Search Engine Optimization

Real-World Incident: How Google Indexed 9,500 Pages — Then Quietly Removed Them All A case study on AI-generated content, programmatic SEO, and the March 2026 Core Update A LinkedIn connection recently asked me to analyse their website — makdatainsights.com — a market research report platform with around 10,000 pages. What I found was one of the most textbook examples of a Google indexing trap I've seen in real time. Let me walk you through exactly what happened. The Index Graph That Tells the Whole Story Look at the Page Indexing report in Google Search Console. The pattern is striking: 7 Feb 2026 — 78 pages indexed 10 Mar 2026 — 9,528 pages indexed (peak — nearly the full 10K sitemap) 11 Mar 2026 — Drop begins. 9,292 pages. 27 Mar 2026 — March 2026 Core Update released 24 Apr 2026 — Only 2,641 pages indexed. 7,047 pages sit in "Crawled – currently not indexed" Google didn't ignore these pages. It crawled them, indexed them, reconsidered — and then s...

I recently tackled one of the more challenging tasks in local SEO — getting a fake Google Business Profile (GBP) review removed. Here's a full breakdown of the process, the roadblocks, and ultimately, how we succeeded. The problem Upon analysis, I discovered that the same review text had been posted across approximately 15 different Google Business Profiles, spanning multiple locations and three separate companies: Southern Cross Group Services Southern Cross Protection Southern Cross Investigations My client had no record of any customer interaction or engagement with this reviewer whatsoever. Furthermore, my client is an independent entity and is not affiliated with Southern Cross Protection or any similarly named organizations. Initial actions taken I began with the two standard methods available for flagging a fake review: Marked the review as "off-topic" directly on the listing. Submitted a formal removal request via the  Google Review Management Tool . Unfortunately...

Recently, I encountered an interesting indexing issue in Google Search Console while working on the website:  https://www.schoolblazerlimited.com/ Google Search Console showed the following notification: “Duplicate – Google chose different canonical than user.” This issue can sometimes be confusing because even when the technical SEO setup is correct , Google may still choose a different canonical URL. In this post, I would like to share the root cause, investigation process, and the steps we took to resolve the issue. The Issue Observed in Google Search Console When we inspected the homepage URL in Google Search Console , we noticed: The non-www version was indexed in Google -  https://schoolblazerlimited.com/ The www version was not indexed -  https://www.schoolblazerlimited.com/ When checking the URL Inspection Tool , the status showed: “Duplicate – Google chose different canonical than user.” This meant that although we had specified a canonical URL, Google had sel...

Recently, I came across a critical indexing issue on the website hopmyjob.com , which is worth sharing because it can help other website owners and SEO professionals facing similar problems. In Google Search Console (GSC) , the homepage was reported with the status: Page is not indexed: Duplicate, Google chose a different canonical than user At first glance, this looks like a common canonical conflict. However, a deeper investigation revealed a serious security-related SEO issue . Canonical Issue Identified in Google Search Console User-declared canonical:  https://hopmyjob.com/ Google-selected canonical:  https://9738492609.xgijnaqgavwkrbmhgqfeibhugadiz.org/significantly-reduce-their-motivation Screenshot reference: Canonical details from GSC and When Google chooses a different canonical URL than the one we declare, it means: Google does not trust the declared canonical Google believes another URL represents the content better In this case, Google selected a suspicious, ran...

Interesting SEO Observation from a Professional Listing Website Recently, we encountered a critical SEO issue related to a Dynamic Result Page section on a professional listing site. This issue highlights how URL inconsistency can directly impact Google’s ability to process XML sitemaps. What Went Wrong? Our development team unintentionally changed the internal linking structure of dynamically generated pages. New dynamic URLs were generated unexpectedly These URLs did not match : Submitted XML sitemap URLs Canonical URL formats The incorrect URLs were being used in internal links As a result, Google started seeing multiple URL versions for the same pages. Impact on Google Sitemap Processing Before Fix Google stopped processing the XML sitemap URLs Sitemap pages were ignored or delayed Indexing signals became inconsistent This happened because Google was confused about which URL version was the correct one . What We Fixed Updated all int...

 Recently, we came across an interesting case in Google Indexing that highlights how small mistakes in Google Search Console can have a big impact on rankings and visibility. The Case: Page Missing from SERPs The page https://www.experience.com/reviews/joe-spisak-403982 was not showing up in Google Search Results (SERPs). When we inspected the URL in Google Search Console (GSC) , the tool clearly said: Crawled and Indexed – meaning Google had the page in its index. However, when we checked with the “site:” search operator ( site:experience.com/reviews/joe-spisak-403982 ), the page was not visible in the results. At the same time, repeated submissions for re-indexing were not helping. The Root Cause On deeper analysis, we discovered something unusual: The page was being crawled and indexed correctly. But it was not ranking or appearing in Google. Finally, we found the real issue — a removal request for this page had been mistakenly submitted in Google Sea...