Solved: Google ranked website pages then dropped everything. What should I try to fix things?

#devops #programming #tutorial #cloud

🚀 Executive Summary

TL;DR: Googlebot may see a different version of your website (e.g., a default Nginx page due to an IPv6 DNS misconfiguration) than regular users, causing sudden de-indexing. To resolve this, diagnose with Google Search Console’s ‘Test Live URL’ and then audit and correct all DNS A and AAAA records globally, or temporarily force Googlebot routing via CDN/WAF rules.

🎯 Key Takeaways

Googlebot frequently crawls over IPv6, making misconfigured AAAA records a critical and common cause for sudden de-indexing, as it can direct the crawler to an incorrect server.
Google Search Console’s ‘Test Live URL’ feature is the most important diagnostic tool, providing a live screenshot of exactly what Googlebot renders, revealing rendering or routing issues.
Global DNS propagation and geo-routing rules must be meticulously audited for both IPv4 and IPv6 records to ensure all paths consistently lead to the correct production server, preventing Googlebot from being misdirected.

A sudden drop in Google rankings often points to a discrepancy between what users see and what Google’s crawler sees, usually caused by misconfigured DNS, CDN, or geo-routing rules.

So, Google Ranked Your Site and Then… Vanished. A DevOps Post-Mortem.

I got a frantic Slack message at 10 PM on a Tuesday. “Darian, all our marketing pages have dropped off Google. Like, completely. SEO is freaking out.” We hadn’t deployed anything new. No code changes, no server crashes. Traffic just fell off a cliff. After an hour of digging, we found it: a well-intentioned network engineer had “cleaned up” our DNS, removing a legacy AAAA (IPv6) record. Turns out, Googlebot *loves* to crawl over IPv6. He had unknowingly pointed Google’s crawler to a dusty, default Nginx welcome page on a server we thought was decommissioned. To our users, everything was fine. To Google, our entire site had been replaced by “Welcome to Nginx!”. It’s a classic case of seeing different things, and it can be absolutely devastating.

The ‘Why’: What Googlebot Sees vs. What You See

This isn’t about keywords or content quality. When your pages rank and then disappear overnight, it’s almost always a technical problem. The root cause is a simple but terrifying concept: your server is showing a different version of your site to Googlebot than it is to a regular user.

This can happen for a few reasons:

DNS Misconfiguration: Like in my story, Googlebot (crawling from a specific IP range or using IPv6) gets routed to a different server than your users on their home WiFi (using IPv4).
Aggressive CDN/WAF Rules: Your CDN or Web Application Firewall might misinterpret Googlebot as a malicious bot and block it, or serve it a captcha page.
Mobile vs. Desktop Content: Your server might be failing to render the mobile version of the site, and since Google uses mobile-first indexing, it sees a broken or empty page.

Google calls this “cloaking” when it’s intentional, and they penalize it harshly. When it’s accidental, the result is the same: your pages are de-indexed because Google thinks the content is gone.

The Triage Plan: From Screwdriver to Sledgehammer

Okay, enough theory. You’re in a panic and need to fix this. Here’s my standard operating procedure, starting with the easiest check and escalating from there.

Solution 1: The Quick Fix – Use Google’s Own Tools

Before you SSH into a single server, let Google tell you what it sees. This is your single most important diagnostic tool.

Log into Google Search Console (GSC).
Grab the URL of a page that has disappeared.
Paste it into the “URL Inspection” bar at the top.
Click “Test Live URL”.

This will show you what Google’s crawler sees, right now. Pay attention to the “Screenshot” tab. If you see your beautiful webpage, the problem is likely not a rendering issue. If you see a blank page, a server error, a login wall, or a default “Welcome” page, you’ve found your smoking gun. You now know that Google is not seeing the same thing you are.

Solution 2: The Permanent Fix – Audit Your DNS & CDN

If GSC shows a broken page, 9 times out of 10, the issue is DNS. You need to look at your domain’s records and think like a crawler. Googlebot’s infrastructure is global and uses both IPv4 and IPv6. You must ensure all paths lead to the correct production server.

Here’s a common faulty setup I see:

Record Type	Host	Value / Points To	Comment
A	@ (root domain)	192.0.2.10 (IP of prod-web-01)	Correct: Points IPv4 users to the live site.
CNAME	www	example.com	Correct: Routes ‘www’ traffic to the root.
AAAA	@ (root domain)	2001:db8::1234 (IP of old staging server)	WRONG: This is the killer. IPv6-enabled crawlers like Googlebot are being sent to an old, incorrect server.

Pro Tip: Don’t just ping or dig from your own machine. Use an online tool like “whatsmydns.net” to check your A and AAAA records from multiple locations around the world. This will quickly reveal if you have stale records propagating or geo-routing rules that are sending crawlers to the wrong place.

The fix is to audit every single DNS record for your domain. Ensure that all A and AAAA records point to the correct load balancer or production web server IP. Delete any that don’t. After you fix it, go back to GSC, run the Live URL Test again, and once it looks good, click “Request Indexing” to get Google to re-crawl the fixed page.

Solution 3: The ‘Nuclear’ Option – Force the Route

Let’s say you’re in a complex environment and can’t figure out the routing issue, but you’re losing money every minute. There’s a “hacky” but effective temporary solution: specifically identify Googlebot and force it to the right server.

You can do this at the CDN or load balancer level (e.g., Cloudflare Workers, AWS WAF, or Nginx). The logic is simple: if the request is from Googlebot, ignore the normal routing rules and send it directly to the IP of a known-good web server, like prod-web-01.

Here’s what a pseudo-code rule might look like in your CDN/WAF:

WHEN Request Header 'User-Agent' CONTAINS 'Googlebot'
THEN
  // Override the backend origin pool
  Route traffic to Origin: 'prod-web-server-direct-ip' (192.0.2.10)
ELSE
  // Continue with normal load balancing rules
  Route traffic to Origin: 'default-load-balancer'

Warning: This is a brittle solution. Google can change its user-agent strings, and hardcoding IPs is a form of technical debt. Use this to get your site back online immediately, but promise me you’ll keep working on the permanent DNS fix described in Solution 2.

Losing your search ranking feels like your foundation has crumbled. But stay calm. Don’t immediately blame your content or your SEO strategy. Put on your engineer’s hat, work the problem methodically, and remember that Google is just another user hitting your infrastructure. You just need to make sure it’s walking through the right door.