What is the best way to fix this Google Search Console Redirect Error

[koneill]

What is the best way to fix this Google Search Console error:

I've tried to tweak my robots.txt file, resubmited my sitemap.xml file and also checked that the site doesn't have any noindex attributes set on the homepage or inner pages as I customized the template for this to make sure of this. I'm hosting this site via blogspot.com. Because of this redirect error on the homepage none of the other posts are being indexed:

Page indexing
Page is not indexed: Redirect error

Crawled as
Googlebot smartphone
Crawl allowed? Yes
Page fetch info
Failed: Redirect error
Indexing allowed?
N/A

My current robots.txt files is as such:

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow:

User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /

User-agent: *
Disallow: /search
Allow: /
Allow: /feeds/posts/default

Sitemap: https://aikingdom777.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml
Sitemap: https://aikingdom777.blogspot.com/sitemap-pages.xml

[Dani]

I'm going to take a random guess here that Googlebot is unable to crawl the page because it is ending up in an infinite redirect, multiple redirects, or being redirected to a page that doesn't exist, or something like that. In other words, the redirect you have set up at that URL isn't working.

I would start by visiting the URL yourself (with your cookies cleared, just the way Googlebot would access it) and see if you encounter any errors. Use your web browser's developer tools to inspect and make sure that there's just one single redirect in place. In other words, that the URL doesn't redirect to a different URL that redirects to a third URL.

If that works as intended, then make sure that you, or your CDN, aren't doing any cloaking where you show different content to Googlebot than to human visitors. Sometimes things work for you but they don't for Googlebot.

As a sidenote, what is the point of that sitemap-pages.xml second sitemap file? It appears to not have any URLs when I look at it. Also, your homepage doesn't seem to be in your sitemap.xml file.

[ShikhaKedia]

Test the redirect in person
Get a web browser (with cookies cleared or incognito) and attempt to enter the homepage URL as Googlebot would. See if the page redirects, see how many redirects there are, or if it ends on a broken link. Sometimes there are multiple redirects that occur (URL → another URL → another), and that is not good to Google.

Verify the status codes
If you have a redirect in place, make sure it is done with a 301 (permanent) or even a 302 (temporary) depending on the appropriateness of such redirect. Avoid using meta refresh or JavaScript-based redirects if possible, it can cause issues for the bots.

Check any redirect from your hosting / template / platform
Because you are on Blogspot, see if the template or custom domain settings have caused this redirect. Website hosting, blog template, CDN and more sometimes redirect non-www to www, or redirects HTTP to HTTPS in ways that result in a redirect loop or dead ends.

Check the sitemap and robots.txt
Check to see if your homepage URL is in the sitemap correctly. Also double check that the robots.txt doesn’t disallow something that is blocking Googlebot from crawling the final destination of the redirect.

Check if the homepage is missing or 404s
If the redirect goes to a non-existent page (404 error) or missing, that will also trigger the homepage missing page error. Ensure that the final page is transcribed to properly retrieve or input the actual homepage.

[carbattery]

You can fix a Google Search Console Redirect Error by ensuring all redirects are correct, functional, and consistent. For permanent changes, use 301 redirects, avoid redirect chains or loops, and update internal links to point directly to the destination. Verify smooth navigation and error-free indexing with tools like Google Search Console or Redirect Checker.

[Dani]

Thanks for the info I’ll check it all out - I used copilot generative at one point to create that robots.txt file asking it to optimize it.

AI can be a great tool, but it gets things wrong a lot of times too, so always double check all of its work and don't take anything for granted.

Have you gotten the GSC errors fixed? Typically GSC updates Page indexing about once a week.

[willam45678]

Redirect errors in Google Search Console are often caused by broken or outdated internal links. Regularly checking site structure and fixing URL mismatches can help resolve them. I recently went through a similar issue while working on a coffee-related project and cleaning up redirects significantly improved indexing and performance.

[Somit_1]

I had a similar issue, but my problem was caused by an HTML file that include noindex property in meta.