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Wierd SERP listing ?!?

by Conrad Stuart
8 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I just checked my rankings for a keyword that I have had the number 3 spot on for some time. It's the wierdest thing, I just checked it and rather than having the usual title tag, description, then url in green setup for google listings, it simply shows the url of the site in the large, blue title tag font, then no description, and no green url. Thats it.

Isn't that strange? has anyone else seen that before?:confused:
#listing #serp #wierd
  • Profile picture of the author snape
    Are all other listings behaving the same way? I think its temporary glitch. Also try using some other browser and see whether the problem still exists or not. I don't think there is any problem with you or your website.
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  • Profile picture of the author Conrad Stuart
    Yeah, all the other listings are normal, just mine is wierd. I actually have the number one spot for the same KW with another site, and that listing looks fine too....ur right, must just be a glitch
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  • Profile picture of the author aandersen
    one of my recent sites is doing it as well. it got indexed on day 1 but has looked like that ever since. this is the first time ive had it happen like this

    according to stats in webmaster tools its being crawled but its not indexing all my pages or updating my description. i submitted the sitemap and no errors, no crawl errors, everything appears to be ok

    i have read that DNS issues can contribute to this happening and i am on an abnormal hosting situation right now so i hoping this is not the case, curious to know what your hosting situation for the site in question is

    one thing i noticed yeasterday was that my WP editor had changed all my html all funky and sloppy code, so i re-did it and now it looks much cleaner and i ome back today and i has now started indexing more pages so that may have helped (but description still not updated)

    i will be patient and keep link building and hope for the best because you can never force google to do anything can only abide by their advise

    if you figure something out with your problem please update as it may help me, i will do the same on my end
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    • Profile picture of the author Wesley Atkins
      This happens when Google is blocked from accessing your content on a site that has previously been indexed.

      Here is what you need to check:

      1. Check your robots.txt file in the root of your domain and make sure you there are no disallow tags for the main domain.
      2. Check the source code of your pages and make sure there are no headers that say:
      <meta name="robots" content="noindex" />
      3. Check your .htaccess file has no weird entries that could be preventing Google from accessing your site.

      If all of these are fine then it could just be a temporary indexing problem that is not caused by your site.

      If this is the case, then here is how to get back in quickly..

      1. Add an entry in your robots.txt file for your XML sitemap. Ie:
      Sitemap: http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

      2. Add the sitemap in your Google webmaster tools account.

      3. Add your site to this website: Is My Site Indexed? - and ping the page URL that you are given at pingoat.com

      4. Then ping your sitemap.xml file at pingoat.com too.

      5. Submit your site to 2 bookmarking sites, Propeller & Digg and ping these pages too.

      - This should get you back in pretty quickly.
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      • Profile picture of the author aandersen
        i think im good on my side

        #1 - my robots.txt is so plain
        Code:
        User-agent: *
Disallow:

Sitemap: http://mydomain.tld/sitemap.xml.gz

        #2 - my source says th contrar
        Code:
        <meta name="robots" content="follow, all" />
        #3 - i think my .htaccess is all good, looks like this

        Code:
        #wordpress put automatically

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

#someting i appended to the file

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mydomain.tld [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.tld/$1 [L,R=301]

        I just added robots.txt to my sitemap

        already previously submitted to webmaster tools

        I just looked up on ismysiteindexed as you suggested

        I had already bookmarked on digg/propellor but i did go ahead and add a new bookmark to an inner page on a new account. I also just tweet'd it and updated it's satus on indenti.ca as both of these seem to get crawled a lot and tend to get things indexed quickly


        pinged my indent.ca user page, twitter user page, sitemap, ismysiteindexed, & new bookmarks

        the only thing i did new is add the robots to my sitemap, but ive never done that in the past on any site

        i guess now i wait and see if any thing improves

        this is frustrating
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  • Profile picture of the author aandersen
    just to update, i went back and checked webmaster tools after doing all of this and now my sitemap errors saying that the robots.txt was not a valid entry so i took it back off and resubmit.

    it was my understanding that SE bots will auto-check robots file first thing so I dont see why having it in the the sitemap is needed.

    but im just thinking outloud because as of now i dont have a solution
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    • Profile picture of the author Wesley Atkins
      No, in your robots.txt add the sitemap entry which it looks like you already have.

      The other way round will not have any benefit.

      If your not back in after 48 hours, PM me your URL and I'll take a look.
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      • Profile picture of the author aandersen
        Originally Posted by Wesley Atkins View Post

        No, in your robots.txt add the sitemap entry which it looks like you already have.

        The other way round will not have any benefit.

        If your not back in after 48 hours, PM me your URL and I'll take a look.

        thanks again, you know the way i read you post the first time i thought it said the other... it seemed strange but i figured, why not ill try.

        at any rate, i shall wait no and see what happens.

        i appreciate your assistance.
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