Having trouble removing homepage from google
-
For various reasons my client wants their homepage removed from google, no just the content of the page off but the page not to be indexed (yep strange request but we are mere service providers) today I requested in webmaster tool that default.asp was removed. Wht says done but the sites homepage is still listed. The page also has a no index tag on but 24 hours and 18k Google bot hits later it still remains.
Anyone got any other suggestions to deindex just the homepage asap please
-
yes, we have resorted to this. We have a canonical tag to the blocked .com version of the site so hopefully that gets rid of the page. The client want's it removed 'yesterday' but only so much I can do when I don't control Google personally!
Thanks again for the advice
-
Unfortunately, GWT removal is one of the fastest ways I know of. If Google isn't honoring that, they're probably trying (in their minds) to protect you from de-indexing your home-page. I think the next most extreme step would be to rel-canonical your home-page to another page (possibly even another site) - that's going to be hard to undo later, though.
-
Very true, I agree with you fully on this. However the client is very much in a 'get it out of the engine and we will worry about the traffic 'tomorrow'' frame of mind.
To be honest as long as the page still works for direct traffic we could seo a replacement homepage /welcome.asp to rank for the company name easily enough but for now it's the hassle of trying to get the page out
-
I agree. You never want to de-index your homepage as (in my opinion) the heart of your website. You're showing willing to co-operate by removing references of the trademark throughout your site and personally I would think that would be sufficient.
If you have pages within your site then I would use a .htaccess 301 redirect for the pages in question and redirect users to the homepage instead, that way you attribute the page rank (link juice) from the removed pages back to the homepage.
If the client has suggested you remove the index from the homepage I would cover your back and write a letter informing them of the negative issues of de-indexing the homepage and just say that it can be done but you hold no responsibility for loss of search engine traffic as a result. It might also be worth adding an annotation within Google Analytics noting the date the homepage was de-indexed so the client (and you) can see the impact it has on the site.
-
I fully agree with you about the trademark but you know clients can be when they hear the words 'legal action. Hopefully we can get the page out and appease the trademark owner.
Thanks for your advice on this matter
-
I'm not a legal expert, but are they still using the trademark on the home-page? If they're not using it at all, but are only ranking on it from past efforts, there's not much of a case. They can't control the algorithm - they can only remove references on the site. Of course, it depends on how pervasive those references are and how much you want to fight it.
I just worry that de-indexing the home-page is going to have much broader, long-term consequences.
If you want to make the party threatening action happy at any cost to your site, you could rel-canonical your home-page to their home-page. I wouldn't do it, but it's another possibility.
Ultimately, though, all these things take time to process. If you, in good faith, have removed all trademark references and have requested removal with Google, you can't control the rest and I doubt you're liable for it.
-
It's a very strange situation I admit. The main reason is that they used to have a contract to supply certain services on behalf on a third party. They seoed for the company name but have since lost the contract and now being threatened with legal action for ranking for the trade mark because they no longer have permission to use it. We plan on creating a new homepage at welcome.asp which would be seoed as the site homepage for both branded and non branded terms. However we need to get the trademark issue out the way asap
-
Typically, for a regular NOINDEX situation, you wouldn't want to use Robots.txt (you're right, it could prevent the page-level signal), but in this extreme of a situation and to really get the GWT signal to work, you may need the Robots.txt directive in place.
I'm confused, though, they want the home-page out of Google but NOT the rest of the site? By blocking the home-page, they'll kill the link-juice to other pages, and do massive SEO damage. I have to think there's another alternative.
For example, could they canonical the home-page to another, Google-safe page (let users see the original but send SERPs elsewhere)? Another alternative would be to move the current home-page content to a deeper page, 302-redirect to that page for visitors, and leave Google on the Google-safe home-page.
My gut reaction is that this sounds like a very dangerous maneuver, but it's really tough to say without understanding the logic behind it.
-
The best way to do this would be at page level. For the pages you don't want indexed, add
This will tell the search engines not to index that page, but to follow and index the other pages.
But I do have to say, I have never heard of anyone trying to not index the home page. It will be interesting to see how this turns out.
-
Thanks for the reply.
You're correct that they still want the homepage working but not indexed. They wish for sections to remain indexed. I will try the robots idea but it I block the site there would it still crawl the page to pick up the no index tag?
-
Just the home-page, or the entire site? GWT is usually the fastest and most reliable way. I'd block the entire site in Robots.txt, too - sometimes, Google wants to see that prior to a GWT removal (although, usually, NOINDEX Is enough).
I assume they still want the page active for visitors (and just want it off of Google)?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Removing Multiple 301 Redirects
During my last redesign (and migration to Drupal) some of the updated SEO friendly url's on the new site were misspelled. Rather than updating the 301 redirects to point to the correct page the developer just added an additional 301 redirect. So it was redirected like this website.com/oldpage (301 to) website.com/new-paige (301 to) website.com/new-page Instead of website.com/oldpage (301 to) website.com/new-page I'll be finishing another redesign and updating to https soon, should I remove the redirect to the misspelled domain and just have one 301 from the original page? These multiple redirects have been up for over a year. Thanks for any specific advice!
Technical SEO | | talltrees0 -
Web Page Dropped Out of Google?
One of our web pages seems to have completely dropped out of Google after featuring on page 1 for a number of years. It can't be a site wide issue as all other web pages are performing as normal. The page is http://www.contractormoney.com/income-protection/ and the key phrase it was performing well for was 'contractor income protection'. Any ideas??
Technical SEO | | Pete40 -
Google having trouble accessing my site
Hi google is having problem accessing my site. each day it is bringing up access denied errors and when i have checked what this means i have the following Access denied errors In general, Google discovers content by following links from one page to another. To crawl a page, Googlebot must be able to access it. If you’re seeing unexpected Access Denied errors, it may be for the following reasons: Googlebot couldn’t access a URL on your site because your site requires users to log in to view all or some of your content. (Tip: You can get around this by removing this requirement for user-agent Googlebot.) Your robots.txt file is blocking Google from accessing your whole site or individual URLs or directories. Test that your robots.txt is working as expected. The Test robots.txt tool lets you see exactly how Googlebot will interpret the contents of your robots.txt file. The Google user-agent is Googlebot. (How to verify that a user-agent really is Googlebot.) The Fetch as Google tool helps you understand exactly how your site appears to Googlebot. This can be very useful when troubleshooting problems with your site's content or discoverability in search results. Your server requires users to authenticate using a proxy, or your hosting provider may be blocking Google from accessing your site. Now i have contacted my hosting company who said there is not a problem but said to read the following page http://www.tmdhosting.com/kb/technical-questions/other/robots-txt-file-to-improve-the-way-search-bots-crawl/ i have read it and as far as i can see i have my file set up right which is listed below. they said if i still have problems then i need to contact google. can anyone please give me advice on what to do. the errors are responce code 403 User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
Disallow: /administrator/
Disallow: /cache/
Disallow: /components/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /installation/
Disallow: /language/
Disallow: /libraries/
Disallow: /media/
Disallow: /modules/
Disallow: /plugins/
Disallow: /templates/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /xmlrpc/0 -
Removing irrelevant items from Google News?
A client wants to know if it's possible to get Google to remove stories from Google News feeds if those stories have nothing to do with the client? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | JamesAMartin0 -
Google Penalty?
Hi, I have recently been asked to help www.mycanvas.ie I have a feeling they have a google penalty. All their Google Keywords have literally dropped out of the Google SERP but they are still shown on Yahoo SERP. I recently did a site:www.mycanvas.ie and the pages are still in google index. The only thing that comes to mind is that the site owner submitted to 380 web directories over a period of 2 months with http://www.directorymaximizer.com/ do you think this could be causing the problem with google? Advise and suggestions are welcomed, thank you.
Technical SEO | | Socialdude0 -
Duplicate homepage content
Hi, I recently did a site crawl using seomoz crawl test My homepage seems to have 3 cases of duplicate content.. These are the urls www.example.ie/ www.example..ie/%5B%7E19%7E%5D www.example..ie/index.htm Does anyone have any advise on this? What impact does this have on my seo?
Technical SEO | | Socialdude0 -
Google indexing page with description
Hello, We rank fairly high for a lot of terms but Google is not indexing our descriptions properly. An example is with "arnold schwarzenegger net worth". http://www.google.ca/search?q=arnold+schwarzenegger+net+worth&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a When we add content, we throw up a placeholder page first. The content gets added with no body content and the page only contains the net worth amount of the celebrity. We then go back through and re-add the descriptions and profile bio shortly after. Will that affect how the pages are getting indexed and is there a way we can get Google to go back to the page and try to index the description so it doesn't just appear as a straight link? Thanks, Alex
Technical SEO | | Anti-Alex0