough to say  for sure but I have witness this type of rapid fluctuation before.

Hey I am also facing this issue for my news website and I am working on it from last 2 months but still, none of my backlinks are indexed properly you can check my website blockcrux in Moz it has zero domains