Web / marketing company had noindex,nofollow on for entire website

[Omyleggo]

Hi all, first post. I'm not a web, SEO, etc. expert... Not even close. However I discovered recently that the company who rebuilt my website (for my small business) launched the site in January 2022 with noindex,nofollow turned on for every page. It makes a lot of sense why my business took a hit since then.

I started the business in 2021, so I initially attributed the slowdown to other factors, but none of it made sense. I was on an upward trajectory until the new site launched, then it's been a steady slide downhill.

I've run numerous ads during that time with little to show for it. I've had companies run ads for my business, also with little results. As I'm coming close to becoming insolvent, I've been digging into SEO (lots to learn!) and trying to figure out if something was wrong. Obviously something was very wrong.

I'm trying to assess lost revenue because of this glaring error. My understanding is that none of my pages would have been served in an organic search, unless the searcher already knew about me and typed the name of the business. There's also speculation that having an entire site not indexed will negatively impact paid ads. I've also seen that organic clicks are many times higher than paid ads in getting clicks.

So, for roughly 21 months, my pages were not showing on non-paid search engine results. I can't find an instance online where this has happened to another business. I'm considering legal action, but I want to put together a model that seeks to estimate lost potential customers, also taking into account the ongoing value of newly acquired customers, based on averages of existing business. The rest is simple math based on my average transaction size.

Anyone have thoughts on how to go about building this model?

Thanks!

[not2easy]

Hi Omyleggo and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

I am sorry to hear that happened, but your site is supposed to be your responsibility. It is a shame that you paid someone and they neglected to inform you of the rest of the story. One of the first things most new sites want to do is to set up a GSC (Google Search Console) account and you would have been informed the first time they crawled your site. I am kind of surprised that you were able to use Google Ads on noindexed pages, it must have cost much more than it should have if they have no idea of what content is on your landing pages. I am only looking at the information posted hereand there may easily be details that clarify it.

I have known developers who noindex their work until it is ready to go live and they are paid for their work, but I've never known a case where they quietly left without either changing the index status or informing you of how to do that.

It is almost impossible to accurately estimate the cost of this situation if you were not already selling online before you arranged for your site rebuild. If you were selling prior to the changes, it should have alerted you right away when traffic fell off a cliff.

I should mention that we do not offer any kind of legal advice here, only that you should hire a professional with the experience to answer your questions.

[Omyleggo]

Thanks for the response, not2easy.

I was selling prior to the change (I am a retail storefront with a number of service offerings), and my guess is, due to the site having been indexed by work the prior web company did on the original site, the traffic drop-off was not a cliff, but more of a gradual slide. As a startup, I didn't know what to expect. In hindsight, it looks clear of course.

Not sure what you mean by "your site is supposed to be your responsibility" and how far that goes. If you get surgery done, you don't go home, tear out the stitches, and poke around, following up on the doctor's work. Who knows if the surgeon made a mistake that only became apparent many months after the work?

If a car mechanic rebuilds your engine, you don't unbuild it to make sure they did it right.

I had a plumber do work, and they introduced a tiny leak in one of the pipes that didn't become an apparent problem until many months after.

The point is, the company I hired is supposed to handle the work they promised to do, as self-purported experts in this space. I'm not a web developer, I wasn't the expert in that space, and I don't think I am now by any means, so I didn't know to look at the source of each page on the site and validate every single setting. Does anyone do that? They never mentioned Google Search Console.

I do remember testing the site and recall seeing my business in the searches. However, that was likely a holdover from the last time Google indexed the site. It's not likely Google re-indexed my site the moment the new site launched. I'm seeing a big delay now in trying to get Google to index my site. It's taking a while. 2 weeks, and only a small portion of my pages are indexed.

I am talking to attorneys, and they say it's a pretty clear case, so I don't need legal advice here. The question remains on how to assess loss.

Thanks

[engine]

It's taking a while. 2 weeks, and only a small portion of my pages are indexed.

I would be patient on that as typically, it can take quite a while to re-visit and to re-index a site, especially if it's a large site.

>how to assess loss.

That's not at all easy as there could be mitigating factors that caused loss to be less, or more. You can only estimate, and to extrapolate sales from previous quarters. eg, if you're able to demonstrate growth over time of 10% then, extrapolate that out for the period where the loss commenced. That's the starting point for negotiations. Your lawyer will guide you on that, i'm sure.

[GordonHSEO]

Was it an SEO company who did your website? Surely they'd know this was a huge error on their part. Have the taken responsibility at all?

[Omyleggo]

SEO, Marketing, Web development, analytics, etc. Yep, they should have known better, and they are denying any responsibility. I have an attorney and am suiting up.

[albertaseo]

Now I'm curious about how you found out that each of your websites is set to "noindex". Did they give you access to the website and you did your digging there? The "nofollow" part depends on what your SEO company is backlinking to and what their objectives are. But when building website authority, especially for a newer website, "do follow" links should be prioritized, if they know what they are doing.

As not2easy said, use Google Search Console, you'll see from there if your website pages have been indexed or not. And it takes a while for Google to crawl your website and see results again. And you'll also see what keywords and search queries are popping up relating to you. The best part, it's all organic unless you want to run Google Ads.

[Omyleggo]

I started digging in September, trying to figure out why business was down. I stbled across Google search console, signed up, and then got notified from that service that noindex was on all of my pages. I'm a newbie to all of this, and it was many hours of blind searching and a random post that led me to GSC. This is all stuff I would have expected this company to have done. I wasn't the expert, so I hired them. Turns out they were incompetent, and now my business is suffering.

They claimed to be doing SEO, but obviously they weren't.

[sudo]

The agency forgot to uncheck "discourage search engines" upon delivering the site. Sadly, I've seen it before. As much as I want to side against the agency, there's some due diligence that you could have done on your side to prevent it. Terrible situation, genuinely sorry to hear about this. Whatever your website platform is, you can probably find a cheap (or free) course to learn the basics of it. The site's going to need maintenance (updates, etc), which if gone undone will lead to another fire to put out in probably a year.

[Omyleggo]

Sudo, I'm not sure what other due diligence I would have needed to do. When the website launched, I googled a number of keywords, and my website was coming up. What I now realize is that google was reporting results that would have been created by the previous website being seen and indexed by google.

Again, I hired a company to do a job that I'm not educated on doing myself. How much due diligence needed to be done? I would have had to have known about these settings at the time. I made a reasonable effort to check results.

If a surgeon botches a job and creates a small problem that takes a long time to manifest itself, would their attorney argue that the patient should have done due diligence? I'm not buying that argument.

[engine]

Omyleggo, I agree, it's not up to you when engaging a service.

Hopefully, your site is now getting crawled, and GSC will indicate this.

[sudo]

Omyleggo, sorry for the late reply I'm not that frequent on this site. What I meant to say is that on the one hand, the company should have done better and not made the mistake. On the other, you could have poked around to make sure the settings looked right when they passed it off to you. However, I agree with engine that when you're engaging a service it shouldn't be your job. A good company would have a proper onboarding process for you. Any time I deliver a site, I always provide a handbook on how the site works and maintenance instructions.

How is the site doing today? Hopefully, it has recovered.