Is anyone else experiencing issues related to Google Search Console?

[austins36]

Hello,

I've been working with Google Search Console for about 2-3 years. It feels pretty straightforward. However, about 3-6 months ago, I noticed things within GSC are getting wonky.

I'm not sure if it's an issue with how my sites are built. But I've never had these issues before. I'm working with sites 30-40 pages max, so the crawling budget shouldn't be a problem.

I also use two different Sitemap plugins across my sites, "Not on the same site" . (Rankmath and XML Sitemaps) - Starting to get away from Rankmath

I've noticed XML Sitemaps works better than Rankmath in terms of fetching pages. However, I've noticed that under the "Pages" tab in GSC, I see a LOT of "Discovered - currently not indexed" and it takes forever to Validate; in some cases, it doesn't entirely resolve. Also, It takes forever for GSC to read my sitemap, almost two weeks to cover a 15-page website.

Sometimes I get Mobile issues but then click validate without fixing anything, which resolves.

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I'm just curious whether others are experiencing issues similar to this or if I should re-evaluate my setup. I was aware GSC has been having issues lately, especially with GMB Traffic.

Any feedback is helpful!

Thanks

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

Hi @austins36, we've been having similar issues with well established websites and their new pages being crawled but not indexed. We've begun linking those "difficult" pages so they are highly visible in our footer on selected websites to see if that improves Google's crawling and indexing. So far, the sites we have tested, that has worked in 24 to 48 hours in getting the pages indexed after Google crawls the homepage. However, we have seen interestingly enough, that GSC will sometimes show an individual page as indexed, but when doing a "site:domain" using a browser, the page isn't being shown. Also, there are instances where the page is showing up on mobile search results but nowhere to be found on desktop searches. It definitely seems like Google is doing something funky with indexing for the past couple of weeks. You didn't mention if you were using GSC to request a manual crawl of any pages?

My personal opinion is that Google is being a lot more selective recently in choosing what it deems worthy of indexing and that seems to be highly influenced by the quality of the content along with the prominence you are placing on individual pages throughout your site, which includes appropriate internal linking. I'd also suggest "pinging" your XML sitemap using a browser.

Here's an article that covers that: Google: Pinging Sitemaps Help Get New Content Indexed More Quickly

Hope this helps and please reply back with your results!

 

[austins36]

Hi @austins36, we've been having similar issues with well established websites and their new pages being crawled but not indexed. We've begun linking those "difficult" pages so they are highly visible in our footer on selected websites to see if that improves Google's crawling and indexing. So far, the sites we have tested, that has worked in 24 to 48 hours in getting the pages indexed after Google crawls the homepage. However, we have seen interestingly enough, that GSC will sometimes show an individual page as indexed, but when doing a "site:domain" using a browser, the page isn't being shown. Also, there are instances where the page is showing up on mobile search results but nowhere to be found on desktop searches. It definitely seems like Google is doing something funky with indexing for the past couple of weeks. You didn't mention if you were using GSC to request a manual crawl of any pages?

My personal opinion is that Google is being a lot more selective recently in choosing what it deems worthy of indexing and that seems to be highly influenced by the quality of the content along with the prominence you are placing on individual pages throughout your site, which includes appropriate internal linking. I'd also suggest "pinging" your XML sitemap using a browser.

Here's an article that covers that: Google: Pinging Sitemaps Help Get New Content Indexed More Quickly

Hope this helps and please reply back with your results!

Hey Jeff!

Thank you for your response and information. It was extremely helpful, and I'm glad to know this isn't only pertaining to me.

Putting links in the footer for pages GSC is struggling with is a really good idea, and I'm glad it's been working for you; I will implement this with sites experiencing Coverage/Sitemap issues. and I'll let you know if it works for us as well.

That's wild it's showing pages indexed but not in Google Search when you do a "site:domain" search. I've also noticed sometimes Google will say a page is not indexed yet. But when you directly search the URL in GSC, it will show it is indexed.

I hope GSC starts resolving these issues soon.

- "Your Personal Opinion"
I haven't tried pinging our sitemaps. It definitely looks helpful. Thank you I will try implementing that soon and track the results. I will update this forum with anything I learn!