New online store published but not working - why?

[safsac]

@AdamB Hi, I published by new weebly online store a while ago. However, it still isn't showing up on search engines (it's been set-up with Google & Bing & has all the SEO stuff on all the pages), also my old Square store is still active and no redirects are in place. I thought once I published the new site, it was supposed to automatically deactivate the old site and set-up redirects. Hasn't happened. It is now Fed 27th and I'm guessing my old store will no longer be supported. What am I supposed to do if my new store is invisible with no redirects??? Help please.

[AdamB]

Thanks for following up about your new online store, @safsac. I did a Google site search of your new site, and it looks like Google has thus far indexed only one of your items. It's necessarily unusual for Google to do that and it can sometimes take a little while to fully index the site. I do see that you've verified the site with Google; did you set it up as a property with Google Search Console?

[safsac]

@AdamB Thank you for your reply. I've been trying to get this resolved for awhile with little to no response from folks. At any rate...yes...it's set-up as a property on The Console. This site has been published, verified with both Google and Bing, and set-up as a property for almost 2 months. I know you said it can take awhile for Google to index things...but 2 months?!! Yikes! Somethings wrong. Do I need to create a site map...or is that done automatically by Weebly? Maybe it's a sitemap issue? I'm grasping here.. Help is greatly appreciated!

[AdamB]

Two months really long, although I don't see anything with your site which should prevent indexing. Did you submit your sitemap to Google? It'll be just your domain name with /sitemap.xml added to it.

[safsac]

Thank you @AdamB 

No, I hadn't submitted a sitemap. There was nothing in the instructions for the online store switch that said we needed to. I have now done that. We'll  see how it goes....

Any ideas on why my old store wasn't disabled and why there are no redirects in place - both were supposed to happen automatically upon publishing the new store.

[AdamB]

Hmm... That is strange, because I would have expected the old one to forward to the new. What was the old URL and what is the new? I can take that to our team and see if we can add that manually.

[safsac]

Thanks again, @AdamB, for your timely response. I had emailed Weebly (Dani G, Customer Success) about 6 weeks ago regarding this. She said she was going to elevate it to the "advanced team".... I never heard anything back. I'm hoping you can work your magic! 

My old version Square online store actually had 2 domains that point to the old site:
https://squareup.com/market/willamettewildlings-seed
https://mkt.com/willamettewildlings-seed

Although for ALL the links that are posted on other sites on the internet, I've used the first one (https://squareup.com/market/willamettewildlings-seed)

The newly published Weebly site is:
willamettewildlings-seed.square.site

Any help is GREATLY appreciated!

[AdamB]

Did you run your old online store and the new one at the same time for any period of time? There were some circumstances earlier on where a redirect would not be created, though this was not a bug and was just the way it was until we changed some things with upgrading to the newer online store. I'm not saying we can't help, though I expect you'll need to submit a new email case. For some reason the old one was automatically closed by the system. 

[safsac]

Hi @AdamB, both my old online store and my new online store are both active. They have both been active the whole time. Although, as per Square's instructions for setting up the new store, this wasn't supposed to be the case. Per Square, publishing the new store was supposed to automatically deactivate the old store and set-up redirects. A seamless, easy process. When I published the new store and saw that redirects were not in place, I did nothing with the old store (and evidently neither did Square). I am still using it exclusively -  no one can find the new store (it's not been picked up by search engines). Also, with no redirects pointing to the new store, I would really screw myself over if I manually deactivate the old store. It's my busy time of year and the old store is the only thing bringing in business (the new store is, for all intents and purposes, invisible). Once there are redirects in place and search engines are picking up the new site, I would be happy to manually deactivate the old site (assuming that's something I have control over).

You say redirects were not automatically created "earlier" ..... when is "earlier"? I first published the new online store in January 2020. I considered myself late to the party...as the conversion process had already been done by many, many before me. 

Lastly, I'm not sure I want to try the email route again and open a new case....it seemed to have been a waste of time the last time.

Thank you!!

[AdamB]

Thanks for clarifying that; there's an open ticket with our engineers about this with a different site. I'll add your information there and see if they can manually add the forward for you. Once that redirect is in I don't think you'll need to do anything with the old site in your Square Dashboard.

[safsac]

Thank you, @AdamB . Hopefully the engineers can setup the redirect. And, hopefully the search engines will start picking up the new store (still waiting on it). If not, you'll probably hear from me again....(unless there's someone else I should be contacting?). Thanks again!

[safsac]

Hi @AdamB . Update on no redirects & no search engine hits.

It's been 2 weeks and....

1) still no redirects in place.

2) just received this email from the Google Search Console Team... it reads:

Search Console has identified that your site is affected by 7 Products issues:

Top Warnings

Warnings are suggestions for improvement. Some warnings can affect your appearance on Search; some might be reclassified as errors in the future. The following warnings were found on your site:

Missing field "url"

Missing field "review"

Missing field "aggregateRating"

Missing field "brand"

Missing field "priceValidUntil"

We recommend that you fix these issues when possible to enable the best experience and coverage in Google Search.

I have no idea what to do with this or if this is something I can fix from my end. Any suggestions?

Thx!

[AdamB]

It sounds like there isn't going to be a way to forward the old site to the new one unless it happened automatically already. Are you able to access and make any changes to the old one still? If so I would consider taking it down so that it falls out of Google search results; that should make it easier for the new one to get ranked higher.

Regarding those search errors, those basically will affect whether Google will try and include the item in shopping results. It won't prevent proper indexing and it should get ranked, though. I suspect this is something we'll want to add in the future.

[safsac]

Too risky, @AdamB , to just take down my old site and HOPE Google starts ranking the new site. And, too HOPE redirects just magically appear. Disappointing Weebly is giving no workable solutions to a problem with their website. Guess I'll just keep the old Square site going as long as I can since this is my income and I cannot afford to experiment on just a wing-and-a-prayer. Thanks for the effort though. Best wishes, stay safe in these troubled times.

[pessosices]

@AdamB - My old store is not redirecting to my new one either - so does that mean it will never happen? I was under the impression that it could/would still happen. That's super disappointing if it never will. It still seems to be working & people could put in orders through it.

[AdamB]

I think it turned out to be a bit more involved doing this for stores which were not automatically upgraded or were done prior to some later updates. I don't think it means that it's not possible, but it will take more work to build it out than originally thought.

[pepe810]

Are you satisfied with the way SEO is working for you safsac?  did you upgrade to another domain other than square.site ?

[safsac]

Hi @pepe810

Not satisfied at all. SEO on the new Weebly site is not working. Only 1 page of around 50 is getting picked up even though they are all set up the same. No redirects in place from my old Square site to the new Weebly site either. Basically, with the exception of the one page, my new Weebly site is invisible. And, Weebly has given no workable, reasonable solution. Disappointing. Thankfully my old Square site is still working or I'd be screwed. If you still have an old Square site...keep it running!!

Best, safsac

@AdamB 

[pepe810]

I just set up my store and when I do mock google searches I don't see my stuff showing up.  do you have .square.site or did you upgrade?

[safsac]

@pepe810 . Yes it's a .square.site. figured there's no sense in upgrading since I can't even get the free site working. My site is set-up as a "property" on Googles Search Console, its been published, verified with both Google and Bing, all the SEO on each page is entered, and I've submitted a site map to Google too. It's been months and it's still not getting picked up. Honestly, I've given up on the Weebly site. Hope I'm never forced into a situation by Square where I HAVE to use it.

Best, safsac

@AdamB 

[Joe]

Hi there, @safsac 👋 I can step in for Adam on this one while he is out. So sorry to hear about the continued trouble with your site.

Have you tried flagging this over to our Support Team directly? They may be able to provide some helpful workarounds by taking a deep dive into your site with a more 'hands-on' approach.