{"id":15400,"date":"2021-05-13T09:35:53","date_gmt":"2021-05-13T09:35:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.improvemysearchranking.com\/?p=15400"},"modified":"2023-11-24T15:19:42","modified_gmt":"2023-11-24T15:19:42","slug":"google-highlights-ways-removes-websites-search-index","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.improvemysearchranking.com\/google-highlights-ways-removes-websites-search-index\/","title":{"rendered":"Google highlights ways it removes websites from the search index"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ranking high on the search engine results pages (SERPs) for competitive keywords is no easy task. It requires a lengthy, concentrated effort on the back of ample time and resources.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, despite all the efforts and success, it is possible to lose all those rankings and have your website de-index from the search engine.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are many reasons why Google may decide to de-index your website. But a recent conversation with Google\u2019s John Mueller revealed that there are also two different ways Google deindex a website from the search index.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s see what John said.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

During the SEO Office-hours hangouts, one person asked John Mueller the following question:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI own a site, and it was ranking good before the 23rd of March. I upgraded from Yoast SEO free to premium. After that, the site got deindexed from Google, and we lost all our keywords.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

To provide more context, the person also mentioned that they did gain back rankings for a few keywords, but they would lose the rankings again in a matter of hours.<\/span><\/p>\n

They also mentioned that they had double-checked robots.txt to ensure it is set up as it should.\u00a0 They have also ensured that there are no manual penalties.<\/span><\/p>\n

John Mueller first clarified that the upgrade to the premium version of the Yoast SEO plugin has nothing to do with it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know\u2026 it sounds kind of tricky\u2026 I would say offhand it probably doesn\u2019t have to do with the updating of your plugin.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The next part was more interesting as John Mueller shared some insights into how the deindexing process works from Google\u2019s perspective.<\/span><\/p>\n

He specifically highlighted the slow and long deindexing process in which Google gradually deindexes parts of a website that it no longer considers relevant.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c \u2026 it could very well be a technical issue somewhere.<\/span><\/p>\n

Because usually, when we reduce the indexing of a site, when we say we don\u2019t need to have as many URLs indexed from a website, we tend to keep the URLs that are more relevant for that site and that tends to be something that happens over, I don\u2019t know, this longer period of time where it like slowly changes the indexing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This was a valuable bit of information from John Mueller but not very relevant to the person in their particular scenario, as they were experiencing a total website deindex (not a partial or gradual one).<\/span><\/p>\n

To that, Mueller responded:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo if you\u2019re seeing something where like the whole site disappears from indexing, it almost sounds like something that might be related to a technical issue\u2026 something along those lines.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Our suggestions<\/b><\/h2>\n

If you have been noticing something similar, you should first check your robots.txt to ensure it\u2019s not blocking pages.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Next, double-check if you still have an active sitemap and ensure there are no crawling issues.<\/span><\/p>\n

Third, do a full SEO audit and shortlist any technical and website quality issues. Those issues will most likely be the culprit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Note that there were multiple reports of <\/span>unconfirmed Google algorithm updates in March<\/span><\/a>. So if your loss in keyword rankings coincide with that timeline, those algorithm updates may also be responsible.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ranking high on the search engine results pages (SERPs) for competitive keywords is no easy task. It requires a lengthy, concentrated effort on the back of ample time and resources. However, despite all the efforts and success, it is possible to lose all those rankings and have your website de-index from the search engine. There […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":17287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_oct_exclude_from_cache":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nGoogle on Ways It Removes Websites from Search Index | IMSR<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Discover how Google removes websites from its search index. 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