Why would the number of pages indexed by Google decrease?
Why would the number of pages indexed by Google decrease?
I don't know if everyone pays close attention to the page indexing report in Google Search Console (GSC), but those who are interested in Google optimization might often check this report. It provides information about which web pages have been indexed, which ones haven't, and the reasons for not being indexed. Today, let's discuss how to diagnose and resolve indexing issues.
Having your website's pages indexed by the Google search engine is a crucial step. If your pages are not indexed, ranking becomes irrelevant. There are several ways to check the indexing status of web pages:
Enter "site:domain" in Google search, for example: site:www.youtube.com.
Check if the sitemap is successfully submitted in GSC.
Use the page indexing report in GSC to review the indexing status of pages.
The numbers obtained from these methods may vary, and we won't delve into the analysis of these differences. Instead, let's focus on analyzing the situation when the number of Google-indexed pages decreases.
If pages are not indexed, it may indicate that Google doesn't like your pages or finds them difficult to crawl. Therefore, if the indexed page count starts to decline, it may be due to one of the following reasons:
Your website has been penalized by Google.
Google perceives your page content as irrelevant.
Google is unable to crawl your pages.
Here are some points to analyze, diagnose, and resolve the issue of decreasing indexed page count on your website:
Are the pages loading properly?
Has your server experienced frequent or prolonged downtime? Has the domain recently expired and been renewed?
Ensure that all pages have a normal HTTP 200 status. HTTP 200 indicates success, meaning that users can request files from the server, and the server will respond correctly.
You can use free HTTP header status checking tools like Xenu, DeepCrawl, ScreamingFrog, or Botify to confirm if your website is functioning properly. The correct status should be 200. Any occurrence of 3xx (except 301), 4xx, or 5xx status codes is detrimental to page indexing.
Have the page URLs been recently changed?
Sometimes, changes in CMS, backend programming, or server settings can alter the URLs in the main domain, subdomains, or subdirectories.
Search engines may remember the old URLs, and without proper redirection, many pages can become unindexed.
The links from the old site may still exist in certain places, and people may click on them. Therefore, if URLs have been modified, it's advisable to create backups of the old URLs and implement 301 redirects to the corresponding pages.
Have you resolved duplicate content issues?
Resolving duplicate content problems may involve implementing canonical tags, 301 redirects, noindex meta tags, or setting disallow directives in robots.txt. These actions can potentially lead to a decrease in the number of indexed pages.
In this example, a decrease in indexed page count is not necessarily a bad thing. What we need to do is confirm if the decrease is primarily due to the aforementioned issues and not caused by other factors.
Are your pages timing out?
Some servers may have bandwidth limitations due to cost issues, and such servers require upgrading.
Hardware-related issues can sometimes be resolved by upgrading the hardware or addressing memory limitations.
Certain websites may block IP addresses if they access too many pages at a specific rate. This measure is in place to prevent any potential DDOS attacks, but it can also have a negative impact on the website.
Monitoring for this setting is typically done in the second layer of page settings. If the threshold is set too low, regular search
I don't know if everyone pays close attention to the page indexing report in Google Search Console (GSC), but those who are interested in Google optimization might often check this report. It provides information about which web pages have been indexed, which ones haven't, and the reasons for not being indexed. Today, let's discuss how to diagnose and resolve indexing issues.
Having your website's pages indexed by the Google search engine is a crucial step. If your pages are not indexed, ranking becomes irrelevant. There are several ways to check the indexing status of web pages:
Enter "site:domain" in Google search, for example: site:www.youtube.com.
Check if the sitemap is successfully submitted in GSC.
Use the page indexing report in GSC to review the indexing status of pages.
The numbers obtained from these methods may vary, and we won't delve into the analysis of these differences. Instead, let's focus on analyzing the situation when the number of Google-indexed pages decreases.
If pages are not indexed, it may indicate that Google doesn't like your pages or finds them difficult to crawl. Therefore, if the indexed page count starts to decline, it may be due to one of the following reasons:
Your website has been penalized by Google.
Google perceives your page content as irrelevant.
Google is unable to crawl your pages.
Here are some points to analyze, diagnose, and resolve the issue of decreasing indexed page count on your website:
Are the pages loading properly?
Has your server experienced frequent or prolonged downtime? Has the domain recently expired and been renewed?
Ensure that all pages have a normal HTTP 200 status. HTTP 200 indicates success, meaning that users can request files from the server, and the server will respond correctly.
You can use free HTTP header status checking tools like Xenu, DeepCrawl, ScreamingFrog, or Botify to confirm if your website is functioning properly. The correct status should be 200. Any occurrence of 3xx (except 301), 4xx, or 5xx status codes is detrimental to page indexing.
Have the page URLs been recently changed?
Sometimes, changes in CMS, backend programming, or server settings can alter the URLs in the main domain, subdomains, or subdirectories.
Search engines may remember the old URLs, and without proper redirection, many pages can become unindexed.
The links from the old site may still exist in certain places, and people may click on them. Therefore, if URLs have been modified, it's advisable to create backups of the old URLs and implement 301 redirects to the corresponding pages.
Have you resolved duplicate content issues?
Resolving duplicate content problems may involve implementing canonical tags, 301 redirects, noindex meta tags, or setting disallow directives in robots.txt. These actions can potentially lead to a decrease in the number of indexed pages.
In this example, a decrease in indexed page count is not necessarily a bad thing. What we need to do is confirm if the decrease is primarily due to the aforementioned issues and not caused by other factors.
Are your pages timing out?
Some servers may have bandwidth limitations due to cost issues, and such servers require upgrading.
Hardware-related issues can sometimes be resolved by upgrading the hardware or addressing memory limitations.
Certain websites may block IP addresses if they access too many pages at a specific rate. This measure is in place to prevent any potential DDOS attacks, but it can also have a negative impact on the website.
Monitoring for this setting is typically done in the second layer of page settings. If the threshold is set too low, regular search
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