Index pages dropped signfiicantly after changing to this plugin

Hello!

That does look disconcerting; I’m glad you reached out.

TSF prevents many pages from being indexed because of its “Advanced Query Protection” (blocking bad requests by using “noindex”). TSF also steers robots away from duplicated pages to the original page by outputting a proper canonical URL. I don’t think Yoast SEO has innovated in this over the past decade.

Outputting a proper canonical URL on duplicated pages reduces the total number of pages found by Google (either indexed or not indexed).

To be sure this is happening and nothing is amiss, please share with me the following:
1. How many pages, posts, categories, and tags does your website have?
2. Do you use forum or calendar software on your website?

If you wish me to take a closer look, please share the URL of the domain affected. If you’d rather keep that confidential, please send it to me here: https://tsf.fyi/contact. Thank you!

6,058 categories
2,501 products
5 posts
0 tags

We do not use any forum or calendar software.

We sell printer cartridges, so the 6,058 caregories are printer model numbers. For example, Epson WF-3540 printer. The products are cartridges such as Epson 127 cartridge.

It would be unsuaul if our 6,000 printers are not getting indexed, right?

That would be unusual. Have you reinstated the category base removal via this plugin already, as per this request?

I’d like to look at your site; it’ll take away much guesswork, going back and forth, and allow me to inspect Google’s index directly. Could you share the URL? As I stated above, if you’d rather keep that confidential, please send it to me here: https://tsf.fyi/contact.

Thank you, I have received the link!

An inurl:domain.com search (without www. because of a bug in Google) reveals that Google still has indexed over 5900 results, akin to the report you had earlier, which is in line with the numbers you posted.

Google filters two categories displaying the same products as a “duplicate.” You can filter through those at the bottom of the Page Indexing report.

I tested a few dozen URLs from Google’s cache, and the HTML source revealed that not Yoast SEO but TSF was present. This suggests that Google has no problem indexing TSF-supported URLs.

I think that you filtered the Page Indexing report at the top from “All known pages” to “All submitted pages” — the report will then only include the pages listed in the /sitemap.xml file (learn more), which we kept slim for a variety of reasons.

Since Yoast SEO displayed all pages and categories in the sitemap before, and TSF lists only the important and most recently updated pages, that filtered report would indeed drop in its number significantly.

The actual number of indexed pages should remain largely unaffected, and the “Performance > Search results” at Google Search Console overview should not display any notable fluctuations since making the switch from Yoast SEO. This is the only report that truly matters — all other reports are only to discover ways to improve search performance.

It is important to share as much information as possible when reaching out for support — the filter selection and “Last Updated” timestamp at the top were missing, and so was the “Why pages aren’t indexed” list below. Nevertheless, I think I’m right to assume my assertion was correct. Please verify ?? Thank you!

• This reply was modified 2 years, 1 month ago by Sybre Waaijer. Reason: clarity

You are amazing. Thank you! This plugin is much better than Yoast already. Is there any paid addon that would benefit my site a lot without too much manual work on my end?

Cheers ?? Glad I could help!

I don’t think we have paid add-ons that could benefit your website a lot; perhaps Honeypot to reduce comment spam on WooCommerce reviews — that’d relieve you of a chore. Still, feel free to browse our extensions at https://tsf.fyi/e.

If you have questions about our premium services, per forum guidelines, I must ask you to contact us directly.

Have a lovely weekend!