Hey everyone,
For the past 1.5 years, we've been noticing that some of our URLs are getting completely omitted from search results for particular KW variations. Looking over at Search console, they do appear to be indexed properly, and nothing holding them back. Additionally, the canonical is specified. If that URL has a pagination sequence (triggered as a result of user-generated content), along with sorting parameters, everything is set up in accordance to Google's documentation, as well as to the advice of professional thought leaders in the industry. For certain URLs, we rank just fine, and it fluctuates within reason, just as it does for anybody. But then for some reason many URLs just completely get omitted from results. Occasionally, they'll flicker back and forth, some stay, some go, and for some, it's a never-ending cycle of coming back then disappearing.
In certain instances when a particular URL gets omitted, it later returns to the SERPs under a different URL of the pagination sequence. For example, https://example.com/topic/ would go MIA but later return to rank much lower but under https://example.com/topic?page=5
At first, the issue wasn't too big, but over the past 1.5 I am beginning to notice more and more URLs are particular query variations just get omitted. After each major Google update, from which we weren't negatively affected, I notice this issue get “magnified” and spread. again, for the URLs that actually rank, they rank strongly, but some random ones get omitted. The code structure is identical all across the board and we can't seem to detect any particular pattern within the pages that are disappearing from the SERPs.
In fact, we've also noticed that when we publish new content they never appear in the SERPs, although everything indicates that they're properly indexed. Occasionally, they appear on the first page for a day or so, and then vanish again.
We've investigated over and over, and no one, including us, can seem to identify a root issue. Any help here would be very much appreciated as this is beginning to negatively affect us as this issue is spreading across more URLs. Thanks!
