by The Computing Australia Group | Fix Google Deindexing
Issues (2025)
When you’ve poured time and money into your website, nothing stings more than discovering your pages are missing from Google. Deindexing (being removed from Google’s index) kills organic traffic overnight and can rattle even seasoned marketers.
This guide explains how Google indexing works, the most common reasons sites get deindexed, how to diagnose what happened, and exact, step-by-step recovery actions. You’ll also find a glossary, FAQs, and a practical SEO checklist to prevent future incidents.
What Is Google’s Index-and Why It Matters
Google’s index is like a giant library catalogue of web pages. When Google discovers a page (via crawling), it evaluates the content and stores information about it in the index. Only indexed pages are eligible to appear in search results.
A quick way to check what’s indexed:
-
Search site:yourdomain.com in Google.
This returns a rough list of indexed pages (not a complete audit, but a useful snapshot).
Crawl → Index → Rank:
1. Googlebot fetches pages (crawl), 2) processes and stores them (index), 3) ranks them for queries (search results). If steps 1 or 2 fail-or if Google decides your pages violate policies-your site may become partially or fully deindexed.
The Two Big Buckets of Deindexing
Deindexing typically happens for one of two reasons:
1. You (or your site) told Google not to index
– via technical settings like noindex, robots.txt, password protection, or recurring server errors.
2. Google took action
– due to legal obligations, security risks, or violations of spam/quality policies.
Understanding which bucket you’re in determines your fastest path to recovery.
Common Reasons Google Removes Pages or Entire Sites
1. Legal Obligations & Policy Compliance
Google must comply with valid legal requests (e.g., copyright takedowns). Content that defames, doxes, or otherwise violates applicable laws may be removed from search. In some regions, additional local rules apply. If your site receives such a complaint, Google can remove affected pages (sometimes whole sections) from results.
What to do
- Review notices in Search Console → Security & Manual Actions → Manual actions and Messages.
- Cloaking or sneaky redirects (showing search engines different content than users).
- Doorway pages (thin pages aimed solely at ranking for variations of keywords).
- Aggressive link schemes (buying/selling links, PBNs, manipulative anchor spam).
- Structured data (schema) spam (misleading markup to fake rich results).
- User-generated spam left unchecked (e.g., comment/forum spam at scale).
2. Manual Actions for Spam or Policy Violations
A manual action is a human-reviewed penalty applied when your site violates Google’s spam policies. Depending on severity, it can affect a single URL, a set of pages, or your entire domain.
Typical triggers:
- Pure spam & generated gibberish (low-value auto-generated pages, spun text).
- If a legal takedown is involved, consult counsel, remove or rectify the content, and follow Google’s instructions to appeal if appropriate.
What to do
- Open Search Console → Manual actions to see the exact issue.
- Clean up every instance (content, links, redirects, markup).
- Document your fixes and submit a Reconsideration Request explaining what you changed and how you’ll prevent recurrence.
3. Security Issues: Hacked, Malware, or Phishing
If your site hosts malware, phishing pages, or is compromised (e.g., injected spam, cloaked redirects), Google can remove affected pages and warn users with interstitials (“this site may harm your computer”).
What to do
- Check Search Console → Security issues for details.
- Put the site in maintenance mode if needed.
- Remove malicious code, reset credentials, update software/plugins, and patch vulnerabilities.
- Request a security review in Search Console once you’re certain the site is clean.
4. You Accidentally Blocked Crawling or Indexing
This is more common than you’d think-especially after redesigns or migrations.
Frequent culprits:
- A global Disallow: / in robots.txt.
- noindex meta tag or x-robots-tag header added site-wide (intentionally for staging but left on in production).
- Staging passwords or IP whitelists moved into production.
- Canonical tags pointing to non-indexable or wrong domains.
- Server errors (5xx), timeouts, or infinite redirect loops causing crawl failure.
- robots.txt blocking CSS/JS critical to rendering (hurts crawl & quality evaluation).
- Massive parameter duplication or incorrect pagination that leads Google to skip indexing.
What to do
- Test representative URLs in Search Console → URL Inspection.
- Verify Coverage / Indexing reports for “Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag,” “Blocked by robots.txt,” or “Alternate page with proper canonical tag.”
- Fix the directives, ensure 200 (OK) HTTP status, and submit affected URLs for re-crawling.
5. Thin, Unhelpful, or Low-E-E-A-T Content
Pages that offer little value-duplicate boilerplate, shallow listicles, doorway variants-may be dropped from the index or simply fail to get indexed at all. Google’s systems increasingly prioritize experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust (E-E-A-T) and deprioritize unhelpful pages.
Signals that hurt indexing:
- Large volumes of near-duplicate pages (location/service variants with nothing unique).
- Auto-generated text with minimal human oversight.
- Out-of-date or factually shaky content in YMYL niches (Your Money/Your Life).
- Poor UX: slow, intrusive ads, broken navigation, or pages that don’t load well on mobile.
What to do
- Consolidate thin pages, expand with original insights, data, and media.
- Add credible authorship, bylines, and references.
- Improve Core Web Vitals, page experience, and mobile usability.
6. Gray-Area Link Practices and Toxic Backlinks
Google devalues manipulative links, and in extreme cases may apply manual actions. Even without a manual action, obvious link schemes can suppress indexing/ranking.
Risky patterns:
- Paid links without proper rel attributes.
- Link exchanges at scale, or low-quality guest posts stuffed with anchors.
- PBNs and expired-domain networks built for link juice, not users.
What to do
- Remove or nofollow paid/low-quality links you control.
- For links you can’t remove, consider Disavow (use sparingly; it’s not a silver bullet).
- Refocus on editorially earned links via PR, data content, tools, and partnerships.
7) Removals Requested by Users or Site Owners
Google allows people to report personal harm (e.g., doxxing, explicit images without consent) and also allows site owners to remove their own content from results.
Examples:
- Requests through Google’s Remove content process for personal information or exploitative content.
- You used Search Console → Index → Removals to temporarily hide URLs and forgot to lift the request.
- You blocked entire directories with robots.txt to fix a privacy issue and left them blocked.
What to do
- Check Search Console → Removals.
- If you initiated the removal, reverse it when safe.
- If someone else reported content, remediate the harm (redact, anonymise, or remove pages) and appeal where appropriate.
8. Technical Debt After Migrations or Redesigns
Relaunches are prime time for indexation disasters.
Typical pitfalls:
- Changing URL structures without 301 redirects.
- Forgetting to migrate canonical tags, hreflang, structured data, or sitemaps.
- Mixing live and staging assets, causing mixed content or crawl blocks.
- Serving noindex to logged-out users only (server misconfig).
What to do
- Map old → new URLs and implement 301s.
- Submit fresh XML sitemaps and fix coverage errors.
- Validate structured data and hreflang.
- Use URL Inspection on high-value pages and monitor logs for crawl anomalies.
How to Confirm If You’ve Been Deindexed (and Why)
1. Run a site search: site:yourdomain.com
- If it returns 0 results, it suggests site-wide deindexing.
- If some pages appear, the issue may be partial (sections or templates only).
2. Check Google Search Console (GSC)
- Indexing / Pages: See why URLs are excluded (noindex, canonicalized, blocked, duplicate, etc.).
- Manual Actions: Confirms policy violations.
- Security Issues: Indicates malware/hacking.
- Removals: Shows temporary hides.
- Page Experience / Core Web Vitals: Poor UX won’t usually cause deindexing but can hurt eligibility and crawl prioritization.
3. Crawl your site (Screaming Frog or similar)
- Flag noindex tags, blocked resources, 4xx/5xx errors, and canonical inconsistencies.
4. Review server logs
- Confirm Googlebot visits, status codes, and whether resources are blocked or timing out.
5. Audit robots.txt
- Look for Disallow: / or blocked critical paths (/wp-admin/ is fine; blocking /wp-includes/ or /assets/ can break rendering).
Step-by-Step Recovery Plan
Step 1: Stabilise & Secure
- If compromised, lock down access, update credentials, patch software, and restore from a clean backup if needed.
- Set up server-level caching/CDN to reduce timeouts.
Step 2: Remove Indexing Blocks
- Eliminate noindex and robot blocks from pages that should rank.
- Fix any unintended x-robots-tag headers.
- Ensure all canonical tags point to indexable, live URLs (200 status).
Step 3: Fix Errors at Scale
- 301 redirect old URLs to their most relevant new equivalents.
- Repair 404s for still-linked pages or 410 truly gone content.
- Resolve 5xx server errors and infinite loops.
Step 4: Clean Up Spam & Policy Violations
- Remove cloaking, doorway templates, sneaky redirects, and structured data spam.
- Purge auto-generated or scraped text. Expand thin content or consolidate into robust resources.
- Moderate or close spammy UGC areas; add reCAPTCHA, rate limits, and moderation workflows.
Step 5: Link Profile Hygiene
- Stop any manipulative link acquisition immediately.
- Remove/nofollow links you control; compile evidence for reconsideration.
- Disavow as a last resort for stubborn toxic domains.
Step 6: Re-submit to Google
- Update and submit XML sitemaps.
- Use URL Inspection → Request indexing for priority URLs.
- If you had a Manual Action, submit a Reconsideration Request with a concise, honest summary of fixes and proof.
Step 7: Monitor, Measure, Iterate
- Track Indexing → Pages and Crawl Stats in GSC weekly.
- Watch server logs to ensure Googlebot is recrawling steadily.
- Compare organic traffic and impressions in Search Console → Performance.
- Keep a change log (what you changed, where, when) to connect fixes to outcomes.
Prevention: Hardening Your Site Against Future Deindexing
- Governance & Releases
- Require a pre-launch SEO checklist for every deployment (see below).
- Separate staging and production with clear flags; never let noindex ship to production.
- Content Operations
- Publish helpful, original content with SME input, data, and credible sources.
- Maintain editorial standards, bylines, and review cycles—especially for YMYL topics.
- Update or retire stale content; consolidate or redirect near-duplicates.
- Technical Hygiene
- Monitor Core Web Vitals and fix mobile/CLS issues.
- Keep sitemaps fresh; remove non-canonical or noindexed URLs from sitemaps.
- Validate schema (no misleading markup).
- Review robots.txt after every release.
- Security
- Apply WAF/CDN protections, auto-update CMS/plugins, enforce MFA, and maintain backups.
- Regularly run malware scans; audit admin roles and SSH/DB access.
Jargon Buster
- Google Index: Google’s database of web pages eligible to show in search results.
- Crawling: Googlebot discovering and fetching pages.
- Indexing: Processing and storing information about a page so it can rank.
- Manual Action: A penalty applied by human reviewers for policy violations.
- Robots.txt: A file telling crawlers what paths they can or cannot fetch.
- Noindex: A directive that instructs search engines not to index a page.
- Canonical Tag: Hints which URL is the “master” version among duplicates.
- Core Web Vitals: Metrics of user experience (loading, interactivity, stability).
- E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust.
- UGC: User-generated content (e.g., comments, forum posts).
FAQ
Is duplicate content a reason for complete deindexing?
Not usually. It can dilute signals and lead to de-prioritised indexing, but full deindexing typically requires more serious policy or technical issues.
How long does reinclusion take after fixes?
Recrawling can happen quickly for popular sites and more slowly for smaller ones. Manual action reviews require a human review and can take longer. The key is completeness of fixes and a clear reconsideration request.
Do I need to use the disavow tool?
Only when you have a massive, manipulative link profile you cannot clean up directly. For most sites, Google simply ignores low-quality links.
Can server speed alone cause deindexing?
Severe, persistent 5xx errors or timeouts can cause large-scale index dropping. Fix reliability first.
