I'm noticing that URL that were once indexed by Google are suddenly getting dropped without any error messages in Webmasters Tools, has anyone seen issues like this before?

[nystromandy]

I'm noticing that URLs that were once indexed by Google are suddenly getting dropped without any error messages in Webmasters Tools, has anyone seen issues like this before?

Here's an example:
http://www.thefader.com/2017/01/11/the-carter-documentary-lil-wayne-black-lives-matter

[Ria_]

I'm seeing that URL as being indexed in Google. Do you have any other examples?

[nystromandy]

Hi Ria,

How are you determining that this URL has been indexed? When I search our page title, keywords that should return this result, or even the direct URL- this page doesn't show in any of the search results.

Here's another example that doesn't seem to be indexed:
http://www.thefader.com/2017/01/09/lil-wayne-best-rapper-alive-rap-millennial-grows-up-essay

Am I missing something obvious?

[Ria_]

If you do a site search for the URL (just search in Google: "_site:http://www.thefader.com/2017/01/09/lil-wayne-best-rapper-alive-rap-millennial-grows-up-essay_" - without quotation marks), you can see if it's indexed in Google.

The first URL you gave was indexed for me. But the second one doesn't appear to be.

[nystromandy]

Neither one is showing as indexed for me, actually this messageboard thread is what I'm getting in my SERP.

I am noticing this randomly with a lot of our URLs, with no error messages in Webmasters Tools, any suggestions on how to fix this?

[Ria_]

With the site search, are you including "site:" in the search query before the URL, like in my example? You shouldn't be getting this thread in a site search if you're doing it right.

If the pages are indexed, then you just need to get them ranking in a better position. In which case, you should form an SEO strategy.

For sites that are no longer indexed, try fetching and rendering the URL in Google's Search Console to see if there's any issue. You can also request Google submit the URL to index through this tool.

If you haven't already, it would also be beneficial for you to submit your sitemap through Google's Search Console to improve Google's crawling of your site. It might just be that Google is having a hard time crawling your site, and that's why you're dropping links.

[nystromandy]

I tried your exact search and it's still not coming up for me.

I also used the GWT fetching and rendering tool on some other links that were once indexed and then removed- and what I noticed is that they would get reindexed for short time, and then will get removed from the index again.

We are submitting a sitemap through GWT and no errors are getting returned.

We must be having an issue with Google crawling our site, but I haven't been able to find anyone who has had a similar experience- do you know of any other things I can try to fix this issue. The main problem is that it's intermittent and there is no consistency as to why some of our links are indexed and some aren't.