Some of you who use Blogger.com as your blogging platform may notice that lately, your posts may not have been indexed properly.
Even if you request indexing manually using the Google Search Console URL inspection tool, you may still find it difficult to index a newly published page.
If your new page does not get indexed, the URL will not appear on Google. This is a major problem because your readers will not be able to reach you, especially if you rely on organic traffic from Google Search.
To check if you experience this error, go to your Google Search Console and inspect your URLs.
The URL inspection page on the console may tell you that your URL is not on Google. You will also notice that the page indexing status will say "Page is not indexed: Redirect error".
Moreover, on the crawl status, the page fetch will say "failed: redirect error".
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| Solving Page is not indexed: Redirect error in Google Search Console |
So, what causes this problem, and how can you get around it?
The root cause of the problem is the fact that your Blogger-based website comes in two different URLs, the mobile version and the desktop version.
If you open your website on a mobile phone browser, you will notice that the tail end of the URL will contain extra ?m=1. There is a question mark, a small letter m, an equal sign, and a number 1.
Meanwhile, if you open it on a desktop, the URL will end normally with .html without those four extra characters.
Now, if you try to open the mobile URL on a desktop, you will automatically get redirected using the regular desktop URL. And vice versa, the desktop URL will also turn automatically to a mobile URL when you open it from a smartphone.
And there is the problem!
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When you request indexing, Google Search Console will crawl your website under the name of Googlebot smartphone. It means that the bot will visit your website as if from a smartphone.
Now, if you submit a desktop URL to Google Search Console, the Googlebot will automatically be redirected to the mobile URL version.
As a result, the crawler gets confused because it suddenly gets redirected, and the crawler will not be able to fetch the page properly. That's why you receive an error that says Page is not indexed: Redirect error.
To solve this problem, you simply need to submit your website's mobile URL with the ?m=1 tail end on Google Search Console every time you want to index it.
Just add those four characters at the end of your regular desktop URL when you request indexing.
This way, Googlebot smartphone will not be redirected to the desktop URL and will be able to fetch your page just fine.
So, avoid using the regular desktop URL to prevent the redirect error!
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| Indexing using the mobile URL to solve the redirect error |
Using this method will index your mobile URL immediately on Google. Please note that the mobile URL will work normally even when you access it from a desktop!
This method basically will let Google know that the inspected mobile URL is the temporary canonical URL. Over time, as Googlebot re-crawls your pages, the desktop URL will automatically become the canonical version, free of error.
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| Indexed mobile URLworks normally even when it's opened from desktop |
So bottom line is, indexing your mobile URL will solve the redirect error. The mobile URL will still be searchable and function like regular URLs, even from a desktop.
Currently, this simple method is the most effective solution to solve the redirect error.
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