301 migration - Indexed Pages rising on old site

[ggpaul562]

Hello,

We did a 301 redirect from site a to site b back in March.

I would check on a daily basis on the index count using query "site:sitename"

The past couple of days, the old domain (that was 301 redirected) indexed pages has been rising which is really concerning. We did a 301 redirect back in march 2016, and the indexed count went from 400k pages down to 78k.

However, the past 3 days it went from 78k to 89,500. And I'm worried that the number is going to continue to rise.

My question -

What would you do to investigate / how to investigate this issue? Would it be screaming frog and look at redirects? Or is this a unique scenario that I'd have to do other steps/procedures?

[Deacyde]

Hello,

I would double check to make sure that all versions of that older domain were redirected, the www and non www, http and https, make sure they all are redirected to the same one.

Make sure that nothing has been done with the redirects in any form, I don't know if anyone else has access to these redirects, but it's very easy for someone to of done something.

Also make sure that these are actually being indexed and Google isn't just having some weird rankbrain fart with the pages it's cached, as I too did a redirect / redesign in march abouts and have been awaiting 700 pages to go bye bye from indexing, however we're down to 659 now, sometimes this number goes up sometimes it goes down a few, but nothing wild.

So when you do a site.domain.com search, Google might show you 100+ pages, but click towards the end of them and see if Google shows you the results or if the page count actually decreases and nothing is shown, this would mean that the pages are just cached and on the road to being forgotten.

Google will keep caches for a bit, in case of an opps moment or even hack attack recovery.

But from 78k to 89k seems like a big jump, but if you had 400k pages to start with, and when you do a site:domain.com and if the last group of pages return nothing, there is a good chance this is just Google's url caching dreaming of electric sheep...

[solvid]

Hi,

Instead of using "site:domain.com" search to check indexation, I would use Search Console for more accurate information.

Did you verify your new site and submitted the change of address in Search Console?

Thanks,

[BlueprintMarketing]

See https://moz.com/community/q/in-google-search-console-https-or-non-https

• The HTTP:// will be added on to any non-HTTPS URL Automatically.

  I always type it in HTTP://  because of habit, however, it does not make a difference because Google ads it the only time this makes a difference is when adding HTTPS://

  So it makes no difference whatsoever as long as you have

  the four versions of your encrypted site you can choose between

  Google is indexing more than one of the four below.

• http://

• https://

• http://www.

• https://www.

• just be certain that all four are there do not worry about the non-encrypted http://

https://moz.com/ugc/accidental-seo-tests-when-on-page-optimization-ceases-to-matter

https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/news/https-when-to-act/

https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/https-dilemma-security-seo/

I hope that answers your question.

All the best,

Thomas