Googlebot being redirected but not users?

[Sayers]

Hi,

We seem to have a slightly odd issue.

We noticed that a number of our location category pages were slipping off 1 page, and onto page 2 in our niche. On inspection, we noticed that our Arizona page had started ranking in place of a number of other location pages - Cali, Idaho, NJ etc. Weirdly, the pages they had replaced were no longer indexed, and would remain so, despite being fetched, tweeted etc.

One test was to see when the dropped out pages had been last crawled, or at least cached. When conducting the 'cache:domain.com/category/location' on these pages, we were getting 301 redirected to, you guessed it, the Arizona page. Very odd. However, the dropped out pages were serving 200 OK when run through header checker tools, screaming frog etc.

On the face of it, it would seem Googlebot is getting redirected when it is hitting a number of our key location pages, but users are not. Has anyone experienced anything like this? The theming of the pages are quite different in terms of content, meta etc.

Thanks.

[Sayers]

Can anyone offer any insight on this? The issue shows no sign of improving, and our organic is tanking.

If this really is an issue on Google's side, and it appears based on our technical set up, how can I force Google to take note and reindex the pages?

Here are some more examples, from across a number of categories..

Category A:
Page that has dropped out of index: https://goo.gl/KEQ8Yh
Cached version of that page: https://goo.gl/DPzFWM

Page that has dropped out of index: https://goo.gl/5KiQ4s Cached version of that page: https://goo.gl/myRWNg Category B: Page that has dropped out of index: https://goo.gl/pr3YQs
Cached version of that page: https://goo.gl/8SEYi5 Page that has dropped out of index: https://goo.gl/LqzDrg
Cached version of that page: https://goo.gl/iwPs45 Category Page that has dropped out of index: https://goo.gl/YBZS7c Cached version of that page:https://goo.gl/n33QzG Page that has dropped out of index: https://goo.gl/Ht4gfO
Cached version of that page: https://goo.gl/u81vbA

[Sayers]

Weirdly, at the time this seemed to correct itself overnight without any fixes our end. However 6 months on and it has happened again... Only this time, all location pages have dropped out of index, but latest cache versions all redirect to the Kansas page.

Have checked log files for these relevant URLs, and all show 200 (and being crawled regularly). When you fetch them in SC the show as complete, and they are all still indexed in Bing.

Very confused!

[George-Freitag]

Hi Nicola,

Have you checked your canonical tags to be sure that they are pointing to the correct URL? Sometimes with storefront pages people just copy/paste the same HTML, swapping out the contact information. But maybe they forgot to update the canonical tags?

Keep us updated!

[Sayers]

Thanks for advice Chris. Have checked, and can't see any issues with htaccess or robots seem. A very strange one indeed!

[Sayers]

Hi Anthony,

Desktop returns 200, whilst mobile returns a 302 to the mDOT site.

Thanks.

[ChrisAshton]

Hi Nicola,

Sounds like a very strange one indeed. I can't say I've ever heard of Google giving a redirect when other 3rd party crawlers give you a 200.

My only suggestion to begin the troubleshooting would be to have a look at your htaccess and maybe Robots to see if there are any directives in there addressing Google specifically.

Anthony's suggestion is also a great idea. At least you'll see what Google is picking up on those pages right now rather what they saw last time it was cached.

[anthonydnelson]

You mention these pages are returning 200 in SEO tools, but would you please share what are these URLs are returning when you Fetch as Googlebot in Google Search Console? Test it in both desktop and mobile versions.