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Googlebot being redirected but not users?

by sayers
2 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi,

We seem to have a slightly odd issue.

We noticed that a number of our location category pages were slipping off 1 page, and onto page 2 in our niche. On inspection, we noticed that our Arizona page had started ranking in place of a number of other location pages - Cali, Idaho, NJ etc. Weirdly, the pages they had replaced were no longer indexed, and would remain so, despite being fetched, tweeted etc.

One test was to see when the dropped out pages had been last crawled, or at least cached. When conducting the 'cache:domain.com/category/location' on these pages, we were getting 301 redirected to, you guessed it, the Arizona page. Very odd. However, the dropped out pages were serving 200 OK when run through header checker tools, screaming frog etc.

On the face of it, it would seem Googlebot is getting redirected when it is hitting a number of our key location pages, but users are not. Has anyone experienced anything like this? The theming of the pages are quite different in terms of content, meta etc.

Thanks.
#googlebot #redirected #users
  • Profile picture of the author paulgl
    Good question. Could be lousy answers.

    First, do you have any redirects? Google is very touchy if not done properly. Sends them in a wild goose chase that will never end.

    Second, apparently google might want a forward slash at the end of the url you are are fetching. That is, use domain.com/index.php/ not domain.com/index.php

    If both of those don't solve anything, use a free redirect checker online. Just google it and spin it through. If it detects no redirects, AND neither of the above don't work.....

    Are you using wordpress? Did you mess up or not change some config file to reflect your preferred domain?

    If none of that does shinola, your only recourse may be to change hosts. Find one that can fix your problem.

    Paul
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    If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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  • Profile picture of the author SEO-Dave
    Interesting problem, you should have posted the URL it's one of those SEO puzzles that MUST be solved :-)

    Try switching your user agent to Googlebot and see what you get:

    https://www.google.com/search?q=Swit...t+to+Googlebot

    If you find Googlebot is being redirected you've got a problem.

    There's scripts for cloaking content (blackhat SEO technique), check no scripts are redirecting Googlebot.

    Check the canonical URLs go to the right URL, if wrong URLs set it shouldn't cause a redirect, but could be causing confusion.

    I'd also check for hreflang tags as well, Google redirects from Google search results to relevant language sections (try a relevant Google search from another Google language version), maybe someone messed up if you've got multiple languages and have set hreflang tags (also check XML sitemaps).

    If multiple people work on the site maybe someone tried something stupid or made a mistake in a script.

    Interesting example at https://moz.com/blog/what-google-doe...e-can-hurt-you see the Update bit. Apparently this tool Keyword Density Tool can help check for the port 80 issue.

    David
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    Freelance SEO Consultant
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