Page only shows up in Google for “site:” search but not even for a search for its URL

Question

I read the following post it a nutshell it boils down to, google DOES index your page but may not bother showing it in search results.

Background

All my pages are showing indexed, I have about 100 posts on my site all 1000+ words, and I pride myself on the quality and originality of my content.

Many of my pages are showing indexed but not showing in search results, if I do a Site: search I only get about 50% of my posts returned.

One post, as an example got 3500 social shares, and 50'000+ views, however this post is simply not showing in search, even if I paste the url into search box I get nothing back.

My Question

I realize this might be difficult to diagnose, however if anyway can provide any ideas as to why A LOT of my pages is not appearing in search and what I can do to get these pages to show? It will be greatly appreciated.

Additional info

• This problem started soon after a google ad-sense application

Answer 1

This problem started soon after a google ad-sense application...

I will assume your problem may be temporary in nature because when a new ad unit is created and the site is tested right away, instead of an ad appearing, a browser message similar to "the page cannot be displayed" will appear in the ad box. Once the ad unit receives enough views, an ad will then be displayed provided your account is in good standing. People don't like to visit pages where half of the elements look like they cannot be loaded.

What I suggest is to only use at this time is one non-intrusive ad unit per page since more could make the page look awkward, especially if the ads take up the majority of the real-estate and are above the fold. I assume you are following google webmaster guidelines. You should also follow google's adsense guidelines found at https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/48182?hl=en.

I find that if I don't follow adsense policies 100%, I lose adsense impressions but google never tells me anything. When Google thinks I fixed all my mistakes, my adsense impressions goes up.

I think Google's SERP's behave in a similar way. If you follow all of google's rules and your content is right on topic with what the guest is looking for, then your page will score high in the results.

This may be obvious, but double check each of those posts to make sure there is NO duplicate content between any two posts. If there is, then either remove the duplicate content, or at least make the duplicates non-indexable to search engines. Siteliner.com can help with detecting duplicate content.

Answer 2

Do you use Google's Search console? If you do, are there any messages to you? If you are not yet using Search console, it should be your first step to do.

You can create your Search console account here.

If your blog has xml sitemp, you should upload it to the Search console (Crawl > Sitemaps). This helps Google to index all of your content.

Next check your index status (Google Index > Index status). Maybe you have accidentally blocked some pages from the indexation (this is too easy to do with some SEO plugins).

Next check the manual penalties (Search Traffic > Manual actions). Are there any notifications for you?

If your audience uses also Bing, you should add also Bing's Webmaster tools to your site. It is similar to Google's search console and also it allows you to upload your sitemap to the search engine.

You can also check for the quality of your backlinks with a tool like Open site explorer. If there are many spammy (paid) links referring to your website, it could be the cause of indexation problems.