Hi there, we have some newspaper websites and since we moved to HTTPS, Google Search Console started to give 500 errors and only indexes 10% of our websites.
Is there anything on the theme that may be causing any error to googlebot?
many thanks!
Hello,
The theme will not influence what google indexes or not.
Please check your Google Webmaster Tools under the index section for any details on this.
Generally a 500 error is an internal server error:
http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-fix-the-internal-server-error-in-wordpress/
Thanks
hi there,
thanks for the quick feedback, just checking if any kind of html header could be causing this issue. It’s weird because before the migration to https it was working.
thanks again!
When you migrate to https you need to do several things
a) do search/replace in your dbase to replace all old image and text internal links for http version of site to https
b) make sure you have proper 301 redirect for all site pages and images to redirect from http to https if entered in browser window
c) you need to follow GOOGLE’s explicit directions for migration to https, including adding NEW version of site as https to search console, and test + submit sitemap(s) for the https version of site
d) consider adding explcit version of URL in your wp-config.php file also
e) if running AdSense ads, update your site info for your ads in your ads account to https version of site
Google considers http and https versions of site to be two different things. SO, once your https version is in search console they will no longer index the http version, and you will want to REMOVE the sitemaps from the http version in console.
I went through this torment in 2014. So, it’s a little bit of a process.
Also sucks that your “inbound links” and such will drop if you have an old site (our main site went online in 2000), since they also consider https > inbound links to be different than http > inbound links. Kind of sucks. I’ve been waiting since 2014 for them to have a proper “merge sites” thing, but noooo…. it’s not like they’re in the search engine business or anything (*grrr*)
Not sure if that helped or not, but there you are.
Hey Chris, sorry for the late reply, but we also have this issue and it’s getting worst.
Basically we have 10 website with high traffic, 5 of them are with newspaper, and these 5 stopped indexing on google, when we changed to HTTPS.
The plugins are the same, everything except the theme is the same. Right now the googlebot is giving 500 on almost every article on these 5 websites.
Do you have any tip where we can look for to fix this issue?
many thanks!
