Homepage is deindexed in Google

[Shinosky]

Happened sometime on the 12th or 13th of Feb (is there a way to tell exactly besides referring to GA?). 
I've been on the Google Webmasters Tools forums trying to nail this down - https://productforums.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!msg/webmasters/OgpmNCc3IFA/mmtgUilyXUUJ

I can only think that Google is viewing this as duplicate content from an internal page for example: http://mudlifeled.com/shop

Very frustrating because we were moving up on the first page for some good brand key words and traffic was climbing.

Now I've got my hands up and am at a loss to what I can do.

[Keszi]

Hi Michael,

I am not quite sure, but I have a gut feeling telling me it has something to do with your canonical tags. When did you implement those? (cannot run a crawl now, but I will surely check it out in the evening).

Gr., Keszi

[GPainter]

Your main site is index when I'm looking, you've blocked some of your pages with a noindex and nofollow tag in your meta robots which wont be helping you

e.g. https://www.mudlifeled.com/product-category/aurora-d-series/

try to remove the meta robots tag, (this overrides the robots.txt)

Good news your main page is indexed by Google, also if you do have to noindex a page at least it follow.

EDIT I also assume you don't have any sort of manual penalty and that you have checked

[Shinosky]

This post is deleted!

[Shinosky]

Hi Keszi,

Thanks for the reply.

Being a WordPress site - I have not touched the format of the canonical tags since I took over managing the website in April of 2014.

Michael Shinosky

[Shinosky]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the reply.

All HTTPS is blocked by design to keep from any possible duplicates with HTTP.

Michael Shinosky

[GPainter]

a canonical link would work better and mean you're not shooting your self in the foot so much see more here -

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en

how does fetch as Google work out for you?  Did you also review what you were doing prior to this happening to see if a change you made has triggered this?

edit

One quick thought did you set up https redirects on the main homepage correctly and that's whats causing you an issue?

[Shinosky]

From what I can tell - I have no manual penalty.

Is there a way to check this outside Webmasters Tools?

I'm not seeing the homepage at all in the index. I've checked on outside computers with myself not being logged into google here in Florida.
My analytic data is confirming that there is a definite drop of hits to the homepage.

[GPainter]

You can check here - https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools

your site >Search Traffic > Manual actions

[Shinosky]

No manual webspam actions found.

[GPainter]

This post is deleted!

[Shinosky]

Fetch is good. No errors with fetch or render.

The only update I made was from WooCommerce 2.2 to 2.3. This has not effected the output or markup of anything of importance.

Are you located in the USA?

[GPainter]

I am located in the UK, however I am also finding it odd.

Couple of things I'd look into is to claim both http & https in webmaster tools, rather than block the robots, change it for a canonical tag which tells Google you're preferred domain and also can help with your link juice flow.

Have to admit I'm in a bit of a pickle though..

[Shinosky]

I ask because it seems that viewers can see the homepage outside the USA.

One of the first things I did when I took over the site in April of 2014  was claim both in webmasters tools.

I have made the canonical change as suggested. Should I keep the meta robots tag as well?

[GPainter]

No the canonical makes the robots surplus, it tells Google its a duplicate of where ever you pointed the tag to, this also means any links also sort of get redirected too (in a sense)

[GPainter]

Just an update: seems to be working now for me (I was unable to see homepage before)

[Shinosky]

I'm not seeing the homepage yet :(. Though using the canonical method did jiggle some lower level pages back into the index. Yikes - this is weird. Any other suggestions?

[GPainter]

I'm a little stumped, as it should be working (and is for me) you could try giving it a bit more time with that canonical to take affect. I've tried looking via a proxy and i can't see it in American search compared to the UK search.

did you try looking through here - http://moz.com/ugc/8-reasons-why-your-site-might-not-get-indexed 

[Shinosky]

Yeah me too

It seems others can see the home page with site:www.mudlifeled.com outside the USA. But not inside of the USA.

Everything is good from the the suggested link.

I'm banging my head against my desk...lol

[Shinosky]

Now the index is showing:

<cite class="_Rm">www.mudlifeled.com/?taxonomy=product_type&term=simple</cite>

as the first result of a site: lookup

ugh