Deindexed homepage by Google
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I just noticed that my homepage was de-indexed by google.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
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Hello floretweddings,
Dont panic, what you are seeing is the result of Google trying to understand what your new site is about (the https version is a completely new site for google).
Sadly, you've sent mixed signals to Google. First redicting to HTTPs then undoing that redirect.
At the moment of writing this anwer the page is indexed, check it out using site: operator. Keep into consideration that right now both versions are live, the http and the https. Make the redirection (by plugin, by a hosting rule o by .htaccess file) or use a canonical to point every page to its https version.Take a look on these three articles. They might help you.
The Big List of SEO Tips and Tricks for Using HTTPS on Your Website - Moz Blog
The HTTP to HTTPs Migration Checklist in Google Docs to Share, Copy & Download - AleydaSolis
Google SEO HTTPS Migration Checklist - SERoundtableHope I've helped.
Best luck.
GR. -
Thank you so much for the reply, Gaston. Much appreciated. At this point, I'm more concerned about the rankings than the ssl. I didn't realize (obviously) about all the redirection that was required beyond just the main page, hence how I got myself into this situation. Never straightforward it seems. Thanks again.
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Hi there.
I'm not seeing any messed up code or headers or anything like that. As Gaston said, it might be after-effects of broken plugin or something.
At this point, i'd recommend this: do manual fetch as google request, see if it comes up. If not, disable all the plugins, do new fetch and see if it comes back, re-enable plugins, fetch, see what happens. this would help you troubleshoot.
I recommend doing these steps on development server - basically replicate your website on like a subdomain URL - that way you can do all the plugin disabling etc and do all the fetches without affecting currently ranking site. Also, after replication on dev server and doing fetch right away, you'll know if your home page is just being still cached by google in the state of noindex due to previous mess.
Also, make sure that in sitemaps you have last-modified set to as recent time as possible, otherwise google won't update the page index, since it's technically considered cached, if not modified since last crawl.
Hope this makes sense.
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It does makes sense. Thank you for taking the time to reply, Dmitrii. Much appreciated.
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No problem, let me know how it goes.