Diagnosis Case Files

Problem

A large catalogue store had thousands of products live, but Google was only indexing a small percentage of the pages that could drive revenue.

Diagnosis

Google was not seeing a clear path to the highest-value product pages. Weak internal linking, bloated faceted URLs, and inconsistent template quality made too many products look low-priority, so crawl attention and indexation concentrated in the wrong parts of the catalogue.

Outcome

Index coverage improved after crawl waste and product discovery issues were fixed.

Problem

Organic traffic fell after a Shopify rebuild because the new store launched with weaker page signals than the site it replaced.

Diagnosis

The migration preserved surface-level templates but not the strength of the old URL signals. Redirect mapping, canonicals, internal linking, and collection relevance were inconsistent, so Google kept re-evaluating page identity instead of consolidating authority into the new store.

Outcome

Priority collections recovered once migration signals were consolidated.

Problem

Core collection pages struggled to rank because multiple tag and filter URLs competed for the same intent.

Diagnosis

Tag pages were indexable and internally linked in ways that made them look like primary category targets. Google treated tags as competing landing pages, diluting relevance and creating unstable rankings for the core collections.

Outcome

Query mapping consolidated around core collections; rankings stabilised.

Problem

A business stayed visible for brand searches but disappeared from high-intent local service queries in Maps.

Diagnosis

The business entity signals were inconsistent. Conflicting NAP data across directories and weak GBP category alignment reduced confidence in relevance for non-brand local queries, especially where competitors had clearer service + location signals.

Outcome

Local visibility improved after entity signals were aligned.

Problem

After a site rebuild, key landing pages stopped being indexed even though traffic to supporting pages remained stable.

Diagnosis

Redirect chains combined with mixed canonical signals created inconsistent page identity. Google repeatedly re-crawled legacy URLs, but the final destination pages were not receiving consistent canonical reinforcement or clean internal linking.

Outcome

Priority pages re-entered the index once URL signals were consistent.

Problem

Important pages stopped ranking consistently after Google started spending crawl budget on thousands of low-value parameter URLs.

Diagnosis

Faceted navigation generated indexable parameter URLs and the canonical setup reinforced them. Internal links surfaced filtered variants as if they were primary pages, which pulled crawl attention away from core categories and service pages.

Outcome

Crawl attention returned to core pages; index coverage stabilised.