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
-
Page Speed or Site Speed which one does Google considered a ranking signal
I've read many threads online which proves that website speed is a ranking factor. There's a friend whose website scores 44 (slow metric score) on Google Pagespeed Insights. Despite that his website is slow, he outranks me on Google search results. It confuses me that I optimized my website for speed, but my competitor's slow site outperforms me. On Six9ja.com, I did amazing work by getting my target score which is 100 (fast metric score) on Google Pagespeed Insights. Coming to my Google search console tool, they have shown that some of my pages have average scores, while some have slow scores. Google search console tool proves me wrong that none of my pages are fast. Then where did the fast metrics went? Could it be because I added three Adsense Javascript code to all my blog posts? If so, that means that Adsense code is slowing website speed performance despite having an async tag. I tested my blog post speed and I understand that my page speed reduced by 48 due to the 3 Adsense javascript codes added to it. I got 62 (Average metric score). Now, my site speed is=100, then my page speed=62 Does this mean that Google considers page speed rather than site speed as a ranking factor? Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/YSxSwOG Regarding: https://etcnaija.com
Technical SEO | | etcna0 -
Page with "random" content
Hi, I'm creating a page of 300+ in the near future, on which the content basicly will be unique as it can be. However, upon every refresh, also coming from a search engine refferer, i want the actual content such as listing 12 business to be displayed random upon every hit. So basicly we got 300+ nearby pages with unique content, and the overview of those "listings" as i might say, are being displayed randomly. Ive build an extensive script and i disabled any caching for PHP files in specific these pages, it works. But what about google? The content of the pages will still be as it is, it is more of the listings that are shuffled randomly to give every business listing a fair shot at a click and so on. Anyone experience with this? Ive tried a few things in the past, like a "Last update PHP Month" in the title which sometimes is'nt picked up very well.
Technical SEO | | Vanderlindemedia0 -
Google rankings strange behaviour - our site can only be found when searching repeatedly
Hello, We are experiencing something very odd at the moment I hope somebody could shed some light on this. The rankings of our site dropped from page 2 to page 15 approx. 9 months ago. At first we thought we had been penalised and filed a consideration request. Google got back to us saying that there was no manual actions applied to our site. We have been working very hard to try to get the ranking up again and it seems to be improving. Now, according to several serps monitoring services, we are on page 2/3 again for the term "holiday lettings". However, the really strange thing is that when we search for this term on Google UK, our site is nowhere to be found. If you then right away hit the search button again searching for the same term, then voila! our website is on www.alphaholidaylettings.com page 2 / 3! We tried this on many different computers at different locations (private and public computers), making sure we have logged out from Google Accounts (so that customised search results are not returned). We even tried the computers at various retail outlets including different Apple stores. The results are the same. Essentially, we are never found when someone search for us for the first time, our site only shows up if you search for the same term for the second or third time. We just could not understand why this is happening. Somebody told me it could be due to "Google dance" when indices on different servers are being updated, but this has now been going on for nearly 3 months. Has anyone experienced similar situations or have any advice? Many thanks!
Technical SEO | | forgottenlife0 -
When do you use 'Fetch as a Google'' on Google Webmaster?
Hi, I was wondering when and how often do you use 'Fetch as a Google'' on Google Webmaster and do you submit individual pages or main URL only? I've googled it but i got confused more. I appreciate if you could help. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Rubix1 -
Google caching the "cookie law message"
Hello! So i've been looking at the cached text version of our website. (Google Eyes is a great add on for this) One thing I've noticed is that, Google caches our EU Cookie Law message. The message appears on the top of the page and Google is caching this. The message is enclosed within and but it still is being cached. I'm going to ask the development mean to move the message at the bottom of the page and fix the position, but reviewing other websites with cookie messages, Google isn't caching them in their text only versions. Any tips or advice?
Technical SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Noindex,follow - linked pages not showing
We have a blog on our site where the homepage and category pages have "noindex,follow" but the articles have "index,follow". Recently we have noticed that the article pages are no longer showing in the Google SERPs (but they are in Bing!) - this was done by using the "site:" search operator. Have double-checked our robots.txt file too just in case something silly had slipped in, but that's as it should be... Has anyone else noticed similar behaviour or could suggest things I could check? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Nobody15569050351140 -
Why is an error page showing when searching our website using Google "site:" search function?
When I search our company website using the Google site search function "site:jwsuretybonds.com", a 400 Bad Request page is at the top of the listed pages. I had someone else at our company do the same site search and the 400 Bad Request did not appear. Is there a reason this is happening, and are there any ramifications to it?
Technical SEO | | TheDude0
