3

Google doesn't seem to realize that there are links on my page.

I don't yet have provided a sitemap, and I know that I should (and I will).

Regardless, I'm trying to figure out whether I've done something fundamentally wrong with my site/links so that Google does not want to accept them.

  • The links in the main navigation are like this:

    <a href="/en/learn"><div class="material-icons-outlined"></div>LEARN</a>

  • The links are not created via JS. They are served on the initial html.

  • I have not provided a robots.txt (as I want everything to be crawled).

  • I have not added a rel="nofollow" to those links.

Why I think that Google didn't just crawl all subpages, but didn't even read the hrefs from the main page:

  • Google has crawled my main page three times in the past couple weeks. It also crawled some resources (images and JS files).
  • Google Search Console does not list any internal links (or external ones, for I have not published the site's URL yet to anyone except you helpful helpers).
  • When I enter a subpage URL (like https://example.com/en/print) directly into Google Search Console, it tells me that "Page is not indexed: URL is unknown to Google". I would assume that a URL is only unknown to Google if it hasn't found the URL in any link whatsoever.

Question: What could I be doing wrong (apart from not having a sitemap yet)?

Improve this question
10
  • How old is the site? You say "in the past couple weeks" which makes me suspect that it just hasn't been around very long.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Aug 25, 2022 at 16:05
  • @stephen It was first uploaded ca. 5 weeks ago. I immediately asked Google to crawl via Search Console, which was then done on July 27th. Google revisited/recrawled the site since then three or four times, but it just keeps recrawling the same URLs (main page, and some resources). I would think, that once Google crawls a page even once, it should at least now know the subpages' URLs, even though they themselves would be indexed way later. Isn't that correct?
    – 144226734
    Commented Aug 25, 2022 at 16:15
  • Yes, it should crawl all the linked pages. I assume you are looking in your server's log files to know what Googlebot is accessing?
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Aug 25, 2022 at 16:17
  • I like your site, BTW. I have my own sudoku software and site (qqwing). Your solver rates puzzles with more granularity than mine and looks like it tests for a couple techniques that mine does not.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Aug 25, 2022 at 16:19
  • @StephenOstermiller Thank you =) I have checked the logs but nothing particularly alarming. Some calls from several crawlers, but errors are seemingly only from blackhats trying weird URLs. All other calls that I guess was Google, are the same ones listed inside Google Search Console. (Main page + some JS + some images)
    – 144226734
    Commented Aug 25, 2022 at 16:23

0

Reset to default

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.