Why is only my /en landing page indexed after almost 1 year? Old domain indexed 60+ pages quickly

Hi everyone,

I’m hoping someone with experience dealing with Google indexing and domain migrations can help me figure out what may be wrong with my site.

I’m a solo developer managing the site myself, so I may have missed something obvious from an SEO perspective.

My current domain has been online for almost 1 year, but Google has only indexed the main /en landing page. None of the other important pages are getting indexed.

Here is the full history:

• The site was originally on an old domain.
• The old domain actually performed quite normally from an indexing perspective. I got around 60 pages indexed within a few weeks.
• I decided to migrate the site to a new domain and used Google Search Console as part of the migration process.
• I also implemented permanent 301 redirects from the old domain to the new domain.
• However, the migration never properly completed from Google's perspective. Even after more than 9 months, the new domain still wasn't picking up the old site's indexed pages properly.
• Eventually, I lost control of the old domain, so I can no longer make changes to the old domain or modify the redirects there.
• About 3 months ago, I decided to completely change and rewrite the content on the new domain.
• I didn't just lightly edit the old content. I intentionally completely reworked the content so that it would not be similar to the content that existed on the old domain.
• I also tried to make the new content substantially more comprehensive and useful.
• Despite doing this, I'm still stuck with basically only the /en landing page indexed.

I have also been doing some social media marketing, so the site does receive traffic from different real users and IP addresses. It's not a site that has literally zero visitors.

For additional context, I also developed an iOS app for the service, and the app currently generates what I believe is the largest external link and referral source back to my website.

What I've already tried​

One important point is that I've already spent several months troubleshooting this with Codex and Claude.

I've gone through the usual technical SEO and indexing possibilities and tried to identify what could be preventing the other pages from being indexed. I've looked at things such as crawling, indexing status, sitemap, canonical tags, robots.txt, internal linking and other technical factors.

Despite all of this, I still haven't been able to determine what is actually blocking the pages from being indexed.

So I'm hoping to get advice from someone who has personally dealt with a similar domain migration or indexing problem, rather than just the usual basic SEO checklist.

What I'm trying to understand is whether the problem could now be something related to the domain itself, rather than simply the content.

Could the previous migration have caused some kind of long-term issue with the new domain?

For example:

• Could the failed or long-running Google Search Console migration still be affecting the new domain?
• Could the old 301 redirects or migration history have caused problems?
• Could Google still have some association between the old and new domains?
• Could losing control of the old domain make the situation worse?
• Could there be some kind of domain-level trust or quality issue?
• Is it possible that Google is crawling the pages but deciding not to index them?
• Is there something specific in GSC that could help determine whether this is a crawling problem, a quality or indexing problem, or something related to the old migration?
• Could canonical tags, sitemap, robots.txt, internal linking or other technical SEO settings still be responsible?

The thing that really makes me confused is the comparison with the old domain:

Old domain: around 60 pages indexed within a few weeks.

New domain: almost 1 year old, but essentially only /en indexed.

I've also completely rewritten the content on the new domain over the last 3 months, specifically to make sure it isn't simply duplicate or substantially similar content from the old site.

My main question​

At this point, could the new domain itself be "burned" or otherwise problematic in Google's eyes?

Would you guys continue trying to recover this domain, or would it make more sense to abandon the current domain and start again with a completely new domain name?

Starting over with another domain would be a pretty serious decision for me because I've already invested quite a bit of time and effort into social media marketing for the current domain. The social media marketing hasn't been particularly effective either, and I'm also concerned that the lack of Google visibility may affect users' trust when they discover the site through social media and then search for the site themselves.

I also already have an iOS app for the service, so moving to another domain would mean dealing with the existing app, links, marketing and branding all over again.

So I'm really trying to figure out whether this is a domain that I should keep working on and try to recover, or whether I'm wasting time on a domain that has some kind of underlying Google issue.

If you were in my position, would you keep working on the current domain or move everything to a new domain?

If you think the current domain is recoverable, what would you check or do first?

Any advice from someone who has experienced a failed domain migration like this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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TL;DR: My old domain got around 60 pages indexed within a few weeks. I migrated it to a new domain using Google Search Console and permanent 301 redirects, but after 9+ months the migration never properly transferred the indexing. I eventually lost control of the old domain. The new domain is now almost 1 year old, and after completely rewriting the content 3 months ago, only the /en landing page is indexed. I've spent months troubleshooting the technical SEO side with Codex and Claude but still can't find the cause. I also have an iOS app and some social media traffic pointing to the site. Could the new domain itself have an indexing or trust issue, and should I keep trying to recover it or start over with another domain?

I wouldn't abandon the domain yet. If only one page is indexed after a year, I'd focus on finding out whether Google is crawling the other pages but choosing not to index them.

GSC's URL Inspection and Page Indexing reports should give you the biggest clues before starting over.

GeeLark AI said:

I wouldn't abandon the domain yet. If only one page is indexed after a year, I'd focus on finding out whether Google is crawling the other pages but choosing not to index them.

GSC's URL Inspection and Page Indexing reports should give you the biggest clues before starting over.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion. I actually went down that road quite deeply already.

I've spent months on this. I've gone through the GSC messages, URL Inspection results and Page Indexing reports over and over again, and I've been checking them roughly every couple of weeks to see what changed.

I've also used Codex, Claude, Gemini, and even the expensive Claude Fable 5 to analyze the GSC data and try to figure out what could actually be preventing the pages from being indexed.

Whenever the pages still weren't indexed, I kept trying different things. I further enhanced the content, changed URLs on some pages, created new pages, improved internal linking, and tried various other things. Then I'd wait and check again, but the pages still wouldn't get indexed.

There is another detail that makes me particularly suspicious about the previous migration.

Even the main /en landing page took almost 6 months to get indexed.

During those first several months, whenever I searched Google for the new domain name, Google would still show the old domain in the SERPs rather than the new domain. This continued for quite a long time after the migration to the new domain.

My suspicion is that the old domain may have remained associated with the new domain in Google's systems because the migration through GSC never properly completed, but I obviously can't say for certain that this was the cause.

What's making me even more suspicious of the domain is that I actually did a separate test.

I built a completely new site in the same industry, with broadly similar subject matter, but using a different format, different site structure and different content. I did this using the same Google account and the same Google Search Console setup.

That new site got all of its locale pages indexed within about one week.

So this is why I'm starting to wonder if there is something specific about the current domain or its history, rather than a general problem with my site setup, content, Google account, or GSC configuration.

I'm definitely not saying I've ruled everything out, and I'm still open to the possibility that I'm missing something in URL Inspection or the Page Indexing reports.

What makes this particularly confusing is the timeline. During the first several months after the migration, the old domain continued to appear in Google when I searched for the new domain name, while the new domain itself still wasn't properly indexed. That continued for almost 6 months before the main /en page finally got indexed.

The old domain has since disappeared from the Google SERPs, and I no longer have control over it. In fact, the old domain is no longer even reachable now — it doesn't return a normal 404 page; the domain itself simply isn't accessible anymore.

So I'm not saying the old domain is currently competing with the new one. I'm wondering whether something from the previous migration or the history of the new domain could have put the new domain into some kind of unusual state that I'm still dealing with today.

This is also why the separate test is so interesting to me. I built another site in the same industry, with broadly similar subject matter but a different format, structure and content, using the same Google account and the same GSC setup. That site got all of its locale pages indexed within about one week.

After months of troubleshooting, waiting almost 6 months just for the main /en page to get indexed, and seeing the new test site get indexed normally, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to explain why this particular domain is behaving so differently.

That's why I'm particularly interested in hearing from anyone who has experienced a case where the domain history or a previous migration may have been a factor.

If you have any specific things you think I should look for in URL Inspection or the Page Indexing reports, I'd definitely appreciate it. I'm happy to dig into those again.

The test site makes a general GSC issue less likely, but it still doesn’t prove the domain is burned.

I’d stop changing URLs and compare 5 affected pages in URL Inspection: last crawl, indexing status, user-declared canonical, Google-selected canonical and crawled HTML.

If Google is still choosing an old or different URL, that’s useful evidence of a migration issue. If it chooses the current URL but leaves it crawled-not-indexed, I’d start looking beyond the migration.

Google recommends keeping old-domain redirects for at least a year, so losing the old domain may have interrupted the transfer. I wouldn’t migrate again until the pattern is clearer.

thaaz said:

The test site makes a general GSC issue less likely, but it still doesn’t prove the domain is burned.

I’d stop changing URLs and compare 5 affected pages in URL Inspection: last crawl, indexing status, user-declared canonical, Google-selected canonical and crawled HTML.

If Google is still choosing an old or different URL, that’s useful evidence of a migration issue. If it chooses the current URL but leaves it crawled-not-indexed, I’d start looking beyond the migration.

Google recommends keeping old-domain redirects for at least a year, so losing the old domain may have interrupted the transfer. I wouldn’t migrate again until the pattern is clearer.

Click to expand...

The old domain is no longer showing in Google SERPs, and it's no longer reachable either. I also no longer have control of it.

For the first ~6 months after the migration Google kept showing the old domain when I searched for the new domain name, while even the new domain's /en page wasn't indexed. Eventually, the new domain's /en page got indexed, but the other pages still haven't been indexed, not even the domain homepage without /en.

I've already checked URL Inspection, including indexing status, last crawl, canonicals and crawled HTML. Still no clues.

That narrows it down. One thing first: if / redirects to /en, the root not being indexed is normal, so I wouldn’t count that as another missing page unless / returns 200.

The useful detail now is the exact Page indexing reason for one affected URL. If it says “Discovered – currently not indexed”, I’d check Crawl Stats, host status and server logs. If it says Crawled - currently not indexed and Google selected the same URL as canonical, repeated submission won’t help and the old migration looks less likely as the current blocker...

What exact reason does GSC show, and does / return 200 or redirect to /en?

thaaz said:

That narrows it down. One thing first: if / redirects to /en, the root not being indexed is normal, so I wouldn’t count that as another missing page unless / returns 200.

The useful detail now is the exact Page indexing reason for one affected URL. If it says “Discovered – currently not indexed”, I’d check Crawl Stats, host status and server logs. If it says Crawled - currently not indexed and Google selected the same URL as canonical, repeated submission won’t help and the old migration looks less likely as the current blocker...

What exact reason does GSC show, and does / return 200 or redirect to /en?

Click to expand...

All affected pages are showing “Crawled – currently not indexed.”

The root URL redirects to <span>/en</span>, so I understand that the root itself not being indexed isn't really the issue. The actual problem is that all the other /en content pages and locale pages are also not being indexed.

The affected pages return 200, are indexable, have self-canonicals, are included in the sitemap and have the appropriate hreflang setup.

For the affected URLs, it says “No referring sitemaps detected”, even though my sitemap is successfully processed and contains these pages. Instead, GSC shows referring pages, including pages from the old domain, as well as internal pages from the current site.

Are you using hreflang tags correctly for the different language versions? Also, check if the non-indexed pages have enough internal links or unique content compared to the main English version.