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SOLVED

Page Not Indexed but referrer is showing as Google

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Level 2

Hello!

 

Our organization has recently been rolling out a new home page. Due to extra caution, they have decided to have it live on a temporary sub-domain first where the normal home page URL re-directs to the the new home page URL. When a redirect occurs, a CID populates in the new URL, as far as I know, this new URL with the CID is the one that Adobe should be capturing with re-directs. If a user manually types in the new home page URL, then no re-direct occurs (other than adding the https:// and language parameter) so the URL that adobe captures is one without a CID.

 

The new home page URL is not indexed in Google nor do we want this page indexed in Google. We have checked and according to Google, it is still not indexed.

 

When looking at the "referrers" for all raw versions of the URL (with all the different CIDs), the second top referrer appears to be https://www.google.com/, which I am guessing is due to the original home page being found in Google, it re-directing and then Adobe capturing the new home page URL and still associating Google as the referrer.

 

If that is the case, that makes sense to me, however, we are seeing the same thing (the second top referrer being Google) for the new home page URL that shows up with no CID (no re-directs should've occurred). Perhaps we should be digging more into how our re-directs have been implemented, but any insights into why this might be happening are welcome!

 

Thank you thank you!

 

1 Accepted Solution

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Correct answer by
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion

Just out of curiosity, did you check the referrer type on the Google Referrers?

 

Google has a lot of products, and not all of them are part of Search / Search Console... it's possible that those referrers came The Google app (linked from one of your content pages), or maybe from Google News.... The Search Engine should be type "Search Engines" everything else is lumped under "Other"....

 

It could also, as you said, be something with your redirects... 

 

Google seems to have many ways to mysteriously find content and send people to it when you don't want them too... Good luck investigating!

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1 Reply

Avatar

Correct answer by
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion

Just out of curiosity, did you check the referrer type on the Google Referrers?

 

Google has a lot of products, and not all of them are part of Search / Search Console... it's possible that those referrers came The Google app (linked from one of your content pages), or maybe from Google News.... The Search Engine should be type "Search Engines" everything else is lumped under "Other"....

 

It could also, as you said, be something with your redirects... 

 

Google seems to have many ways to mysteriously find content and send people to it when you don't want them too... Good luck investigating!