Site deindexed after HTTPS migration + possible penalty due to spammy links

[CTI_Digital]

Hi all, we've recently migrated a site from http to https and saw the majority of pages drop out of the index.

https://www.relate.org.uk/

One of the most extreme deindexation problems I've ever seen, but there doesn't appear to be anything obvious on-page which is causing the issue. (Unless I've missed something - please tell me if I have!)

I had initially discounted any off-page issues due to the lack of a manual action in SC, however after looking into their link profile I spotted 100 spammy porn .xyz sites all linking (see example image).

Didn't appear to be any historic disavow files uploaded in the non https SC accounts.

Any on-page suggestions, or just play the waiting game with the new disavow file?

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[Yoav-Blustein]

Hi!

what information do you seen in search console?
Assuming that you have already tested all of your old URL's and the redirection paths points correctly to the new URLs, does Google Search console indicates any problems with the number of URLs submitted to it?
canoncals? are they in use? pointing to the correct version of the site?

[sergeystefoglo]

Hi there,

There could be a lot of reasons why certain pages of your website are dropping out of your index. Could you answer the following questions to help us narrow down the possible cause?

• How long ago did you switch to https?
• Have you submitted both non-www and www versions of the https site to Google Search Console (GSC)?
• Have you kept the http versions of your website in GSC?
• From the looks of it, your sitemap has been updated to reflect the https pages. Have you submitted the updated sitemap to GSC?
• Are there any sitemap errors appearing in GSC? Any other errors?
• Could you attach a screenshot of the indexation rate on both https and http versions of the site from GSC?
• Could you confirm that all redirects were done 1-to-1 and properly redirected? (301s and not 302s)

Some things that we could rule out:

• It looks like the site isn't using noindex tags in a way that would cause deindexing
• It looks like the robots.txt file isn't disallowing any important paths that would cause deindexation
• The http version of the www and non-www pages redirects to the www, https version of the site which is good
• Canonicals seem to be updated and pointing to the https version of the site

Sorry for all of the questions, I just want to make sure and rule out possible causes to focus in on what the issue could be.

Thanks, Serge

[CTI_Digital]

Hi Serge,

Thanks for your input. I've answered your questions below.

• How long ago did you switch to https? - 21st June
• Have you submitted both non-www and www versions of the https site to Google Search Console (GSC)? - Yes
• Have you kept the http versions of your website in GSC? - Yes
• From the looks of it, your sitemap has been updated to reflect the https pages. Have you submitted the updated sitemap to GSC? - Yes - Submitted pages are not matching Indexed pages
• Are there any sitemap errors appearing in GSC? Any other errors? No Sitemap Errors. some 404ing pages.
• Could you attach a screenshot of the indexation rate on both https and http versions of the site from GSC?
• Could you confirm that all redirects were done 1-to-1 and properly redirected? (301s and not 302s) - Confirmed - all tools are reporting 200 status after hitting the 301.

We are still waiting to see some results from submitting the disavow file. So far, no positive movement.

Thanks for your help!

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[sergeystefoglo]

Thanks for answering all of my questions!

It's interesting that when I do a simple site:search in Google none of the main pages of your website are appearing. Most of the search results are either archives or comments. Typically, I've seen this kind of thing happen when something goes wrong in the redirects or a site is penalized.

It looks like the big dip in indexation didn't occur until about August. I would think that if you pulled the trigger in June, pages would start dropping out of the index much sooner.

In this case, your theory about a possible penalization might be right. I'd be interested to see what happens once Google considers the disavow file (unfortunately, that will take some time).

Does anyone else have any input or possible reasons why pages on this site have dropped out of the index so quickly?