NoIndex/NoFollow pages showing up when doing a Google search using "Site:" parameter
-
We recently launched a beta version of our new website in a subdomain of our existing site. The existing site is www.fonts.com with the beta living at new.fonts.com. We do not want Google to crawl the new site until it's out of beta so we have added the following on all pages:
However, one of our team members noticed that google is displaying results from new.fonts.com when doing an "site:new.fonts.com" search (see attached screenshot). Is it possible that Google is indexing the content despite the noindex, nofollow tags? We have double checked the syntax and it seems correct except the trailing "/". I know Google still crawls noindexed pages, however, the fact that they're showing up in search results using the site search syntax is unsettling.
Any thoughts would be appreciated!
-
Thanks, appreciate you taking the time to write out a response!
-
Thank you for your reply. I will get this information over to the dev team!
-
Hi Chris
If Google sees a link to the page it may still list it in its index even though when they got there they saw the noindex tag so they didn't crawl it.
The rational is they see a link from your main site with some anchor text and index the link based on the anchor text they can't crawl it because you say not to, but they still have some information about the page from your anchor text.
Here is a direct Matt Cutts Quote:
"Our highest duty has to be to our users, not to an individual webmaster. When a user does a navigational query and we don’t return the right link because of a NOINDEX tag, it hurts the user experience (plus it looks like a Google issue). If a webmaster really wants to be out of Google without even a single trace, they can use Google’s url removal tool."
REF: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-noindex-behavior/
You can block access to the test site (which is what we do) via htacess (if you're on a Linux Server) and use the Google Index Removal Tool to strip out the currently indexed pages.
I hope that helps.
-
If you have nofollow on all the pages, there is a chance it is being caused because google can't follow any links to your pages tho crawl and update them with the no-index tag.
Try changing your links to noindex, follow.
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
-
"Equity sculpting" with internal nofollow links
I’ve been trying a couple of new site auditor services this week and they have both flagged the fact that I have some nofollow links to internal pages. I see this subject has popped up from time to time in this community. I also found a 2013 Matt Cutts video on the subject: https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2298312/matt-cutts-you-dont-have-to-nofollow-internal-links At a couple of SEO conferences I’ve attended this year, I was advised that nofollow on internal links can be useful so as not to squander link juice on secondary (but necessary) pages. I suspect many websites have a lot of internal links in their footers and are sharing the love with pages which don’t really need to be boosted. These pages can still be indexed but not given a helping hand to rank by strong pages. This “equity sculpting” (I made that up) seems to make sense to me, but am I missing something? Examples of these secondary pages include login pages, site maps (human readable), policies – arguably even the general contact page. Thoughts? Regards,
Technical SEO | | Warren_Vick
Warren1 -
Should you use google url remover if older indexed pages are still being kept?
Hello, A client recently did a redesign a few months ago, resulting in 700 pages being reduced to 60, mostly due to panda penalty and just low interest in products on those pages. Now google is still indexing a good number of them ( around 650 ) when we only have 70 on our sitemap. Thing is google indexes our site on average now for 115 urls when we only have 60 urls that need indexing and only 70 on our sitemap. I would of thought these urls would be crawled and not found, but is taking a very long period of time. Our rankings haven't recovered as much as we'd hope, and we believe that the indexed older pages are causes this. Would you agree and also would you think removing those old urls via the remover tool would be best option? It would mean using the url remover tool for 650 pages. Thank you in advance
Technical SEO | | Deacyde0 -
Will unused/dead pages within my site that is non-linked hurt my seo?
For example my website has mysite.com/randomunusedpage.html No links go into that page from the website but it is published (came with the WP theme). Will that hurt my SEO and should I delete the page or is it harmless? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Marvellous0 -
SEMRush's Site Audit Tool "SEO Ideas"
Recently SEMRush added a feature to its site audit tool called "SEO Ideas." In the case of specific the site I'm looking at it with, it's ideas consist mostly of suggesting words to add to the page for the page/my phrase(s) to perform better. It suggests this even when the term(s) or phrases(s) it's looking at are #1. Has anybody used this tool for this or something similar and found it to be valuable and if so how valuable? The reason I ask is that it would be a fair amount of work to go through these pages and find ways to add the select words and phrases and, frankly, it feels kind of 2005 to me. Your thoughts? Thanks... Darcy
Technical SEO | | 945010 -
How could you make a URL/Breadcrumb structure appear different in Google than when you click into site?
I'm seeing a competitor be able to make their URL/Breadcrumb stucture appear different in Google than on the site. Google shows a 3-4 category silo for the page but once clicked the page is off root. How could you do this?
Technical SEO | | TicketCity0 -
Page Indexing increase when I request Google Site Link demote
Hi there, Has anyone seen a page crawling increase in Google Web Master Tools when they have requested a site link demotion? I did this around the 23rd of March, the next day I started to see page crawling rise and rise and report a very visible spike in activity and to this day is still relatively high. From memory I have asked about this in SEOMOZ Q&A a couple of years ago in and was told that page crawl activity is a good thing - ok fine, no argument. However at the nearly in the same period I have noticed that my primary keyword rank for my home page has dropped away to something in the region of 4th page on Google US and since March has stayed there. However the exact same query in Google UK (Using SEOMOZ Rank Checker for this) has remained the same position (around 11th) - it has barely moved. I decided to request an undemote on GWT for this page link and the page crawl started to drop but not to the level before March 23rd. However the rank situation for this keyword term has not changed, the content on our website has not changed but something has come adrift with our US ranks. Using Open Site Explorer not one competitor listed has a higher domain authority than our site, page authority, domain links you name it but they sit there in first page. Sorry the above is a little bit of frustration, this question is not impulsive I have sat for weeks analyzing causes and effects but cannot see why this disparity is happening between the 2 country ranks when it has never happened for this length of time before. Ironically we are still number one in the United States for a keyword phrase which I moved away from over a month ago and do not refer to this phrase at all on our index page!! Bizarre. Granted, site link demotion may have no correlation to the KW ranking impact but looking at activities carried out on the site and timing of the page crawling. This is the only sizable factor I can identify that could be the cause. Oh! and the SEOMOZ 'On-Page Optimization Tool' reports that the home page gets an 'A' for this KW term. I have however this week commented out the canonical tag for the moment in the index page header to see if this has any effect. Why? Because as this was another (if not minor) change I employed to get the site to an 'A' credit with the tool. Any ideas, help appreciated as to what could be causing the rank differences. One final note the North American ranks initially were high, circa 11-12th but then consequently dropped away to 4th page but not the UK rankings, they witnessed no impact. Sorry one final thing, the rank in the US is my statistical outlier, using Google Analytics I have an average rank position of about 3 across all countries where our company appears for this term. Include the US and it pushes the average to 8/9th. Thanks David
Technical SEO | | David-E-Carey0 -
Duplicate content with "no results found" search result pages
We have a motorcycle classifieds section that lets users search for motorcycles for sale using various drop down menus to pick year-make-type-model-trim, etc.. These search results create urls such as:
Technical SEO | | seoninjaz
www.example.com/classifieds/search.php?vehicle_manufacturer=Triumph&vehicle_category=On-Off Road&vehicle_model=Tiger&vehicle_trim=800 XC ABS We understand that all of these URL varieties are considered unique URLs by Google. The issue is that we are getting duplicate content errors on the pages that have no results as they have no content to distinguish themselves from each other. A URL like:
www.example.com/classifieds/search.php?vehicle_manufacturer=Triumph&vehicle_category=Sportbike
and
www.example.com/classifieds/search.php?vehicle_manufacturer=Honda&vehicle_category=Streetbike Will have a results page that says "0 results found". I'm wondering how we can distinguish these "unique" pages better? Some thoughts:
-make sure <title>reflects what was search<br />-add a heading that may say "0 results found for Triumph On-Off Road Tiger 800 XC ABS"<br /><br />Can anyone please help out and lend some ideas in solving this? <br /><br />Thank you.</p></title>0 -
Will training videos available on the "members only" section of a site contribute to the sites ranking?
Hello, I got asked a question recently as to whether training videos on the deeper pages of a website (that you can only access if you are a member and log in) will help with the sites ranking. On the SEOMoz software these deeper pages have been crawled as far as I can tell with errors reported on pages from the "members only" section of the site, leading me to believe the members only pages and their content will contribute to the sites overall ranking profile. I have suggested uploading the informational videos on the main pages of the site for now, making them accessible to all visitors and putting them in a more obvious place to encourage more sharing and views, however I've also said I would check it out with some experts so any information will be greatly appreciated! Many thanks 🙂 Charlotte
Technical SEO | | CharlotteWaller0