Labels

Google Search Console (3) Reviews & Advice (1)
Showing posts with label Google Search Console. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google Search Console. Show all posts

How to exclude a page from Yoast SEO sitemap - Google Console Submitted URL marked ‘noindex’

Hi Everyone! In this post I share the fix in Google Search Console for "Submitted URL marked ‘noindex’".

What cased this error?

I had a checkout page where was marked as noindex and there was no reason to add that page to search engine indexing. However, the default setting for creating XML Sitemaps added all the pages on the website to the sitemap URLs. So Google was confused as one one side the sitemaps asked to index all pages and on the other side 1 page was set as noindex.

How did I fix this?

There are 2 possibilities. Either allow the page to be indexed or find a way to remove the page from the auto-generated sitemap URLs. I chose the 2nd option.
Steps:
  1. In your Wordpress site go to your Pages.
  2. Find the page in the list.
  3. Click on it to enter the Editor.
  4. Scroll all the way down to the Yoast SEO box.
  5. Click on Advanced.
  6. Select "NO" for "Allow search engines to show this Page in search results?"
  7. And I also selected "NO" for "Should search engines follow links on this Page?"
  8. Then click to UPDATE the page.
  9. And finally, go to the Google Search Console and click Validate Fix.
Here is the picture:

Labels:

Products - Missing field "name" + Validation

Hi Everyone! In this blog post I share how I fixed the Google Search Console Products - Missing field "name" and started Validation to complete the fix. I also share the picture from my Console.

What caused the issue?

  • This has to do with the schema language. On my product pages there was insufficient technical information (that is not visible to visitors) where the main issue was that Google could not understand what is the name of the products even though it was defined in multiple locations.
  • When looking into the code I found at least 3 mentioned of the "name", but for whatever reason Google had an issue finding it.

How did I fix it?

  • First I tried to manually insert the required schema code, but that proved to be too difficult or time consuming. I just wanted to do it for 3 product pages and not for the entire blog whereas the code was recommended to be placed in the <head> section which I did not want to change just for the 3 pages.
  • I then installed a Schema Wordpress plugin which promised to fix the issue but it did not. While it did add general schema definitions, the free version only had an "Article type", but to fix the "Product" issues we need "Product type" schema language. So I removed this plugin.
  • I then found the Schema & Structured Data for WP Wordpress plugin which had all the features I needed but it did require that I manually create the Product Type and insert the "formulas" or "rules" of where it should take the various names/definitions from.
  • That's manual work, but it is only 1 time and it worked out really good in the end because I not only defined the "name" which was a "red" error, but I also defined the vast majority of "orange" warnings, so now my pages are fully in compliance and I am happy about that.
  • I then went back to the Google Search Console and clicked to Validate my fix.
  • After a few minutes of a quick check that the fix was indeed done the Console approved my request and the Validation started. It will take a number of days until it is fully finished (i don't know why it takes so long), but I am confident that this issue is now solved.


Labels:

Unparsable structured data - Incorrect value type "@context" + Validation

Hi Everyone! In this blog post I share how I fixed the issue reported by Google Search Console called unparsable structured data - incorrect value type "@context". I also share the picture from my Search Console when I fixed the issue and started the Validation.

What caused the problem?

This has to do with the schema language and Google's need to see the "https://" in a particular place on the page. The problem was that my HTTP / HTTPS Remover Wordpress plugin was removing all those parts of the URL so all the links in the code were visible as "//whatever" without that starting part.

This was not a problem at all for my visitors or anyone. It was just a technical issue / problem that Google wanted done another way.

How did I fix it?

  • I was forced to deactivate and delete the HTTP / HTTPS Remover Wordpress plugin in order to make the "https://" part visible in the URL. After that I had to query my database to find any old leftovers of "http://" which was the first reason I had installed this plugin in the first place.
  • Now that I don't have the plugin I have to do the manual work of changing all the old "http://" into "https://" so that the website can remain secure.
  • In my case I did this first by manually looking where those old leftovers exist. I found them both in WP-options as well as WP-posts and finally I used the Better Search Replace Wordpress plugin to do the replacement. I was doing this very slowly and carefully and I backed up my database before doing so because it is not possible to undo this action and doing something wrong can break the website.

What else did I do?

  • After replacing all into "https://" I cleared cache and went to do random page checks on my website to make sure everything is working. Random checks are not a guarantee but it's still good to do.
  • I then looked into my site code to double-check that in the place where Google had an issue with the full URL is now showing instead of just "//whatever". It naturally was as the HTTP / HTTPS Remover Wordpress plugin was now removed.
  • I then went back to the Google Search Console and clicked the button to Validate my fix. Google did a check for a few minutes to make sure the fix was done and accepted my request. The Validation then takes a number of days to complete. Currently it is saying "Validation Looking good" and I am confident that this issue is now resolved.


UPDATE

Hi again. It's been a few days (~ 5 days since validation started) and I just wanted to add an update.

Now 68 out of the 155 URLs have passed the validation but Google has put them under the "Other" category rather than "Passed". This is because Google could not find the original error since I have fixed it so in those cases it puts in the "Other" category. But you see on the picture I added below that this is considered same as "Passed".

Again, I don't know why it takes so long for the validation to finish, I would think Google could do this in minutes, but as you can see it has been 5 days and it only processed 68 URLs.

Anyhow, I am not worried because clearly the fix has worked and the URLs are passing validation so I am sure the issue of "Unparsable structured data" / "Incorrect value type "@context" " has been fully fixed.


Labels:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)