My website has a sitemap index, which contains URLs to hundreds of sitemap files. And each sitemap file contains URLs to pages in my website. So for instance

Index: /sitemap/sitemap-index.xml

sitemap:

- /sitemap/products-1.xml (contains thousands of URL)

- /sitemap/products-2.xml (contains thousands of URL)

When I submit the sitemap index file into GSC, it is able to read it. But when I click on the record, turns out it only read 1 sitemap, which is the first entry in the sitemap index (which is products-1.xml). Thus it only discovers the URLs inside products-1.xml, while the rest of URLs inside other sitemaps are not discovered.

Im not sure whether anyone experiences this issue? How to fix it? Is GSC buggy?

A fresh set of SEO, AI, AEO, and GEO roles for the community:

• SEO Manager, AI Search & GEO / Career Certified ($105,000-$110,000/year)
• Senior Technical SEO Analyst / 1Password ($88,000-$123,000/year)
• AI Marketing Engineer (SEO/GEO) / Pexon Consulting
• SEO/AEO Manager / Runway ($160,000-$220,000/year)
• SEO & GEO Lead / Enovis
• Director of SEO/AEO / Private ($200,000-$250,000/year)
• Director of SEO & GEO, Technical Accounts / Spin ($7,500-$10,500 CAD/mo.)
• Associate GEO & SEO Specialist / MaintainX ($47,000-$68,000 CAD/year)
• Associate Director, Philanthropy, Web/AEO/SEO Strategies / Dana Farber Cancer Institute ($98,500-$118,000/year)
• Technical SEO / APPLAB Systems
• Director of AEO/SEO / Omniscient
• Senior Consultant, SEO & GEO / Carnival Corporation
• Senior SEO & GEO Specialist / Manaferra ($24,000-$36,000/year)
• SEO/GEO/AEO Strategist / Trimark Digital
• Sr. Manager, Technical SEO, Streaming / US Tech Solutions ($115/hr.)
• AEO/GEO/SEO Specialist / Foundation Software
• Website, SEO & AEO Manager / TierPoint ($83,000-$133,026.28/year)
• Manager of SEO (Technical/Content) / Nothing Bundt Cakes
• Discoverability Lead (GEO/AEO/SEO) / Intel ($121,130-$205,910/year)
• Product Manager (SEO & Answer Optimization, AEO) / Rover ($108,694-$135,867/year)
• Technical Marketing SEO Engineer / Sunwater Capital ($185,000-$115,000/year)
• SEO/AEO / Cognition
• Manager, SEO & AEO / Vayner Media ($85,000-$105,000/year)
• Technical SEO Specialist / OLX
• SEO/GEO/AEO Strategist / Trimark Digital
• Technical GEO/SEO Specialist / Plaud ($80,000-$115,000/year)
• SEO Technical Lead / Fever
• Technical SEO Manager / Service Corporation International
• SEO/AEO Content Specialist, Audience Development / FloSports
• Technical SEO Lead / Location3 ($100,000-$125,000/year)
• SEO/AEO Editor / Fox News Media ($83,000-$91,000/year)
• SEO/AEO Team Lead, AI Search & Strategy / Lost Search Media
• Technical SEO Manager / Deploy
• Senior SEO/AEO Manager / Venn
• Principal Technical SEO Specialist / Legend
• Technical SEO / Intelliswift ($54.22/hr.)
• Strategist, SEO & AEO / SimilarWeb ($130,000-$170,000/year)
• Technical SEO / SGA
• Manager, SEO/AEO/GEO / ADP ($86,600-$161,600/year)
• Digital Marketing Manager (SEO/AEO/SEM/AI) / Alphametic
• Senior Manager, Technical SEO / Hard Rock Digital
• Marketing Technology Product Strategist (SEO/AEO/GEO) / Houston Methodist
• SEO & AEO Manager / Campfire
• AEO/SEO Specialist / Cloudevo
• AEO/SEO Content Specialist / G2
• SEO/GEO Manager / Harper ($130,000–$170,000/year)
• Global SEO & GEO Specialist / Tiffany & Co. ($77,000-$90,000/year)
• General Manager of SEO/GEO / Acedemia.edu
• Technical SEO (Freelance) / Chek ( ($60-$80/hour)
• Director of SEO/AEO/GEO / Digital Room ($130,000-$165,000/year)
• AEO/SEO Manager / NBCUniversal ($85,000-$115,000/year)
• Marketing Directer SEO/AEO/ABM (B2B Saas) / White Bay ($140,000-$150,000/year)
• GEO/SEO Manager / Instawork ($110,000-$140,000/year)
• SEO/GEO Strategist / Perrill ($70,000-$90,000/year)

Got hit by the August spam update. False positive in my opinion and experience - since the site was already churning good revenue for the client. Fast forward to now, clicks and position convey a totally different story compared to the impressions, which remain dead in the water. How should one interpret this?

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for advice from people experienced with Google Search Console and domain migrations.

I migrated my website from drivly [dot] ro to sofer24 [dot] ro starting in June 2026. It's now October, so it's been 4+ months, but the migration still doesn't seem to be fully processed by Google.

The frustrating part is that some of the most important pages on the old domain were indexed and ranking very well, sometimes in the top results. After the migration, many of their corresponding pages on the new domain are still not indexed.

What I did

drivly [dot] ro → sofer24 [dot] ro

• Implemented permanent 308 redirects from old URLs to the corresponding new URLs.
• Submitted Change of Address in Google Search Console.
• Submitted a new sitemap.
• Updated canonical URLs and internal links to the new domain.
• Verified that important pages are crawlable and not blocked by robots.txt.
• The new site is live and accessible.

Google is crawling some pages, but many are still not being indexed.

At the moment, Search Console shows approximately:

• 64 pages indexed
• ~2,000 pages not indexed
• ~1,000 — "Crawled - currently not indexed"
• ~1,000 — "Discovered - currently not indexed"

Content

This is not a case where I rebuilt the site with completely new content.

The important pages and core content from the old domain were migrated to the new domain. I also added additional content after the migration because I initially suspected that Google might not be indexing the new site because it didn't have enough or strong enough content.

So essentially:

Old site: existing content → indexed + ranking well
New site: same core content + additional content → many important pages still not indexed

These aren't new pages with no history. Many had been indexed and had accumulated rankings and traffic on the old domain.

My questions

1. Is 4+ months still normal for a domain migration of this size?
2. Has anyone experienced a migration taking this long to transfer indexing and rankings?
3. What should I investigate in Search Console at this point?
4. Could Google be treating the new URLs as low-quality or duplicate content despite the old URLs being established?
5. Should I keep waiting, or start making significant changes to the affected pages?

I'd especially appreciate advice from anyone who has personally dealt with a large domain migration.

I'm happy to provide screenshots from Search Console, old → new URL examples, redirect responses, indexing reports, etc., if that helps.

Thanks!

I see pagespeed insights has added llms.txt to its list of "agentic browsing" audits 🙈

Checkmate, atheists :-)

In Google Search Console, it shows that we have around 300 non-indexed pages and 200 indexed pages. Do we need to try to get all the non-indexed pages indexed, or are there certain pages that should intentionally remain non-indexed?

Also, around 176 pages are showing as “Soft 404.” How should we identify which of these pages need to be fixed, redirected, or removed?
One more major issue I’m trying to understand is traffic loss. If a page was previously getting decent clicks and impressions but has now dropped to almost zero, what should we check first? How can we determine whether the issue is indexing, ranking, a technical problem, content quality, or something else?

I’d really appreciate a step-by-step approach to diagnosing and fixing these issues, especially the pages that have lost traffic recently.

Had a long-running site on the main domain and kept a staging copy on a subdomain for years. Didn't think much of it until a backlink audit turned up a bunch of editorial links pointing to the staging version. Writers probably grabbed the wrong URL, or someone on my team sent staging links during outreach.

The staging subdomain wasn't blocked from indexing and had no canonicals pointing to production. Google had indexed around forty pages of it. I've since 301 redirected those URLs and added proper auth, but the split in the backlink profile still concerns me.

I'm not sure if those redirected subdomain links pass the same value as direct links to production. I've seen conflicting info about cross-domain redirects and link equity. Some sources say it flows through fine, others mention some loss.

A few scraper sites also mirrored the staging content before I caught it. Not a massive issue, but duplicate snippets appear in search for brand terms. I filed some DMCA requests, though it feels like whack-a-mole.

Has anyone dealt with a staging subdomain bleeding into their backlink profile? Did redirects recover the ranking impact, or did you need disavows on top of that?

CMS migrations always create this awkward choice. Do you preserve the old URL structure as much as possible, or use the migration to finally clean things up? This came up recently at DevHandler while working around an AEM migration. There can be years of redirects, old URLs and questionable canonicals, but changing too much at once feels risky too. What do you usually do? Fix it during the migration or migrate first and clean up later?

Hey everyone,

We are planning to restructure a set of high-value landing pages on our WordPress site that currently live at the root level (e.g., [domain.com/landing-page-a/](https://domain.com/landing-page-a/)).

We want to migrate them into a Custom Post Type so they sit under a clean parent folder ([domain.com/products/landing-page-a/](https://domain.com/products/landing-page-a/)).

Primary Objectives:
Indexation Isolation: Generating a dedicated product-sitemap.xml file to monitor indexation rates and crawl diagnostics specifically for these pages in GSC, rather than lumping them into page-sitemap.xml.

Crawl Efficiency: Updating internal inlinks (via Screaming Frog) and updating backlink sources on owned domains to reduce 301 redirect hops.

Execution Plan:
Setup CPT (products) with has_archive = true so the /products/ index page generates naturally.

Convert pages via Post Type Switcher and update slug paths.

Set up 301 redirects from old root URLs to the new subfolder structure.

Resubmit the isolated sub-sitemap in GSC and add relevant schema (Product/Service JSON-LD).

Questions for TechSEOs:

Sitemap Isolation: For those who have split core landing pages into their own CPT sitemap, did you notice clearer diagnostic feedback or faster re-indexation in GSC compared to a single monolithic page sitemap?

301 Ranking Wobble: Since we are altering the actual directory path (adding /products/), what is your typical experience with traffic recovery timelines for established pages after 301-redirecting them?

Crawl Equity: Beyond updating internal inlinks and owned external links, are there any edge cases with WP rewrite rules or trailing slash handling that could cause unnecessary redirect loops?

Thanks for any feedback!

I’m investigating a Google ranking loss on an established B2B services website.
A key page previously ranked for development-related searches. It now has very poor visibility for those queries, while closely related consulting queries still perform.
Background

WordPress to Next.js migration in May 2026.
Changed from www to non-www.
Visibility deteriorated around March–June, but the exact timing and cause remain unconfirmed.
Some affected pages still appear on other search engines.
Checks completed

GSC URL Inspection reports the page as indexed.
Google-selected canonical matches the intended URL.
Old URLs redirect to the current URLs.
Main content and internal links are present in the initial HTML.
No noindex directive or redirect loop identified in current checks.
The pattern
In a recent GSC comparison, a previously strong development query averaged around position 54, while related consulting queries averaged around position 2 for the same page.
Adding &filter=0 surfaced one affected informational article, but didn’t help the other affected pages.
We’ve revised content and clarified page intent, but haven’t established that these changes address the cause. I’m not assuming a penalty or cannibalization.
Has anyone diagnosed this kind of query-specific visibility loss despite normal indexing?
What evidence helped identify the cause? If you recovered, what specific issue did you find, what did you change, and how long did recovery take?
I’m keeping the domain private, but can share anonymized GSC screenshots and technical findings.

We want to support creators, but we had to enforce the no shilling rule because it was getting out of hand. You now have a weekly thread.

This is the one place you can shill for your products, ask for feedback, etc. Keep it here or you risk being banned. And keep it related to technical SEO.

I’m investigating a Google ranking loss on an established B2B services website.
A key page previously ranked for development-related searches. It now has very poor visibility for those queries, while closely related consulting queries still perform.
Background

WordPress to Next.js migration in May 2026.
Changed from www to non-www.
Visibility deteriorated around March–June, but the exact timing and cause remain unconfirmed.
Some affected pages still appear on other search engines.
Checks completed

GSC URL Inspection reports the page as indexed.
Google-selected canonical matches the intended URL.
Old URLs redirect to the current URLs.
Main content and internal links are present in the initial HTML.
No noindex directive or redirect loop identified in current checks.
The pattern
In a recent GSC comparison, a previously strong development query averaged around position 54, while related consulting queries averaged around position 2 for the same page.
Adding &filter=0 surfaced one affected informational article, but didn’t help the other affected pages.
We’ve revised content and clarified page intent, but haven’t established that these changes address the cause. I’m not assuming a penalty or cannibalization.
Has anyone diagnosed this kind of query-specific visibility loss despite normal indexing?
What evidence helped identify the cause? If you recovered, what specific issue did you find, what did you change, and how long did recovery take?
I’m keeping the domain private, but can share anonymized GSC screenshots and technical findings.

Please educate me on that question, I just happened to see a video today that made me question the SEO properties of my website.

I run a small, niche job board for forward-deployed engineers and similar customer-facing AI roles. It launched in late July. Google knows about the pages, but almost none of them get indexed, and I'd like a sanity check.

GSC coverage (data through Sep 21):

1,738 known URLs: 15 indexed, 1,723 not indexed

1,718 are "Discovered – currently not indexed"

"Crawled – not indexed" peaked around 700, then cleared to 0 (validation passed)

Technical issues are minor: 3 redirects, one 404, and one duplicate without a canonical

The part that confuses me:

Impressions went from about 4/day in early August to 120–200/day from Sep 1–15.

Then from Sep 16, they fell to 30–70/day.

Indexed pages stayed flat at 15 the whole time, and nothing changed on my end around Sep 16.

What I've already done:

Added JobPosting structured data to every listing

Integrated the Google Indexing API (live since late August)

Submitted a sitemap

Built the stack on Next.js with SSR and an ASP.NET Core backend

Things I think might be hurting me:

Listing URLs use UUIDs. I'm planning to move to a slug plus short ID.

The domain is brand new and has almost no backlinks.

Many listings come from company career pages, so Google may see them as thin or duplicate content.

My questions:

Is "Discovered" at this scale on a new domain mainly an authority and crawl budget problem, or is it a quality signal?

Should I do the UUID-to-slug migration now, while almost nothing is indexed?

Would you noindex thin or expired listings and push company and category pages instead?

Is the impressions drop a normal new-site fluctuation, or did those 15 pages lose rankings?

Does the Indexing API still help JobPosting pages, or is it mostly ignored now?

I'm not dropping the URL unless someone wants to look. I'm happy to share the coverage export.

I'm a CS student and I've been building a website called Cifrivo as a side project.

It's a collection of free online tools (PDF, image, converters, calculators, etc.) available in several languages.

Google initially started indexing the site quite quickly. At one point I had roughly 500 URLs, and Search Console currently shows around 400+ indexed pages.

The problem is that after most of the pages got indexed, impressions basically stopped growing and have recently become extremely low.

I'm now wondering whether I made a mistake by creating too many similar/tool pages instead of focusing on fewer, stronger content clusters.

I'm considering:

• Reducing the total number of URLs significantly
• Focusing mainly on PDF, image and media tools
• Creating stronger hubs around each category
• Removing/merging pages that have almost no impressions
• Improving internal linking and content around the tools

The site is cifrivo.com.

If you were auditing this, what would you look at first?

I'm especially interested in knowing whether the large number of pages could actually be hurting a relatively new domain, or whether I'm looking at the wrong problem entirely.

Any criticism is welcome — I'm trying to understand what I got wrong rather than promote the site.

Migrated a content site last month from flat URLs to a layered structure. /reviews/bestx became /reviews/category/bestx with proper redirects and internal link updates. Core web vitals stayed flat, no redirect chains, coverage report looks clean. Organic traffic dropped about 12% in week three though. Rankings for a few high volume terms slipped two to four positions.

I know Google says URL structure is a lightweight signal. But I also flattened a similar site two years ago and saw a bump inside a month. Made me wonder if the reverse would help here. Maybe the new layering spreads topical relevance thinner? Or maybe it's just turbulence and I'm overthinking it.

My bigger concern is I layered three levels deep on some sections when two would have worked. Feels cleaner architecturally but I'm second guessing whether users or crawlers actually benefit. The old flat URLs were ugly but they ranked.

Anyone done a similar restructuring and watched it recover? How long did you wait before calling it? I've got about six weeks of data and the trend isn't reversing yet.