Overcoming Google's Indexing Hurdles for a Listing Page

I want to share my journey of overcoming a challenge in indexing a specific listing page, ultimately achieving its inclusion on Google SERP. It's been quite an interesting ride.

For the past four months, we've encountered an issue with one of our pages not being crawled by Google. This page belongs to a professional listing site in the USA with millions of pages.

Initially, Google crawled the page on October 6, 2023, and October 13, 2023, returning a "Not found" status for both desktop and smartphone bots. However, despite the page now returning a 200 OK response, further crawls seem to have been neglected.

Upon inspecting the URL in the URL inspection tool, I noticed the last crawl date was October 6, 2023, by the desktop bot. While the initial "404" error was due to server stability issues during deployment, a review of the server log file revealed no current issues.

Regarding the server stability during deployment, I discussed with our DevOps team, who mentioned minimal disturbance occurred during server restart.

The lack of recent crawls can be attributed to the previous encounter with a 404 error by both Googlebots, which may have led to less frequent crawling.

I've been fielding questions from clients, the customer support team, reporting managers, and even the CEO, all expressing disappointment over the four-month period.

We've tried various approaches:

1. Client Side: Requested amendments to meta tags and a link from their site to the listing page. Given that it's a JS-based site, opportunities for changes are limited.
2. 
   
3. Developer Side:

• Ensured the URL is in the XML sitemap and declared in the robots.txt.
• Addressed internal linking issues.
• Suggested improvements for page speed and mobile-friendliness.
• Manager approval was obtained to improve the accessibility of company pages, with a focus on interlinking and higher priority tags in the XML sitemap.

From an SEO perspective, I've:

• Completed indexing requests through the URL Inspection Tool.
• Created backlinks.
• Submitted a "Request a Recrawl" for the robots.txt file.
• Researched and engaged in community discussions on Google forums, Reddit, and local search forums.
• Planned strategies including priority tag usage, meta tag tweaks, and interlinking implementation.
• Monitored performance closely.

A significant turn came with the decision to migrate the site from a subdomain to the main domain, though unrelated to the indexing issue. Post-migration, all pages started indexing except for the particular one in question, leading to renewed pressure from customer support.

Finally, I coordinated with a Python developer to utilize the Google Search Console Index API for a fresh crawl. After some access struggles, we managed to run the API successfully. The moment when the listing page was instantly indexed upon testing was truly unbelievable.

Although it took three days to reflect on Google SERP's first page, the relief was immense. I promptly informed my reporting manager and shared indexed screenshots with our customer support team.

In conclusion, this struggle provided invaluable learning experiences.