Why do my site pages keep getting deindexed?
Getting your content deindexed by Google is dreadful news for any SEO manager or content marketer. Deindexation means your carefully crafted content is no longer rank on SERPs, taking away its potential to attract clicks and convert visitors into sales. So, what could banish your content being indexed?
Google can decide to deindex pages or URLs that break its guidelines—and this can be cause by minor, seemingly unrelevant changes. For instance, tweaking website settings, content, or on-page and technical SEO elements makes your website fail to provide satisfactory answers to searchers’ queries. Google can also thinks that you’re attempting to deceive its algorithm or doing fraudulent activities.
In this article, we’ll explore over 10 common reasons for Google deindexation, helping you identify and address them to maintain a healthy technical SEO performance. We also add some recommended tools like prerendering SEO tool to minimize site’s chance of getting deindexed.
Reasons Why Your Content is Being Deindexed
1. Using Cloaking Techniques
The first reason on why your page getting deindexed is cloaking. Cloaking involves showing different content or URLs to users and search engines to manipulate how your pages rank on SERPs. This practice violates Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and totally goes against Google’s goal of providing relevant results to searchers.
If you try manipulating the system with cloaking, Google will quickly catch on and penalize your site. In most cases, your URL gets deindexed. Honesty and transparency are essential for a healthy online presence.
Related: Is dynamic rendering cloaking? This cloaking vs dynamic rendering blog gives you the answer.
2. Blocking JavaScript-Based Content
One technical issue that can inadvertently contribute to deindexing is blocking search engines from accessing and rendering your website’s Javascript SEO content. This issue primarily occurs when using modern JS frameworks like React, Vue, or Angular, which default to client-side rendering.
As a result, your content becomes invisible to search engines, reducing your site’s appeal and negatively impacting its SEO. This can lead to Google deindexation on the affected pages or the entire site.
To resolve this issue, consider installing a prerendering SEO tool like Prerender. Prerender generates a static version of your pages and delivers it to search engine crawlers upon request. By doing so, you ensure that Google regains access to your content, allowing your pages to be indexed fast and perfectly.
Learn more about how to install Prerender and all the benefits you can enjoy with this prerendering SEO tool.
3. Implementing Faulty Structured Data
Google’s structured data guidelines strictly prohibit any misleading or deceptive use of markup. For instance, if you own an ecommerce online store, you add fake star ratings to your product page’s rich snippets on SERPs.
Violating these guidelines by marking up hidden content, providing false information, or manipulating markup to gain rich results you don’t qualify for is considered a spam tactic. Even unintentional violations can lead to Google penalties, including deindexing from search results.
4. Having Excessive Automated Queries to Google
Google has boundaries that you must respect. Sending automated queries or requests without permission is a no-go, as it violates their terms of service.
Google vigilantly monitors excessive, unauthorized traffic that strains its resources and may issue an IP block or deindex-related website URLs (or even the entire site) as a penalty.
Avoid accidentally triggering this by misusing tools or misconfiguring crawlers or web scrapers. For instance, aggressively scraping Google’s search results or proprietary data feeds using automated scripts is a violation.
5. Participating in Link Schemes
While link building is an essential SEO strategy, you must exercise caution and avoid deceitful tactics. Google’s algorithms can spot unnatural link patterns and penalize sites or deindex URLs or domains that engage in manipulative link-building practices. For instance, participating in link schemes or buying links can lead to severe penalties.
Google also has a clear and strong stance against:
- Paid links are intended to manipulate search results.
- Low-quality link directories.
- Hidden links in footers.
- Keyword-stuffed links in comments and forum signatures.
Related: Learn about how to find and fix broken backlinks.
6. Having Faulty Redirects and HTTP Status Errors
Correct HTTP status codes are essential when implementing redirects. Using temporary redirects (302) instead of permanent redirects (301) can confuse search engines and cause indexing problems. If Google detects a redirect leading to a non-existent or error page, it may remove the original URL from its indexation list.
Moreover, URLs that consistently return error status codes like 404 (Not Found) or 500 (Server Error) are deemed “dead ends” by Google and eventually dropped from the index.
Also, keep in mind that domain expiration can make your URL unavailable for Google to crawl, and if there’s nothing to crawl, there’ll be nothing to index. So, ensure proper redirect management and timely domain renewal to avoid these problems.
7. Using Doorway Pages
Creating low-quality pages solely to rank high for specific keywords and then redirect users elsewhere hurts your site in two ways. First, it delivers a frustrating experience for visitors who land on irrelevant content. Second, these pages clutter search results (SERPs) with useless information, making it harder for genuine searchers to find valuable websites.
Consequently, Google identifies and penalizes these doorway pages by either deindexing them or applying site-wide penalties that impact the ranking of all pages on your domain, not just the offending doorway pages.
Focus on generating unique, high-quality content that enhances user experience, consolidates similar content, and complies with Google’s guidelines to preserve your site’s integrity in search rankings.
8. Misuse of the Robots.txt Files
The robots.txt file directs search engines on how to crawl your site. However, incorrectly configuring this file can block Google’s bots from crawling and indexing your site.
A common error is the blanket ‘disallow’ rules (Disallow: /), which can exclude important pages or URLs from being indexed by Google. To avoid this error, regularly audit your robots.txt file usage.
If you’re unsure how to configure your site’s robot directive, refer to our guide on robots.txt file optimization. This guide tells you everything you need to know on configuring your robots.txt files to avoid indexing issues and ensure Google discovers pages that matter to your business.
9. Having Malware or Security Issues
One of your top priorities should be ensuring the safety and security of your website for visitors.
Suppose Google detects that malicious actors have compromised your site and are serving malware, phishing pages, or other shady code that puts users at risk; they will promptly deindex those affected pages to prevent further harm. This action aligns with Google’s commitment to delivering a safe browsing experience.
To avoid deindexing due to such compromises, regular security audits, prompt software updates, vulnerability patching, and robust security practices like web application firewalls and HTTPS are crucial.
Related: Visit our How to Conduct A Technical SEO Site Audit blog to learn more about website auditing.
10. Having Hidden Text or Links
Discovering hidden text on your website can raise Google’s attentions, but not all instances are intentionally deceptive. Sometimes, the hidden text serves a legitimate purpose. For example, the alt text that describes images or the descriptive captions for videos.
However, there are instances where they are used sneakily to deceive readers or even Google. Some examples of such tactics include:
- Setting the font size to zero renders the text invisible to users.
- Positioning text off-screen using CSS, making it inaccessible to visitors.
- Displaying white text on a white background to effectively conceal the content.
- Using small, inconspicuous characters to hide links, misleading both users and search engines.
While innocent instances of hidden text might require adjustments to regain Google’s trust, engaging in deceptive practices is a surefire way to get your website deindexed.
11. Using Improper Canonicalization
When several pages or URLs of your site are very similar, they can lead to duplicate content issues. If you fail to specify the correct canonical URL using the rel=”canonical” tag, Google will receive conflicting signals about which page or URL is most important.
Because of this confusion, Google ultimately chooses and indexes one page or URL as the original version and ignores the others, which can hurt your site’s search visibility.
Suppose Google perceives the duplicate content as an attempt to manipulate search rankings; it may not only ignore the pages but also remove them from its index altogether. In other words, it gets deindexed.
12. Experiencing Slow Server Response and Loading Times
A slow-loading website with a slow server response can hinder Google’s crawling and indexing process, consuming more time and resources. This signals to Google that your site may provide a poor user experience, which could frustrate and drive users away.
Pro tip: Find out how to improve your Google PageSpeed Insight scores to 100 points.
Because Google only has limited resources to crawl and index all available content (also known as the crawl budget) on the internet, it prioritize which content worth visiting. If your site consistently drains resources, Google is more likely to deprioritize and deindex your content over time.
Optimizing page speed is a complex task, especially for JavaScript-heavy sites, as it requires balancing functionality with performance. However, you can use Prerender to simplify this process. Prerender pre-renders your page and turn it into its static HTML version, allowing Google to perform faster crawling and indexing. In fact, Prerender’s customers have experienced up to 300x better crawling and 260% faster indexing!
Avoid Getting Deindexed By Google Through JavaScript Rendering
Unless it’s a deliberate attempt to remove a URL from Google search results, getting deindexed is a worst-case scenario for any website. And by worst case, we’re talking about a full-blown impact that can crush your site’s visibility and drown your online revenue.
To avoid this fate, proactively stay on top of your SEO game and follow Google’s guidelines to a T. Regularly audit your site, monitor indexation rates, and deliver awesome user experiences with high-quality, original content.
To make your SEO journey smoother, follow our 10-step checklist of excellent SEO indexing methods to help Google find and index your site. And combine this with Prerender adoption, as Prerender can help you to:
- Identify and solve crawl errors and page indexing issues from the root.
- Optimize your crawl budget and feed bots with index-ready files.
- Access additional technical SEO services, including sitemap crawling and 404 checkers.
With Prerender, you ensure that your content is crawled, indexed, and found by Google and customers alike. Sign up today and get free 1,000 monthly renders to boost your page visibility.
