Hi, I have a quick question about Google Index and am hoping someone can help.
I submitted all of my pages for indexing and one of my urls, www.alpenglowcounseling.net (the main one) is showing that is it both indexed and not indexed (see first and second screenshot).
It is live on Google (see third screenshot).
For the error message on the reason it is not indexed, it says it is due to a redirect. I am confused because I have never created a redirect. The only thing I’ve ever done is launched a landing page (created in Webflow using Relume), then taken it down, and immediatley replaced with the full site (from a different Webflow project also using Relume).
I have also resubmitted this url for reindexing and tried to validate the fix, but it is still showing on my not indexed page. I just retried to validate the fix this morning.
How can I fix this? Or, is there anything to fix and this is just something weird with Google?
Hey, 👋
To Google, those are actually separate pages—one is the www. version of the page. The other, they call the <i>naked domain</i> version.
You'd most likely manage this at the DNS level (with your domain registrar) and / or the Publishing section of your Webflow project settings.
This isn't too big of a deal, though. If the page you <i>want</i> indexed is the www. version, then redirecting the naked domain version to the www. version should be totally fine. All this means is that Google will serve the www. version and not the naked domain version to would-be searchers.
If the pages would otherwise be identical content-wise, setting up this redirect will actually benefit the other page's search equity.
Hi Brandon, thank you so much! I didn’t realize they weren’t the same page, but that makes complete sense.
Yes, the www version is the one I want, just because that’s what Webflow recommended in their Publishing tab, not because I felt strongly one way or the other.
I did a little digging and I’m wondering if Webflow is the one who created the redirect automatically, what do you think? Here’s why —
In screenshot one, Webflow says the way to redirect one domain to another is to add them both in and select one as the default, then publish both (which I did when I launched it a month ago).
In screenshot two, you’ll see that I have both versions connected to the site.
Does this mean the redirect has already been created? If so, that would both answer why the non-www version won’t index and mean that there is nothing else that I should do, correct?
Hey, again!
Your intuition’s probably correct. I want to make sure I understand your order of operations, though.
When you launched originally, was it the same domain in a separate Webflow project? Or did you launch a landing page version of this same project, do some dev work, and then republish? If so, was it both the www. version and the naked domain or just one of the two?
I’ve also seen Webflow have some naked domain issues with various domain registrars, especially Cloudflare. If you’re using a service with a proxy layer (like Cloudflare does), it’s possible that the domain registrar and Webflow’s DNS records aren’t playing nice.
For my money, though, I wouldn’t worry too much about this. It sounds like Google’s serving the version of the domain you want. Even if the homepage has a redirect, your domain’s EEAT score shouldn’t drop at all.
Good morning! Thank you for getting back with me so quickly, especially on a weekend, it means a lot!
Yes, that is correct! I built the landing page in a Webflow project (let’s say Project A) and launched it under www.alpenglowcounseling.net. This project had 1 main home page as well as 3 legal disclaimer pages (such as /privacy-policy and /terms-of-service).
While Project A was live, I created a second project (Project B) and built out the entire site (1 home, 5 interior pages, 3 legal pages) in Webflow’s staging environment.
Then, to launch Project B, I downgraded the site plan from Project A (disconnecting the domain) and upgraded Project B to launch with www.alpenglowcounseling.net.
On Cloudflare and other registrars, hmm. That is so strange. I haven’t done anything with Cloudflare - she said she bought her domain through Google Domains.
One other thing - I tried entering “https://alpenglowcounseling.net/” (no www) into my browser and it automatically redirects to “https://www.alpenglowcounseling.net/” (has www), so I think that would confirm my suspicion that Webflow did the redirect for me.
I apologize if I have over- or under-explained anything above! I really appreciate your guidance about probably not needing to worry too much about this. With the information above, do you still feel that way, or do you think there is something else I need to do?
Got it. The added context is helpful.
Re: Cloudflare / Google Domains — Sounds like it's not a domain registrar or proxy issue. That's good.
Re: Webflow-based redirect. That's probably what happened.
What probably happened (and I should note, entirely on Google's side of things), is that when you effectively unpublished the landing page site, and then published new content at the same URLs, Google—having other content already indexed at those same URLs—then flagged it as a redirect. Since the naked domain can't actually be hit (the www. being the default), Googlebot is reporting back "Hey, I can't find what used to be here in our index, and I'm being sent here instead, so we should mark down a new redirect."
It's a little odd that Google isn't picking up on Webflow simply specifying the www. version of site as the default URL. That isn't typically flagged as a redirect. I've been launching Webflow projects for years and I've never seen that happen. But I maintain that this won't be a discoverability issue for your client. The ideal URL is still indexed and served on the SERP.
Thank you so much for your detailed reply!
I’m happy it’s not a domain registrar or proxy issue.
This makes total sense — I appreciate you walking me through how this probably happened on Google’s side. So weird. I’m glad that this situation seems odd to you too, I was afraid I’d done something wrong! I’m happy it won’t hurt her discoverability chances though, it sounds like Google is just being finicky.
