Old homepage in google on branded keyword

[Shanaki]

Hello there,

I have a strange problem:

if you search "probike" (romanian google.ro), i get an OLD homepage with https://www.probike.ro , and my new homepage is https://probike.ro, the real problem is that title/meta description are not available (see attachment).

Redirect 301: Ok 
Robots.txt: Ok 
Sitemap: Ok

Help, is annoying

With respect,

Andrei

I33gThc

[GastonRiera]

Hi Andrei,

Found your issue: There is an already blocked in robots.txt parameter added when redirected from www to non-www.
I'm attaching an image so you can follow me better.
I used this web: whregoes.com
To solve this issue, I'd try to figure out why that parameter is being added, and remove it or allow its crawling.

That parameter it's blocked in the 2nd line of your robots.txt:
Disallow: /*?

Another way to check what's going on is via the inspect URL tool in search Console.
1- Log in to the www property
2- Inspect URL, only the home page (https://www.probike.ro)
3- Ask to check the live version
4- (wait a few seconds) Google will tell you what they are seeing
--> I guess here you'll find the message that it's being blocked in robots.txt

Also, checking your declared sitemap, it goes to a 404 page. You'd want to take a look here: https://probike.ro/pub/sitemap.xml

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston

eCTinIP

[effectdigital]

Other stuff (since I was able to reproduce exactly with a Romanian proxy):

https://d.pr/i/sSkF9X.png (screenshot)

So above you can see some links boxed in green, which have properly updated URLs (HTTPS only no WWW prefix) whereas the entries in red contain links which still contain the WWW protocol (incorrect, not updated)

I can see that the GMB (Google My Business) listing is still linking to a very old version of the URL (HTTP WWW, so wrong protocol and prefix) - updating that might also be a positive signal to Google which could help

I notice that the redirect (sometimes) doesn't go to OPs homepage, it goes to a child-variant of the homepage which contains parameters assumedly for tracking purposes (e.g: "https://probike.ro/?SID=nn565sjakv33nk6h2haenvbr7k"). The thing is, it's not (always) going 'straight' to the 'clean' version of OPs homepage (sometimes it does, sometimes not), and Google can sometimes be slightly adverse to indexing and listing parameter-based child URLs (unless they significantly alter content in a truly useful way, which this does not)

Check out this video which shows it working perfectly as it should do, in Firefox:

https://d.pr/v/v3lIiS (video)

Looks fine right? But when I try in Chrome:

https://d.pr/v/IABstn (video)

... just so you know, I have sometimes had the redirect work fine in Chrome and at other times I have seen the failure in Firefox, so it's not browser specific. I think it actually has more to do with session data or cookies, as I can usually reproduce the issue when I clear all browsing data, but every time I try to repeat it after that it's less likely to happen (in series)

If Googlebot is following the 301 to some weird parameter URL instead of the true homepage that could be why Google is taking SO long to update this