Google does not seem to know about pages other than Home

  • Resolved lacon

    (@lacon)


    6 years, 10 months ago

    I have a small wp site hosted on a shared hosting service. I am not sure that google can ‘see’ most of the pages. The site is set up very bare bones, all of the default seo settings are intact, etc.

    I tested by using the site specific search feature of google where you enter a url like site:mysite456.com sky to see which pages google could find the word “sky” on. It always finds only the front page, if that page has the search term, and never finds the term on any other page. How could this be so? The site has a normal menu struction, about 8 pages total, basically brochure-ware. The site and content has been in place for 2 years with very few changes.

    A similar test using the site: parameter on another site which runs drupal finds every page with the search term. Both are hosted by the same shared hosting service.

    How can I determine what the issue is?

Viewing 14 replies - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)
  • Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    Please provide a link to a page on your site. Thanks.

    Also, what do you see on the console at Google Webmaster Tools?

    Thread Starter lacon

    (@lacon)

    I will pm you the url as I’m not sure the site owner wants it up here. No, looks like I can’t pm you.

    • This reply was modified 6 years, 10 months ago by lacon.
    Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    There are no PMs here. Use Google Webmaster Tools to see what’s going on.

    Thread Starter lacon

    (@lacon)

    I engaged google webmaster tools on the drupal site I mentioned. It’s been about hour days and there is absolutely no info being generated by webmaster tools. No clicks reported, etc, even though google analytics has been reporting on the site for years. Every section of webmaster tools is basiaclly empty like it was when I first completed the config.

    So even if I set it up on the wp site, it would not contribute anything. webmaster tools must be good for something but as a new user, it’s utility to me has been zero so far.

    Thread Starter lacon

    (@lacon)

    Is the site: methond of testing discoverability valid?

    Any guess as to why google only knows of the front page? From what I’ve read wp is supposed to be good at seo out of the box. The site involved is about as ‘out of the box’ as you can get.

    Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    without a link, I can’t see anything to say anything. ??

    Check the robots.txt file. Did you submit a sitemap at GWT?

    Thread Starter lacon

    (@lacon)

    No – for the wp site I have not even engaged gwt. For the drupal site, which google search has a good handle on, I have not submitted a sitemap. I will check out what that is about.

    Thread Starter lacon

    (@lacon)

    Oh yeah – another puzzle is that google analytics is enagaged at the wp site and it shows visits to all pages. So why the site: search param shows up nothing…?

    Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    The drupal site is irrelevant; *what does Google Webmaster Tools show* for the crawling and index of the WordPress site. Set that up, submit a proper sitemap, and wait a day or two.

    Thread Starter lacon

    (@lacon)

    I mentioned the drupal site because it is the one I had mentioned engaging gwt on; and I’d mentioned that gwt was not set up on the wp site. So your having asked if I’d submitted a sitemap could have only be your having asked about the drupal site, etc, in theory.

    Sorry if this is a dumb question but have you double-checked to make sure you that your “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” setting in Settings > Reading in the WordPress dashboard isn’t checked?

    Thread Starter lacon

    (@lacon)

    Not a dumb question at all…I did see that setting and it is off.

    Thread Starter lacon

    (@lacon)

    Anyone else care to respond? Even though two people responded, the questions remain:

    Is the site: methond of testing discoverability valid?

    Why google only knows of the front page? From what I’ve read wp is supposed to be good at seo out of the box. The site involved is about as ‘out of the box’ as you can get.

    Thread Starter lacon

    (@lacon)

    The site: method of testing discoverability does seem to be valid. We submitted the site to google to redindex and probably as a result of that the site: search param does show inner page results. Still very odd that google would be recording page visit via google analytics, but not return results from those pages via search.

Viewing 14 replies - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)
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