Debugging Poor Google Indexing of (Blogspot) Blog
January 18, 2019 2:04 PM Subscribe
A friend's Blogger/Blogspot blog is indexed incompletely by Google (i.e. many live posts don't show up in searches). I'm trying to help debug via Google Search Console, but it's comically confusing. Help!
The URL's coverage report in Google Search Console shows "submitted URL has crawl issue" (screenshot), though Google definitely recognizes my friend as Owner.
"Filter to sitemaps" uses:
/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=501&max~results=1800
Blog has >2000 posts. Set-up is uncomplicated; just a standard Blogspot, mostly text.
Can anyone guide remotely, or should this be a MeFi job?
The URL's coverage report in Google Search Console shows "submitted URL has crawl issue" (screenshot), though Google definitely recognizes my friend as Owner.
"Filter to sitemaps" uses:
/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=501&max~results=1800
Blog has >2000 posts. Set-up is uncomplicated; just a standard Blogspot, mostly text.
Can anyone guide remotely, or should this be a MeFi job?
google usually says what the error is. "submitted url has crawl issue" suggests that the url for the xml file is wrong and google cannot fetch it.
perhaps there's a robots.txt entry blocking it or the url isn't correct, or perhaps the site had a brief outage?
posted by zippy at 5:03 PM on January 18, 2019 [1 favorite]
perhaps there's a robots.txt entry blocking it or the url isn't correct, or perhaps the site had a brief outage?
posted by zippy at 5:03 PM on January 18, 2019 [1 favorite]
also that panel says that google has indexed 1.5k urls and excluded 2.7k urls for the site. try a google search like 'site:hereismysite.blogspot.com' to verify whether or not google actually has the site indexed.
posted by zippy at 5:04 PM on January 18, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by zippy at 5:04 PM on January 18, 2019 [2 favorites]
one more thing. in that url you pasted in, i would double check the tilde and whether or not it might be a dash instead: ... &max~results=1800
posted by zippy at 8:20 AM on January 19, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by zippy at 8:20 AM on January 19, 2019 [1 favorite]
Best answer: yeah, after a google search of 'inurl:atom.xml inurl:max inurl:start', if that's really a tilde, that's your error.
my fee is one favorite and one best answer.
posted by zippy at 8:58 AM on January 19, 2019 [1 favorite]
my fee is one favorite and one best answer.
posted by zippy at 8:58 AM on January 19, 2019 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: I just returned, catching zippy in mid-monologue. A Lannister always repays his debts. Behold your proud badges, and bask in my thanks.
One thing though. Should "max~results" be set above 1800, given that there are >2000 posts?
posted by Quisp Lover at 9:07 AM on January 19, 2019 [1 favorite]
One thing though. Should "max~results" be set above 1800, given that there are >2000 posts?
posted by Quisp Lover at 9:07 AM on January 19, 2019 [1 favorite]
start index is likely the first post no the xml will include, and max results is the total no, so you probably want start = 1 and max as big as your blog. you can view the xml directly to see what it contains.
posted by zippy at 9:13 AM on January 19, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by zippy at 9:13 AM on January 19, 2019 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
At the top of your screenshot, if you click on the various headings it will show you the pages that have warnings or are excluded. I would view each of those reports & then for each listed page click the "fetch as google" link & then request indexing on the next page.
posted by belladonna at 3:32 PM on January 18, 2019 [1 favorite]