No descripton on Google/Yahoo/Bing, updated robots.txt - what is the turnaround time or next step for visible results?

[adamhdrb]

Hello,

New to the MOZ community and thrilled to be learning alongside all of you! One of our clients' sites is currently showing a 'blocked' meta description due to an old robots.txt file (eg: A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt)

We have updated the site's robots.txt to allow all bots. The meta tag has also been updated in WordPress (via the SEO Yoast plugin)

See image here of Google listing and site URL: http://imgur.com/46wajJw

I have also ensured that the most recent robots.txt has been submitted via Google Webmaster Tools.

When can we expect these results to update? Is there a step I may have overlooked?

Thank you,
Adam

46wajJw

[Ray-pp]

What was the exact search term you used to bring up those SERPs?

When i search 'atlastpartners' and 'atlastpartners.com' it brings up your site with a meta description.

[adamhdrb]

Hello Ray,

Specifically, the firm name, which is spelled a-l-t-a-s p-a-r-t-n-e-r-s (it is easy to confuse with "Atlas Partners" which is another company altogether

[Ray-pp]

Ha, that's exactly what I did.

I'm not showing any restrictions in your robots.txt file and the meta tag is assigned appropriately.

Have you tried to fetch the site with the Webmaster Tools 'fetch as googlebot' tool? If there is an issue, it should be apparent there. Doing this may also help get your page re-crawled more quickly and the index updated.

If everything is as it should be and you're only waiting on a re-index, that usually takes no longer than two weeks (for very infrequently indexed websites). Fetching with the Google bot may speed things up and getting an external link on a higher trafficked page could help as well.

Have you tried resubmitting a sitemap through GWT as well? That could be another trick to getting the page re-crawled more quickly.

[adamhdrb]

Hi Ray,

With fetch as Googlebot, I see a redirection for the non-www, and a correct fetch for the www.Using SEO Yoast, it would seem the sitemap link leads to a 404?

[Ray-pp]

Yoast sets up a pretty efficient sitemap. Make sure the sitemap URL settings are correct, load it up in the browser to confirm, and submit your sitemap through GWT - that will help get a new crawl of the site and hopefully an update to their index so your meta descriptions begins to show in the SERPs.

[adamhdrb]

Sounds great Ray, how would I go about checking these URLs for the Yoast siteap?

[Ray-pp]

In WordPress, go to the Yoast plugin and locate the sitemap URL / settings. Plug the sitemap URL into your browser and make sure that it renders properly.

Once you have that exact URL, drop it into Google Webmaster Tools and let it process. Google will let you know if they found any errors that need correcting. Once submitted, you just need to wait for Google to update its index and reflect your site's meta description.

Yoast has a great blog that goes in depth about its sitemap features: https://yoast.com/xml-sitemap-in-the-wordpress-seo-plugin/

[adamhdrb]

Thanks! It would seem that the Sitemap URL http://www.altaspartners.com/sitemap_index.xml brings up a 404 page, so I'm a bit confused with that step - but otherwise it appears to be very clear!

[Ray-pp]

The 404 error could be around a common error experienced with Yoast sitemaps: http://kb.yoast.com/article/77-my-sitemap-index-is-giving-a-404-error-what-should-i-do

1st step is to try and reset the permalink structure, it could resolve the 404 error you're seeing. You definitely want to resolve your sitemap 404 error to submit a crawlable sitemap to Google.

[adamhdrb]

I just got this figured out, let's try dropping this into Google!

[evolvingSEO]

Hi There

It seems like there are some other issues tangled up in this.

1. First off it looks like some non-www URLs indexed in Google are 301 redirecting to www but then 404'ing. It's good they redirect to www, but they should end up on active pages.
2. The NON-www homepage is the one showing the robots.txt message. This should hopefully resolve in a week or two when Google re-crawled the NON-www URL, sees the 301 - the actual solution is getting the non-www URL out of the index, and having them rank the www homepage instead. The www homepage description shows up just fine.
3. You may want to register the non-www version of the domain in webmaster tools, and make sure to clean up any errors that pop up there as well.

[adamhdrb]

Great, the good news is following submission of a sitemap via Webmaster Tools, things appear to be remedied on Google! It does seem, however, that the issue still persists on Bing/Yahoo.

Some of the 404's are links from an old site that weren't carried over following my redesign; so that will be handled shortly as well.

I've submitted the sitemap via Bing Webmaster Tools, as such I presume it's a similar matter of simply 'waiting on Bing'?

Many thanks for your valuable insight!