We Have a Website in Our Portfolio Called www.TrinitySisters.net

It’s a fairly ordinary, average blog with regular articles and a small web shop — nothing unusual or revolutionary.

When we started optimizing the site, it was completely absent from Google in regular search results. Even a search for its main keyword, “Trinity Sisters,” returned absolutely nothing. Zero.

Now, there is some competition for that keyword — a book, a band, and a few religious American organizations use the same phrase — but by page 4 or 5 in Google’s search results, the content becomes thin and barely related to the search.

That led us to conclude: if the site had poor SEO (which it didn’t), it should still appear around page 4 or 5 — where all the other weak or mismatched results live. So its total absence made no sense.

Bing and Yandex Ranked It First. Google? Nowhere.

What made things even more confusing was that Yandex and Bing had the site ranked #1 — a perfect top spot.

We also tried Baidu. Its results fluctuated wildly — much like Google does with new sites. Sometimes “Trinity Sisters” returned nothing. But when we expanded the query to “Trinity Sisters Dirty Business,” it showed up at position #1. After that, going back to just “Trinity Sisters” sometimes showed it — sometimes not. It was either ranked first or buried so deep that it was effectively invisible.

Even more interesting: by clicking the site in Baidu’s results, we noticed the search engine seemed to “learn” what we wanted. The site would then appear in first position for a few hours — and then disappear again. Apparently, Baidu is highly responsive but forgetful.

AMP Errors and a Plugin Conflict

Digging into the issue, we found 15 AMP-related errors in Google Search Console. Each error said:

“Custom JavaScript is not allowed.”

We tried various things. Eventually, we discovered a strange interaction between two AMP plugins (used one at a time) and an HTTPS plugin.

We tested:

• AMP by AMP Project Contributors

• AMP for WP – Accelerated Mobile Pages by Ahmed Kaludi

• SSL plugin: Really Simple SSL by Rogier Lankhorst

We deleted Really Simple SSL and implemented an .htaccess redirect instead — a more technically correct solution. The plugin is useful for non-tech users, but if you’re using AMP, there may be a hidden risk: your site might get kicked out of Google.

Reindex Request – A Slow, Painful Process

We asked Google to reindex the site. And by the Holy Pilsner, it was painfully slow.

The first three days: one page per day.
Then 3–6 days between crawls.
Eventually, Google slowly realized the AMP errors were gone.

It took almost two months for Google to chew through all pages and conclude there were no issues.

Did it help?

Nope. The site was still in exile. Occasionally it appeared around page 18–20 — a tiny improvement, maybe.

We continued optimizing images, cleaned the database, and moved the site to Cloudflare. No improvement. Google just hated the site.

And Then… Yandex Broke Too

The day after we added the site to Yandex.com Webmaster Tools, it completely disappeared from Yandex too.

Yandex had previously shown the site as #1 for 7 keyword variations involving “Trinity Sisters.” When we ran the same searches Yandex claimed we were #1 for, we got… nothing. Absolutely nothing.

A glaring contradiction between what Yandex reports in Webmaster Tools and what it actually shows in reality.

By the way, note that Yandex.com and Yandex.ru are not the same search engine.

Google’s AMP Confusion = Trust Broken

While researching Google’s AMP documentation — on Google, naturally — we discovered that Google’s own understanding of AMP is shaky at best.

Even Google’s own content and guides suggest that AMP is still at a Beta/Experimental level — despite being live for years. Our trust in Google’s AMP system took a serious hit.

So we decided: ditch AMP entirely. We uninstalled everything AMP-related and requested another review from Google.

And Would You Believe It… It Worked!

We got results — fast.

• DuckDuckGo, previously ranking the site around page 6–8, now had it #1 the next day.

• Baidu started placing the site at the top of page one.

• Bing: Still holding position #1.

• Yandex: Moved to the bottom of page 9.

• Google: Climbed to the bottom of page 3.

A dramatic improvement, which we expected to continue over the coming weeks.

Oddly, a new AMP error appeared in Google Webmaster Tools:

“The referenced AMP URL is not an AMP.”

Which makes sense, because we’d removed AMP completely. So… what AMP reference are they talking about?

Search Console gave us this gem:

“Canonical URL: https://www.trinitysisters.net/youtube-is-a-fraud/ — No further information available for this issue.”

So apparently, Google can detect an AMP error on a site that has no AMP pages, and then offer no explanation whatsoever.

Bravo, Google. That’s peak absurdity. But also, totally in line with their usual level of “support.”

Software Has Bugs – Especially Search Engines

Search engines are software. And software always has bugs.

We’ve worked with software for decades.
There are bugs in Windows, in drivers (causing crashes), in apps, in office tools…
Even Open Office sometimes crashes when pasting with CTRL + V.
Facebook recently showed a random woman’s profile picture on our profile — instead of our own.

If Facebook can mix up profile pictures, what’s stopping it from showing someone else’s data under your name?

AI Is Complicated. And So Is AMP.

AI is massively complex. Of course search engines make mistakes. But AMP makes it worse.

In our experience:

• Bing is the only search engine that handles AMP correctly.

• Baidu likely does too — though its rankings fluctuate.

• Yandex and DuckDuckGo struggle to interpret AMP properly.

• Google? Completely lost.

One Week Later – Rankings Snapshot:

• Bing: #1

• Yandex.ru: #1

• Yandex.com: #1

• DuckDuckGo: #1

• Baidu: #1 or #2

• AOL: #2

• Google: Around position 60–70

5 Months Later: Back in Google

At long last, the site was fully back in Google.
Our conclusion?

Don’t mess around with AMP unless you really know what you’re doing.

In every case where things went wrong, they went really wrong — and pages vanished completely from Google’s index for weeks or even months. Recovery was slow. Much slower than if it had been a brand-new site.

Final Word: Don’t Believe Google Is Infallible

We’ve seen firsthand how errors — especially related to AMP — can destroy a site’s visibility.
And when it happens, Google won’t help.
So test carefully, monitor rankings constantly, and always question the “official” recommendations.

Because in this case, Google clearly didn’t know what the hell it was doing.