Organic search result from Analytics for March 2023 if down by 36% from March 2022.
This has not been fixed as far as we can see.
We are seeing an increase in these web pixel manager sandbox indexing errors.
Started on Wednesday 8th Feb 2023 with 394 upto the Saturday 8th April 2023 we are now on 17260.
1 Like
Hey Greg-Bernhardt,
the problem of this semi-solution is the export-maximum of 404 errors in Google Search Console. You can export up to 1.000 404 errors, but if you have more errors than that, you can’t export them. That’s a big problem, especially for larger Online-Shops because you won’t be able to see real problems in your shop then, if the whole list is full with these kind of URLs that don’t have any benefit for Google or for Shopify customers.
In my opinion this issue should really be fixed immediately
4 Likes
“The pages are gone, so communicate that.”
-Greg Bernhardt, Shopify Staff, 3/30/2023
Conveniently enough, there’s an HTTP code for that that. It’s called 410 - Gone! What’s super cool is it tells google that the page is “gone”, not “missing” so google stops looking for it, they publicly acknowledged that 410’s get pulled faster. I know per our DM’s that you are aware of every single piece of information above so your response defending the 404 decision is concerning.
Maybe you acknowledged what I said but just thought I was wrong, I’m just a forum member. Why don’t we ask the most respected source out there, the Internet Engineering Task Force.
The 410 (Gone) status code indicates that access to the target resource is no longer available at the origin server and that this condition is likely to be permanent. If the origin server does not know, or has no facility to determine, whether or not the condition is permanent, the status code 404 (Not Found) ought to be used instead.
The 410 response is primarily intended to assist the task of web maintenance by notifying the recipient that the resource is intentionally unavailable and that the server owners desire that remote links to that resource be removed.
The 404 (Not Found) status code indicates that the origin server did not find a current representation for the target resource or is not willing to disclose that one exists. A 404 status code does not indicate whether this lack of representation is temporary or permanent; the 410 (Gone) status code is preferred over 404 if the origin server knows, presumably through some configurable means, that the condition is likely to be permanent.
Source Document:
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110.html#name-404-not-found
1 Like
Here’s what John Mueller from Google said about 404 and 410.
“From our point of view, in the mid term/long term, a 404 is the same as a 410 for us. So in both of these cases, we drop those URLs from our index.
We generally reduce crawling a little bit of those URLs so that we don’t spend too much time crawling things that we know don’t exist.
The subtle difference here is that a 410 will sometimes fall out a little bit faster than a 404. But usually, we’re talking on the order of a couple days or so.
So if you’re just removing content naturally, then that’s perfectly fine to use either one. If you’ve already removed this content long ago, then it’s already not indexed so it doesn’t matter for us if you use a 404 or 410.”
Hey Greg-Bernhardt,
the 410 solution would help to avoid the problem with too many 404 errors to export. Is it so hard to fix that, or why didn’t you say anything to my comment? Here it is again:
Hey Greg-Bernhardt,
the problem of this semi-solution is the export-maximum of 404 errors in Google Search Console. You can export up to 1.000 404 errors, but if you have more errors than that, you can’t export them. That’s a big problem, especially for larger Online-Shops because you won’t be able to see real problems in your shop then, if the whole list is full with these kind of URLs that don’t have any benefit for Google or for Shopify customers.
In my opinion this issue should really be fixed immediately
2 Likes
Hi Greg-Bernhardt,
Thank you for working on this issue, and for having the attention of Shopify. It seems these attacks are some of the most important issues for Shopify - so it needs Shopify CEO attention and resources to get it fixed, and for Shopify to get ahead of it. This isn’t where we are it seems.
However, it is confusing as to what I should or shouldn’t do … I have been noticing this issue for months on my Google Search Console and have been periodically reading this blog post.
The “Accepted Solution” is not valid as it is old. It must be updated please to tell people what they should do … EXACTLY and clearly. Throwing additional comments midway in this blog isn’t working!
For instance … I just inserted
Disallow: /web-pixels-manager
Disallow: /wpm
into my robots.txt.liquid file.
Should I have done that? I can’t tell by reading the 9 pages of back and forth.
I still have lots of “non-indexed” files showing:
I have also created a whole bunch of redirects so that the 404’s are presented on an actual webpage. Should I have done that?
I have trying work out what works and what doesn’t now for months … too long.
I await your reply please.
Thank you,
I-LIVE-ON
5 Likes
This is still a big problem, my indexed wpm pages are almost gone but not indexed pages count has gone from 20k to almost 60k in one month. Really tanked my ranking . spring time is my busy season and this is slowest i ever had in 10 years.
I have no clue what shopify is doing to fix this but they need to speed it up.
Also stop saying not indexed doesn’t matter , i m sure a lot of business on shopify are feeling this. 20k to 60k count rise in not indexed pages is effecting our ranking.
If any one has any solution to speed this process up and get us back to normal please let us know?
7 Likes
God!! You are damn right, and god pls punish them!! what they are doing to us, our years’ effort, just ruined by their tiny code!!!
4 Likes
Why are you doing this on Earth? Do you know how hard we effort on our webs? While you can just leave with a tiny code bug bomb for us to deal with the ■■■■■■ results? We don’t accept it! YOU SOLVE THIS PROBLEM AT ONCE, AND YOU OWE US AN APOLOGY!
5 Likes
They need to pay for this!!!
3 Likes
Can you provide an update on this? I agree with @TIMECAPSULES , it is not clear from these 9 pages what we have to do to fix this issue. You keep asking for individual store pages with issues but what is the generic fix every store owner can use to resolve the indexing problem?
Can you please provide an update? Or at least inform us on the status of fixing this? My SEO ranking is dropping severely, similar to other’s. Please communicate a clear path forward or at least provide some insights from Shopify’s side into the timeline of fixing this. Doing so also removes the urge for other’s to keep contacting you about the same matter.
Thanks in advance.
This is definitely not fixed. We have clients sending us their GSC error notification emails on a weekly basis. Now the error is showing up as a Server error (5xx) in GSC.
https://website.com/wpm@0.0.280@5c46ad45w03c6b27bp74bf52d0m9e637fdc/web-pixel-shopify-custom-pixel@0530/sandbox/collections/collection-name
2 Likes
@modabile 410s are also listed in the 404 GSC report. Google has documentation that the difference between 410 and 404 is a couple days at most. https://youtu.be/kQIyk-2-wRg?t=1721
@Andy-Envision I’m seeing that page return 404
@TIMECAPSULES nothing is required on your end
@ahgaos there is no evidence or communication from Google that number of noindex URLs results in a ranking loss. There have been a couple of Google Core Algorithm updates in the past few months. I would encourage you to investigate those.
I have a question for all - just curious. Of the few - throughout this community with similar issues going back for some as early as last summer - I noticed sites from EU, Canada etc… also NOT dot.com’s
SO Questions are: What country is your affected site in? What is affected site domain name end suffix?
Just wondering if there’s a pattern re outside the USA or Not a dot com
That’s because I removed my client’s domain name and collection name, as you can see it’s using website.com. I was only showing what the URL structure is appearing in GSC.
Thank you for Youtube link to 404 or 410 discussion. However, key here is speakers reference to “removing content naturally”. Our issue, is with the thousands upon thousand of other pages that are somehow looking to be indexed. This so far is only happening with our Shopify site. I really do believe more attention needs to be paid here.
Of course Google Algorithm updates factor in, so does the economy. There are thousands of variables. Shopify can certainly argue to dismiss…as not their problem. It’s certainly a problem for our store and I don’t have the resources to ultimately rule this out as THE reason our SEO tanked. So…not sure what to do. Nov 2022 was our best month (as a start-up) Dec was good. Then ZIP
3 Likes
This gross stuff has been happening for 3 months, have you ever really thought about the solution to solve the problem?? and the fault you made?? sorry you don’t think that’s your fault, it’s our fault, it’s shopify users’ fault to choose your! If what you did that you claim can solve our problem, why’s here people keeping pooping out to complain?? We are your customers, but what you treat us like? keep thinking about this in your mind, we are hereby for real solutions, but not perfunctory words.
Again this has been 3 months, let’s see how long does your company will keep running.
3 Likes
I’m not sure if this is helpful, so pls let me know if I’ve completely missed the mark here.
I responded to this thread months ago when I first noticed google had indexed some “non pages” on our website. I simply added a “no index” to any pages which had “vendors?q=” in the url and then added the offending url to my GSC removals.
I subsequently had another random “vendors?q=” type url index, I followed the same procedure.
I’ve had no issues.
What am I missing?
Greg I used to agree with you . not indexed pages shouldn’t be effecting our seo. But in reality now i suspect it is effecting our stores . As for google algorithm updates even the best seo experts wont fully know whats going on with that update for a while as they see results come in. Who knows maybe not indexed pages would of been no issue last year but this year its an issue.
What i want to know is why “not indexed” pages count keeps going up ??? are those wpm pages still being generated? Take a look at the screen shot i just took of my GSC.
Just in the past few days it went up by 3k.
Anyone else experiencing this ?