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Googlebot being redirected?

by sayers
4 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I'm really struggling with an odd issue at the moment. It's making my brain hurt. Any help working it out appreciated. Over the past few days we noticed that a number of our location category pages (classifieds site) had disappeared from the index. Weirdly, when you check the latest cached version of the page, each of the pages all redirect to the Kansas category page! We have tried using the 'Fetch as Google' tool, which shows the URLs to be 'Complete', we've checked log files which show Google regularly crawling these location pages and returning 200's.. However, we cannot get the original pages back into the index. The pages are all still indexed on Bing no problem. Based on the the fact all our top level location category pages are redirecting to the Kansas page when you check the cache, and that the Kansas page shows up in Google searches for any 'domain + state' search, I can only assume Googlebot is being redirected somehow. But the log files would seem to suggest this isnt the case! Any insight / advice appreciated. Thanks
#googlebot #redirected
  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Is there a canonical tag on the page causing that? Almost sounds like it. Canonical tags can cause those sort of redirects.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Hard to say without seeing the URL.

    A poorly designed site can cause problems. Have you changed anything (theme, etc...) on your site recently?
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  • Profile picture of the author paulgl
    Did you recently (or near) change to ssl?

    There are a plethora of other causes.

    Google does strange things because of the product they want to put out to real searchers. Is the kansas page basically the same as the index page? Or very similar? If so, google deems the kansas page to be the one to show. It could be a random thing. They chose kansas at random, as all the rest are similar.

    Did your host switch servers, firewalls, etc? If so, they may be redirecting to "something" first before going to the main page. If all pages were under this, google might think they are the same or similar pages. Hence we get the problem above here as well.

    Since it's a classified ad site, well, those are notorious for just being duplicates of each location. That is, on craigslist each location looks and feels exactly the same. If there's not enough in each location to look THAT different, google is now in a tizzy to find the right one. They chose kansas.

    I would rework the entire site in a way that makes location a nonissue.

    Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author sayers
    Thanks for the responses all.

    Here is an example of one of the affected pages: https://goo.gl/0EPc4j
    And here is the cached version of that page: https://goo.gl/9tYE6c

    There have been no significant site changes recently, and all pages have correctly implemented self referencing canonical tags.

    Oddly, we have a number of other classified sites, within different niches, on the same platform. These are set up the same way, but this is the only site affected.

    In terms of design, it is notoriously difficult to avoid a templated design for locations. However, with each results page having unique metadata, internal links and ad content, I would hope Google would be able to distinguish.

    I actually wonder if this is an issue Google's end, with the pages mistakenly marked as duplicate. Mistaken detection. That was the general feeling on Google Webmaster Help Forum anyway. Either way the issue has persisted for a week now and my traffic is taking a hammering!
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