How to Hide Directories in Search?
-
I noticed bad 404 error links in Google Webmaster Tools and they were pointing to directories that do not have an actual page, but hold information.
Ex: there are links pointing to our PDF folder which holds all of our pdf documents. If i type in , example.com/pdf/ it brings up a unformated webpage that displays all of our PDF links.
How do I prevent this from happening. Right now I am blocking these in my robots.txt file, but if i type them in, they still appear.
Or should I not worry about this?
-
Yes, a visit to example.com/dir should now return a 404 error (if you haven't done any redirecting/canonicalizing). This will increase your 404 count in Web Master tools but it's far preferable to the alternative. If you're not redirecting the robots.txt will eventually work and hopefully the links will just fall out of WMT.
-
My hosting company turned off directory browsing and now everything is how it should be. So to my understanding, if the server sees a file that does not have a index file, it should not be view able and should be forbidden. This shoujld not affect us from an SEO standpoint should it? My hosting company said they disabled all directories in our site, however everything still works, except for the forbidden file directories.
-
Basically it shouldn't really have an affect; those unformatted file listings are literally the web server automatically saying 'here's the files that are in this folder', there's no meta tags, description, on page elements, etc.
If you have these pages and they're ranking well, you generally don't want them to be. The automatic file browsing pages don't have your name, your company, etc. in them, and they're generally pretty ugly. They also theoretically could be 'stealing' juice from your 'real' pages, if your internal structure isn't flowing relevance properly.
Basically what I'm saying is that if these pages are having some kind of SEO effect, you probably don't want them to be since they're so basic.
Also I can't overstate the security concerns that directory browsing might be introducing. If someone can directory browse to where your code lives (.php, .aspx.vb, whatever) they may be able to read it. Code sometimes has important things like logins, passwords, merchant account ids, etc. in it that you definitely don't want people reading.
-
Agreed with Valerie that step 1 is to turn off those directory listing pages - that can be a security issue and you don't necessarily want people to see/access the whole list. Also, make doubly sure you don't have any internal links to that directory (Google crawled it somehow).
Generally, Robots.txt should prevent crawling, but it's not foolproof, and it's pretty bad about removing pages once they're indexed. If you can block the page from browsing and return a 404 for the root page, that should be fine. The other option would be to have the page removed in Google Webmaster Tools. You could request removal for the entire folder, but I'm guessing that you may want the actual PDFs indexed.
-
Will turning of directory browsing affect Search for all directories?
-
I really don't want to 301 redirect them as they are just holding files. This is happening with my includes file too. that holds our header, footer, navigation etc. I can check with our hosting company to find out.
-
I'd create an index.html for the directory, and then redirect it somewhere. This way, you're capturing the inbound links and then rescuing some of the inbound juice.
Otherwise, you can also check out this post for more info on other solutions and modifying your htaccess file to prevent the directory view - http://perishablepress.com/better-default-directory-views-with-htaccess/
-
Blocking it in robots.txt will work to hide it from search engines.
If you want to hide it from users or people to who type in the url, you can simply drop a blank "index.html" in the /pdf folder.
-
I would suggest 301'ing them to their /index.htm or /pdf.htm equivalents. If you don't know, a 301 is a signal to a web browser (or search crawler) saying "this page has permanently moved, please go to (otherpage.htm) instead".
Here's a good SEOMoz article explaining it a bit more:
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection
What might be more of a concern, is it sounds like your web server has directory browsing enabled. This could be a security issue (depending on your web server setup). Generally you don't want to expose directories if you don't have to because it gives a potential attacker insight into your system setup. Here's an example how to do it in Apache:
www.camelrichard.org/topics/Apache/Turn_OffDirectoryBrowsing
And IIS:
technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc731109(v=ws.10).aspx
If you like I can confirm if you have open directories if you give me the link, either here or through private message.
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
-
Optimization for "Search by Photos" feature
Howdy, fellow mozzers, Does anyone know what affects a given company photos show up in the "Search by Photos" section? I can't find any decent info.. Here is the link to SEL, describing the feature (not even google themselves seem to have an announcement about it). https://searchengineland.com/google-showing-mobile-search-by-photos-option-in-selected-local-verticals-323237 Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DmitriiK0 -
How-to: Geography Based Search Results for Job Board
Hi, I’m working with a client that is building a job board website. We want to have the ability to show search results in Google that show job results for a specific area. For example, “Office Administrator Jobs in Chicago” or “Marketing Assistant Positions in Cleveland”. How can we go about setting this up? Do I need to create a separate landing page for each of these exact searches? Or can this be done with a taxonomy or the job search function? This is a WordPress built website and we're using the Yoast SEO plugin. Any help would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cslingerland0 -
Are iframes really an organic search problem?
I'm helping someone with a new site that will have pages for organic search that contain embedded video. Some will be youtube embeds and some will be wistia embeds. These pages will have several hundred words of transcript text and the embeds (iframes) iframes themselves will be rather small, but expandable and possibly more than one per page. The transcript text area is more like 80% of the page. Do you think this is an organic search problem? I use one site audit tool that calls this out as a serious warning. Currently, the embedded player(s) are a column down the left side, about 1/4th of the width of the page, and the transcripts are everything else, wrapping around it. The transcripts are fully readable and not hidden in some kind of expandable accordion or anything. Does layout matter in this issue? Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Fixing A Page Google Omits In Search
Hi, I have two pages ranking for the same keyword phrase. Unfortunately, the wrong page is ranking higher, and the other page, only ranks when you include the omitted results. When you have a page that only shows when its omitted, is that because the content is too similar in google's eyes? Could there be any other possible reason? The content really shouldn't be flagged as duplicate, but if this is the only reason, I can change it around some more. I'm just trying to figure out the root cause before I start messing with anything. Here are the two links, if that's necessary. http://www.kempruge.com/personal-injury/ http://www.kempruge.com/location/tampa/tampa-personal-injury-legal-attorneys/ Best, Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
I have search result pages that are completely different showing up as duplicate content.
I have numerous instances of this same issue in our Crawl Report. We have pages showing up on the report as duplicate content - they are product search result pages for completely different cruise products showing up as duplicate content. Here's an example of 2 pages that appear as duplicate : http://www.shopforcruises.com/carnival+cruise+lines/carnival+glory/2013-09-01/2013-09-30 http://www.shopforcruises.com/royal+caribbean+international/liberty+of+the+seas We've used Html 5 semantic markup to properly identify our Navigation <nav>, our search widget as an <aside>(it has a large amount of page code associated with it). We're using different meta descriptions, different title tags, even microformatting is done on these pages so our rich data shows up in google search. (rich snippet example - http://www.google.com/#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=http:%2F%2Fwww.shopforcruises.com%2Froyal%2Bcaribbean%2Binternational%2Fliberty%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bseas&oq=http:%2F%2Fwww.shopforcruises.com%2Froyal%2Bcaribbean%2Binternational%2Fliberty%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bseas&gs_l=hp.3...1102.1102.0.1601.1.1.0.0.0.0.142.142.0j1.1.0...0.0...1c.1.7.psy-ab.gvI6vhnx8fk&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.44442042,d.eWU&fp=a03ba540ff93b9f5&biw=1680&bih=925 ) How is this distinctly different content showing as duplicate? Is SeoMoz's site crawl flawed (or just limited) and it's not understanding that my pages are not dupe? Copyscape does not identify these pages as dupe. Should we take these crawl results more seriously than copyscape? What action do you suggest we take? </aside> </nav>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JMFieldMarketing0 -
How to optimise a local business directory?
Hey All, I've a new client who is a local business directory designed to promote local businesses across the UK but starting in it's home town of Brighton in the UK. I'm a little stumped to know how I can start to optimise this site as most of the pages being created are from very different businesses and focus on different subjects. I realise this is going to be a long haul but wondered if there are any tips you guys know of. My client domain is: call-us-first.co.uk Thanks Steve
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stevecounsell0 -
Local Keyword Searches With Broad Terms.
I am able to do keyword research for any term that I want,. However, I want to see results for broad keywords in local areas.... For example.. Hair cut Miami may get 100 searches a month. How can I find the number (x) of search volume for "Hair Cut" searched within Miami, FL.? If I add the 100 and the other number (x) it may be worth the while to build.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Search result clicks for one of my posts down significantly
I started receiving a warning warning in google webmaster tools about 2 weeks ago that said "big traffic change for top url". On reading the message i saw "Search results clicks for http://goo.gl/EyhUJ have decreased significantly". When I search google using the keyword "sore breasts" for which that post used to rank at least number 2 on google, I dont see anything. The related post http://goo.gl/vP025 is still ranking well. Can anyone give me an idea of what might have happened? I am totally at sea. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adaeze0