Please help – HMWP Plugin Disallowing Googlebot to crawl/index my site

[lw360]

Hi Guys,

Need some help folks. In late December, I installed the HMWP plugin and I was very happy. However, after a few days, I noticed that site traffic began to dip. I did some digging and I noticed that Google de-indexed many of my well-ranking URL’s. Trying to find out why, I looked into the Google Webmaster Tools and tried to fetch the site; it returned a result “unreachable” and a 500 error code for my URLs. I made sure that the robots.txt file was not disallowing Googlebot from crawling my site and made sure that all search engines were not disallowed. I then uninstalled every plugin I use and reinstalled them one by one and refetching as Googlebot after each plugin installation (this was very tedious, but necessary). By doing this, I was able to pinpoint that the HMWP plugin, when installed, was resulting in an “unreachable”/500 error code result from Googlebot when it tried to fetch my site, causing them to de-index my site. Thus, I am forced to keep it uninstalled; otherwise it will cost me valuable traffic from Google.

I need help with rectifying this issue please. How can I get this fixed?

Thank you very much for your time and effort in advance.

[Suman M.]

Hi, please check this FAQ regarding SEO – http://codecanyon.net/item/hide-my-wp-no-one-can-know-you-use-wordpress/4177158/faqs/16131

HMWP simply masks default WP urls using rewrite rules. Hence, the default URLs will still be accessible. For example: If the url http://www.domain.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/xyz.jpg is renamed to http://www.domain.com/file/2015/12/xyz.jpg; then both these URLs will be valid and accessible.

[lw360]

Hi Suman,

Thank you for your message; I am aware of this, and this does not resolve the issue I am facing. I need a workaround for this bug – every time I activate the HMWP plugin, Googlebot has trouble accessing/indexing my site and returns a 500 code error. When the HMWP plugin is deactivated, Googlebot can fetch and index my site. Please help.

[Suman M.]

Can you please let us know how we can re-generate this issue (steps) in your site so that we can have a clear picture of the issue.

[lw360]

Hi Suman,

1. We installed and activated the plugin HMWP, and it functions as it is supposed to in hiding our wp
2. When we go to Google Webmaster Tools, and click “Fetch as Googlebot”, Google returns an “unreachable” error and 500 error code, meaning Google cannot fetch/connect to your site. Because Google thinks your site does not exist, it de-indexes your pages, meaning you will no longer come up in the results when someone searches on google.com – this is a huge problem
3. We pinpointed this issue to the HMWP plugin. When it is deactivated, Googlebot can fetch and connect with our site just fine, like before. But when HMWP plugin is activated, it is blocking Googlebot from connecting to our site, disallowing it from indexing our site.

The inherit problem is that HMWP is blocking Google from crawling and indexing our site, which results in them de-indexing us and removing us from related search results. Please help in getting this resolved.

[lw360]

Any word guys?

[Suman M.]

Hi, I checked with the test site (HMWP activated & settings applied) at my end and not getting any error/issue while Fetching as Googlebot.
I’ve assigned this ticket to the Sr. support so that he could look into it further.

[lw360]

Guys,

I am still awaiting support feedback. If this is unable to be resolved and I am unable to use the plugin, I’d like a refund please.

[Suman M.]

Hi, sorry for the delay. I’ve reminded the Sr. support again regarding this ticket. He’ll get back to you soon and if cannot be resolved we’ll make a refund.

[Author]

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