Number of URLs have dropped off signifcantly in the past few months

I have noticed the number of URLs that Google has indexed on my message board has dropped off significantly in the past few months.

With approx. 250k urls in total it had a high of about 140k indexed in Google, now that has dropped off to just 76k.

I haven't changed any settings or done anything recently, I am wondering what would have caused it to drop off so much like this.

has traffic changed at all?

Not really, traffic seems to be fairly consistent as always.

it may just be old or bloat urls getting trimmed. the site: command is known to be innaccurate. Just keep an eye on search referrals in analytics. that's the real metric to watch.

Hi Andrew,

Please consider opening a critique request so we can give you some specific feedback on ways to improve your forum.

Mine have also dropped in the past 30-45 days.. less results in google. Total site pages went from 50,000+ down to 26,900

It's odd, I have not done anything except upgrade the sitemap...

I do get an error in Google:

When we tested a sample of URLs from your Sitemap, we found that some URLs redirect to other locations. We recommend that your Sitemap contain URLs that point to the final destination (the redirect target) instead of redirecting to another URL.

Any ideas?

disable the "include old urls" option in the sitemaps options.

Originally Posted by briansol

disable the "include old urls" option in the sitemaps options.

OK, will do. Thanks!

When you do disable that option , you need to manually delete all your existing sitemaps at vbseo_sitemap/data folder and regenerate them.