Search console validation taking a long time?

[angelamaemae]

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! ^_^

[GastonRiera]

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

[angelamaemae]

Cool! Thanks Gaston! I'm glad I asked about this! ^_^

[GastonRiera]

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

[angelamaemae]

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?

[angelamaemae]

....or maybe that's what it found the last time it was crawled? I clicked the "request indexing" button.....we'll see what happens.

[angelamaemae]

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?....

[GastonRiera]

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/CPvfwif

There you might get a hint of what is going on.

[angelamaemae]

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.

[GastonRiera]

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