Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Search console validation taking a long time?
-
Hello! I did something dumb back in the beginning of September. I updated Yoast and somehow noindexed a whole set of custom taxonomy on my site. I fixed this and then asked Google to validate the fixes on September 20. Since then they have gotten through only 5 of the 64 URLS.....is this normal? Just want to make sure I'm not missing something that I should be doing.
Thank you! ^_^
-
You're welcome.
We as a community are here to help.If your issue is now fixed, you could mark this question as answered

Best luck.
GR -
Cool! Thanks Gaston! I'm glad I asked about this! ^_^
-
What sometimes happens is that when some URLs are marked as noindex, googlebot reduces its crawling frequency as they interpret that you really don't want that page to be indexed thus has value or so ever.
What you just did is tell GoogleBot to crawl specifically that page and "force" it to analyze and render that page. So GoogleBot now understood that the noindex is no longer set and that page should be indexed.
I'd wait a few days so that googlebot naturally crawls all your site again and eventually index every page that deserves to be indexed.If that doesnt happen in about 2 weeks, then there is a tool in the old Search Console, where you can tell GoogleBot to Crawl a single page and its links. That is under Crawl-> Fetch as Google. Request an URL to fetched, after a few minutes it a button: _Request indexing_will appear, there you'll have the option to "Crawl this URL and its direct links". This image might came handy: https://imgur.com/a/y5DbUVw
I'm glad it helped previously and hope the last helps you even more.
Best luck.
GR -
Whoooooooaaaaahhhhhh! that fixed it! what's the deal!? lol. why is this method instantaneous and the other method I was pointed to by google is taking months?....do I have to do this with each individual URL?
-
....or maybe that's what it found the last time it was crawled? I clicked the "request indexing" button.....we'll see what happens.
-
hmmm. it says:
Indexing allowed? No: 'noindex' detected in 'robots' meta tag....but I have the settings in yoast set up to allow indexing.....do you think maybe changes in yoast settings aren't applying retroactively?....
-
Sorry to hear that.
Its possible that googlebot still didnt find out that you've changed noindex tag.
Would you mind checking what does the _Inspect URL _tool report?
To find that, go to the new version of Search Console and enter one of that URL that should be indexed in the textbox.
Then clic on the "test live URL" button. This image could be helpful: https://imgur.com/a/CPvfwifThere you might get a hint of what is going on.
-
They're in google search console, but I have tried searching for a couple of them and they don't appear to be indexed :-(. I tried the method you suggested and that didn't bring up anything either.
-
Hi angela,
Those 5 out of 64 URLs.. Is that a report in Search Console? or only 5 URLs appear when searching in Google?
Search Console usually takes a little longer to update its reports on index status.Have you tried a site: search? Also using _inurl: _parameter.
For example: site:domain.com inurl:/category-noindexed/Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Optimization for "Search by Photos" feature
Howdy, fellow mozzers, Does anyone know what affects a given company photos show up in the "Search by Photos" section? I can't find any decent info.. Here is the link to SEL, describing the feature (not even google themselves seem to have an announcement about it). https://searchengineland.com/google-showing-mobile-search-by-photos-option-in-selected-local-verticals-323237 Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DmitriiK3 -
Negative SEO & How long does it take for Google to disavow
Following on from a previous problem of 2 of our main pages completely dropping from index, we have discovered that 150+ spam, porn domains have been directed at our pages (sometime in the last 3-4 months, don't have an exact date). Does anyone have exerpeince on how long it may take Google to take noticed of a new disavow list? Any estimates would be very helpful in determining our next course of action.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vuly1 -
After hack and remediation, thousands of URL's still appearing as 'Valid' in google search console. How to remedy?
I'm working on a site that was hacked in March 2019 and in the process, nearly 900,000 spam links were generated and indexed. After remediation of the hack in April 2019, the spammy URLs began dropping out of the index until last week, when Search Console showed around 8,000 as "Indexed, not submitted in sitemap" but listed as "Valid" in the coverage report and many of them are still hack-related URLs that are listed as being indexed in March 2019, despite the fact that clicking on them leads to a 404. As of this Saturday, the number jumped up to 18,000, but I have no way of finding out using the search console reports why the jump happened or what are the new URLs that were added, the only sort mechanism is last crawled and they don't show up there. How long can I expect it to take for these remaining urls to also be removed from the index? Is there any way to expedite the process? I've submitted a 'new' sitemap several times, which (so far) has not helped. Is there any way to see inside the new GSC view why/how the number of valid URLs in the indexed doubled over one weekend?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rickyporco0 -
Crawled page count in Search console
Hi Guys, I'm working on a project (premium-hookahs.nl) where I stumble upon a situation I can’t address. Attached is a screenshot of the crawled pages in Search Console. History: Doing to technical difficulties this webshop didn’t always no index filterpages resulting in thousands of duplicated pages. In reality this webshops has less than 1000 individual pages. At this point we took the following steps to result this: Noindex filterpages. Exclude those filterspages in Search Console and robots.txt. Canonical the filterpages to the relevant categoriepages. This however didn’t result in Google crawling less pages. Although the implementation wasn’t always sound (technical problems during updates) I’m sure this setup has been the same for the last two weeks. Personally I expected a drop of crawled pages but they are still sky high. Can’t imagine Google visits this site 40 times a day. To complicate the situation: We’re running an experiment to gain positions on around 250 long term searches. A few filters will be indexed (size, color, number of hoses and flavors) and three of them can be combined. This results in around 250 extra pages. Meta titles, descriptions, h1 and texts are unique as well. Questions: - Excluding in robots.txt should result in Google not crawling those pages right? - Is this number of crawled pages normal for a website with around 1000 unique pages? - What am I missing? BxlESTT
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bob_van_Biezen0 -
Ranking for local searches without city specific keywords?
Hey guys! I had asked this question a few months ago and now that we are seeing even more implicit information determining search results, I want to ask it again..in two parts. Is is STILL best practice for on-page to add the city name to your titles, h1s, content etc? It seems that this will eventually be an outdated tactic, right? If there is a decent amount of search volume without any city name in the search query (ie. "storefont signs", but no search volume for the phrase when specific cities are added (ie. "storefront signs west palm beach) is it worth trying to rank and optimize for that search term for a company in West Palm Beach? We can assume that if there are 20,000 monthly searches for the non-location specific term that SOME of them would be fairly local, so do we optimize the page without the city name and trust Google to display results with a local intent...therefore showing our client's site in the SERPS when someone searches "sign company" and they are IN West Palm Beach? If there is any confusion, please just ask me to clarify! I think this would be a great WhiteBoard Friday topic for Rand!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
How many time should a keyword be used in the body of text?
We employee an outside agency to write content for our website as we do not have the ability in house to write unique and good quality content. They have just sent an article which is around 300 words. I told them the keyword phrases to use. When I got the document there is only 1 instance of the keyword phrase(s) in it. Now there seems to be a conflict here amongst posts I have read and general SEO advise as to how many times it should be present (SEOmoz indicates 4 times for instance), our outside agency says it doesn't matter. Now if I have a page optimised for 2 keywords this starts making things tricky and probably looks keyword stuffed to the reader. Assuming the keywords are present once in meta tags, H1, meta descriptions and alt text, what do people think is best practice taking into account recent panda updates? Thoughts appreciated. Thanks Craig
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0 -
How long should a domain redirect take?
Hi, I know that this is a 'How long is a piece of string?' type question but at what point should the ranking value of site A pass over to site B following a domain 301 redirect? I have shifted a domain over to a new URL, same hosting server, same IP address. I haven't made any URL changes or any content changes other than to change the site logo to match the new domain name. Domain B is basically an exact clone of domain A. I have redirected Domain A to domain B using the following line at the top of the .htaccess file:- Redirect 301 / http://www.newdomain.com/ I have submitted a sitemap for the new domain via google webmaster tools. It looks like the original domain as been completely indexed by google following the redirect as all rankings have been dropped from the results and there are no results for a site:olddomain.com search. Surely the rankings should have switched over at this point? Any help would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdeLewis
Ade.0 -
Search Engine Pingler
Hello everyone, it's me again 😉 I've just got a Pro membership on SeoMoz and I am full of questions. A few days ago I found very interesting tool called: Search Engine Pingler And description of it was like this: Your website or your page was published a long time, but you can not find it on google. Because google has not index your site. Tool Search engine pingler will assist for you. It will ping the URL of your Page up more than 80 servers of google and other search engines. Inform to the search engine come to index your site. So my question is that tool really helps to increase the indexation of the link by search engine like Google, if not, please explain what is a real purpose of it. Thank you to future guru who can give a right answer 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smokin_ace0