DERANKED due to Attachment URL’s

If you were affected by the bug related to attachment URLs we have a guide on how to best resolve this here: https://yoast.com/media-attachment-urls/

I have done all the things mentioned in the post couple of months ago!

But i can’t see any improvement to the site.

The website continuously goes deranked, searches dropped.

My Images are returning 401 in webmaster tools!

Please guide me so i can get back my website rank!

The aim of the Yoast SEO: Search Index Purge plugin is to purge attachment URLs from the search index by making all of your website’s attachment URLs return an HTTP 410 (content is gone) status.

Google has approved of our method to solve this issue in the fastest way possible. With that being said, Google Search Console may notify you of an increase in crawl errors. This is to be expected when a large quantity of previously indexable URLs suddenly return 410 status codes. You do not have to do anything and Google will eventually drop the attachment URLs from the search results since they don’t exist anymore.

After six months the attachment URLs (410 crawl errors) should be gone from the search results. At that time, you should remove the search index purge plugin and keep the redirect setting of the attachment URLs set to “Yes”.

It’s been almost 5 or 6 months I’ve installed the purge index plugin and applied the redirect but I can’t see any improvement in Rank of my website. Images are submitted but not indexed.

Have a look at my Sitemap Report

Should I Remove the Purge Index Plugin now?

or wait for these Not found to get back to normal?

URL STATUS

Should I wait for these URL’s stop responding 410 and removed from the search console, then I can remove the purge plugin?

HELP ME OUT HOW CAN I GET BACK MY RANK!

Waiting for your kind Reply!

• This reply was modified 6 years ago by jerrynibbles.

Hi @jerrynibbles,

We’ve identified multiple concerns and we’ve responded to each of them below.

1. Images are submitted but not indexed.
– There’s a known bug in the Google Search Console that can cause your images to appear as noindexed. Google confirmed the issue here. However, this does not affect the actual indexing of images.

2. Should I Remove the Purge Index Plugin now? or wait for these Not found to get back to normal?
– After six months(after you enabled the Purge plugin) the attachment URLs (410 crawl errors) should be gone from the search results. At that time, you should remove the search index purge plugin and keep the redirect setting of the attachment URLs set to “Yes”.

3. Can’t see any improvement in Rank of my website even after installing the Purge plugin.
– Google issued a ranking update around the same date when 7.0 was released, which made it confusing to determine whether ranking drops were caused by this bug. That being said, we suggest also checking some other factors (see below) as Google Rankings depend on over 200 ranking factors such as server load, page speed, cache configuration, mobile versions, responsiveness, and the site’s content and a broad algorithm update by Google can affect your rankings quite a bit.

We suggest the following to improve your site rankings:

• Optimize your content against the focus keywords by following this guide.
• Write the perfect SEO title for your posts and pages by following the steps given in this guide.
• Write clean and meaningful meta description for your pages and posts by following the steps given in this guide.
• Optimize the content by using the advanced content analysis feature provided by the Yoast SEO plugin by following the steps given in this guide.
• We have a definitive guide that could guide you Optimizing your site to the best practices outlined in this article.

Closed. No further concerns.