Sitemap Indexed Pages, Google Glitch or Problem With Site?

[rrhansen]

Hello,

I have a quick question about our Sitemap Web Pages Indexed status in Google Search Console. Because of the drastic drop I can't tell if this is a glitch or a serious issue.

When you look at the attached image you can see that under Sitemaps Web Pages Indexed has dropped suddenly on 3/12/17 from 6029 to 540.

Our Index status shows 7K+ indexed.

Other than product updates/additions and homepage layout updates there have been no significant changes to this website.  If it helps we are operating on the Volusion platform.

Thanks for your help!

-Ryan

rou1zMs

[OlegKorneitchouk]

If the website is still indexed in google (search site:domain.com to see how many pages are indexed), then you might have a canonical URL/sitemap mismatch. e.g. your sitemap has urls site.com/Page-A/ but the canonical url is site.com/page-a/.. Google would still index your site but the # of urls indexed from the sitemap would drop. Another example is your sitemap urls are http but the website is actually https.

Thats the only thing that I can think of (aside from GSC bug) that would cause a drop.

[rrhansen]

Hey Oleg,

Thanks for responding.

When I checked Google everything is still there, or at least we have 8K+ urls still in googles index. Traffic from organic is still good but impressions have declined a bit, nothing major.

I did call Volusion (our cart host) to ask when they switched from http to https links in the sitemap.asp file and they, A: couldn't give me that information, or B: Didn't quite understand my question. However they did say that they are aware of some platform technical issues regarding canonical tags and an http to https redirect issue which they are working on but have no date of completion, nor would they tell me when these issues came about. They said these errors have nothing to do with what I'm seeing in GSC but I have a hunch it does.

What I'm going to do is submit a second sitemap in XML which has all http links to see if that one shows any differently in GSC.

[rrhansen]

Just wanted to pass on an update.

The XML sitemap file with all HTTP urls is showing that 95% of the urls are indexed under Sitemaps Web Pages Indexed.

Not sure if we should have two identical Sitemaps submitted with the only difference being https vs http. Any reason for me not to have both submitted.

[rrhansen]

One last update

Both sitemaps now only show 1320 indexed pages each or 2640 total. So the non secure urls in the xml sitemap did fall off a few days after submitting them.

The site is still fully indexed in google but overall impression share has fallen according to GSC. GA shows slight increases in overall organic traffic.