Hello everyone,
I need help! I have a podcast called “Pop nach 8” and an accompanying website that I created with rapidweaver: https://popnach8.berlin
When I first launched this website, Google and all the other search engines would find and list it, usually at first or second place when, for example, searching for “Pop nach 8 Podcast” or “Pop nach 8 Berlin”. Bing, Duckduckgo, yahoo etc. still find and list the site. But Google no longer does. I tried a lot of things, asked for recrawls, submitted sitemap, fixed some issues with size of pictures, colour of content, non-canoncial pages etc. But still: Google ignores the site for whatever reason. For the home of popnach8.berlin I am using a rapidweaver blog page and I was pretty sure the problem had to do with rapidweaver creating an identical page (Pop nach 8 - der Pop-Podcast aus Berlin)
But now I have run out of ideas what I could do to have the site appear in Google search. Any ideas would be highly appreciated. Thank you!
Hi, I just search on Google from France and I found you on top (popnach…). I think a problem occurs with « pop nach… », the space between the two words give others results with « Nach » on top.
Do you have a Google Search Console account (assuming you do from the things you mentioned you tried)? What is Google Search Console telling you? Usually you can see why Google can’t/won’t index your site from there.
Also just a side note, I noticed you have your site language setting set to English but your site language is in German. You can change the site language setting in RapidWeaver >> Settings >> General >> Site Language dropdown >> Change to German.
Thanx for checking! Interesting thing is: it worked perfectly well for a while after I launched the site, then it did not. But, as mentioned, bing and duckduckgo, yahoo, yandex and aol find and list it.
Thanx for taking the time, Dang. Yes, I use Google Search Console, trying to solve the problem. There it says that popnach8.berlin is an indexed page. There are a couple of (I assume) minor problems, for example a soft 404 error for some pages that no longer exist. And some of the sub-pages under the popnach8.berlin-URL are not being indexed.
It’s interesting that rapidweaver sets the language to English - I chose the “German”-option from the beginning. Seems to be a bug.
Just checked: Seems to be a bug within Rapidweaver 8:
Not sure that thread you linked to is related, but I went digging anyway. 
Looked in our bug tracker and found this:
Themes can currently hardcode this. If we detect that a theme has already hardcoded a language, we won’t insert the site language (or corresponding direction). Quite a few themes hardcode it like this:
<html lang="en">
It looks like you are using this theme:
https://bltthemes.com/preview/rapidweaver/serenade/
The theme is a bit old, I don’t think Brandon Lee is still developing themes for RapidWeaver. I could be wrong though, someone else might know. But it looks like the theme might have the lang hardcoded.
Anyway if I’m reading the report correctly we implemented an enhancement that allowed RapidWeaver to override any hardcoded language and direction attribute that was built into the theme. Not sure but maybe something with your theme is not allowing that to work.
That thread you linked to is referencing RapidWeaver 8. We are no longer developing or updating RapidWeaver 8. I just checked this in RapidWeaver Classic with one of our stock themes, and the lang is getting set correctly, both the global site lang and any page lang override. See below examples:
I don’t have your theme to test on, but if you’d like to send your project file and add-ons folder over I could take a look for you.
Also I have to point out I don’t think the above issue is preventing Google from listing your site at the top of its SERPs (or in its SERPs at all). I just noticed it while checking your site and thought it would be good for your lang setting to match the language your site is actually in. 
Thanx DanG for looking into this. Yes, I have an old Brandon Lee Theme that I use. Might use a new one. And will change my project to RW Classic in the near future, I am still using RW8
Pretty sure, too, that my issues with Google have nothing to do with the language setting. I hate Google (until they list my page again, then I’ll love them 
Yes, the theme is too old and you have some major errors in the structure of the website. Too many H1 headings. I would definitely change that. I don’t understand why there is a duplicate page description … I read everything at Seobility: popnach8.berlin | SEO Bewertung | Seobility.net
The values for Google PageSpeed Insights could be a little better. Use a new theme, or Foundry, or one of the other useful frameworks.
Only the best should be used for a project like this 
Seems like Googlebot can reach your site, at least when I spoof the user agent in my browser.
Your site might not be in Google, but at least this thread is at the top of the list now… 
I strongly dislike Google all the time. 
I agree with @Kunstmaler, a newer theme may help to appease Google.
Wonder if it has anything to do with your domain extension .berlin. Germany seems to have a lot of laws against Google, maybe Google is giving a big 
to .berlin domains 
. (joking of course)
Hi @feuerland,
Your site is indexed by Google:
I’m not sure why it doesn’t list it when you look for it though. It’s not the language setting in RapidWeaver, as Google also finds your website when I restrict it to look for German language websites only:
(I’m sure feurerland can understand what that says, but for everyone else: the first arrow points to a sentence that says “Search pages in German” in Dutch).
Cheers,
Erwin
Hi, have you ever heard of Lighthouse Score? Check your site there and you get some info of your site. You got 2 description tags in your code! And take a look at your robots.txt
Moin, hat du schon mal von Lighthouse gehört? Las da mal deine Webseite durchlaufen und schau dir das Ergebnis an. Du hast 2 description tags in deinen Quelltext! Und schau dir mal der Ergebnis bei der robots.txt datei an.
https://pagespeed.web.dev/analysis/https-popnach8-berlin/ns5exqz0vv?form_factor=mobile
It’s a known fact that Google shows a different SERP to different people. Thereby it can be normal for different people to see different websites listed, when identical or similar search keywords are used.
The exact list and order of the SERP you see can vary based on factors like:
- Whether you are logged in to Google or not.
- The time of day, seasons or holidays.
- What you have previously searched for in Google.
- The device and web browser being used.
- Your geographic location, including your country or language preferences.
Your online footprint might influence things too. Tin hat conspiracy time - it is entirely feasible for Google to change search results based on your browsing habits. Including which websites you most frequently visit, previous clicks / interactions, even possibly what your friends or family are looking at.
Possibly the best way of seeing where the majority of people might expect to find your website listed in the SERP is by putting your web browser into private mode and running a search.
Thanx for checking. Too many h1? Okay, will work on that. Don’t know where the duplicate page description comes from. But will try some stuff there, too.
Danke, Torsten. Das mit den description tags scheint sich gelöst zu haben. Lighthouse mache ich, das ist ein guter Tip!
Thanx for you advice, Willwood. Appreciated!