why does google stop showing our forum pages?

Sample_Product_Exper
Sample_Product_Exper
First Comment Photogenic
✭
in Support

Our forum was getting normal search traffic and then it dropped off hard. I checked the sitemap and it still looks fine, but the pages are barely showing in Google now.

What is the first thing I should verify inside Discourse before I go chase search console noise? I need something concrete because this is already affecting discovery.

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  • Sample_Community_Lea
    Sample_Community_Lea
    First Comment First Answer Photogenic
    ✭
    Answer ✓

    Start with the sitemap and the indexability settings in admin. Make sure the site is not blocking crawlers through noindex in the theme or a site setting, and verify the canonical URLs are consistent. If the forum recently moved hosts or domains, check that redirects are returning 301s and not a mix of 302s. Also confirm the public-facing pages are not behind login for anonymous visitors. If all of that is clean, then use Search Console to inspect one affected URL and compare the rendered page with what Discourse is serving.

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