Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. Why are pages still showing in SERPs, despite being NOINDEXed for months?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Why are pages still showing in SERPs, despite being NOINDEXed for months?

    Technical SEO
    5
    10
    2143
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • MadeLoud
      MadeLoud last edited by

      We have thousands of pages we're trying to have de-indexed in Google for months now.  They've all got . But they simply will not go away in the SERPs.

      Here is just one example....

      http://bitly.com/VutCFiIf you search this URL in Google, you will see that it is indexed, yet it's had  for many months.  This is just one example for thousands of pages, that will not get de-indexed.  Am I missing something here?  Does it have to do with using content="none" instead of content="noindex, follow"?

      Any help is very much appreciated.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • SanketPatel
        SanketPatel @MadeLoud last edited by

        Thanks for your reply,

        Let me know if you are able to deindex those pages. I will wait. Also please share what you have implemented to deindex those pages.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • MadeLoud
          MadeLoud @SanketPatel last edited by

          A page can have a link to it, and still not be indexed, so I disagree with you on that.

          But thanks for using the domain name.  That will teach me to use a URL shortener...

          SanketPatel 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • MadeLoud
            MadeLoud @MadeLoud last edited by

            Hm, that is interesting.  So you're saying that it will get crawled, and thus will eventually become deindexed (as noindex is part of the content="none" directive), but since it's a dead end page, it just takes an extra long time for that particular page to get crawled?

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • edwardrj
              edwardrj last edited by

              Just to add to the other answers, you can also remove the URLs (or entire directory if necessary) via the URL removal tool in Webmaster Tools, although Google prefers you to use it for emergencies of sorts (I've had no problems with it).

              http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=164734

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote -1
              • eyepaq
                eyepaq @MadeLoud last edited by

                No, nofollow will only tell the bot that the page is a dead end - that the bot should not follow any links on page. And that means any inks from those pages won't be visited by the bot - that is slowing the crawling process overall for those pages.

                If you block a page in robots.txt and the page is already in the index - that will remain in the index as the noindex or content=none won't be seen by the bot so it won't be removed from the index - it will just won't be visited anymore.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • MadeLoud
                  MadeLoud @eyepaq last edited by

                  Ok, so, nofollow is stopping the page from being read at all?  I thought that nofollow just means the links on the page will not be followed.  Is meta nofollow essentially the same as blocking a page in robots.txt?

                  eyepaq MadeLoud 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • SanketPatel
                    SanketPatel last edited by

                    Hi Howard,

                    The page is in Google index because you are still linking to that page from your website. Here is the page from where that page links:

                    http://www.2mcctv.com/product_print-productinfoVeiluxVS70CDNRDhtml.html

                    As you are linking that page Google indexing the page. Google come to know about "noindex" tag before that he has already indexed it. Sorry for bad English.

                    Lindsay has written awesome post about it here:

                    http://www.seomoz.org/blog/robot-access-indexation-restriction-techniques-avoiding-conflicts

                    After reading above blog post, my all doubts about noindex, follow, robots.txt get clear.

                    Thanks Lindsay

                    MadeLoud 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote -1
                    • Bryan_Loconto
                      Bryan_Loconto last edited by

                      We always use the noindex code in our robot.txt file.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • eyepaq
                        eyepaq last edited by

                        Hi,

                        In order to deindex you should use noindex as content=none also means nofollow. You do need to follow now in order to reach all other pages and see the no index tag and remove those from the index.

                        When you have all of them out of the index you can set the none back on.

                        This is the main reason "none" as attribute is not very wide in usage as "shooting yourself in the foot" with it it's easy.

                        On the otehr hand you need to see if google bot is actually reaching those pages:

                        • see if you don't have any robots.txt restrictions first

                        • see when google's bot last have a hit on any of the pages - that will give you a good idea and you can do a prediction.

                        If those pages are in the sup index you can wait for some time for Google bit to revisit.

                        One last note: build xml sitemaps with all of those pages and submit those via WMT - that will help at 100% to get those in front of the firing squad and also to be able to monitor those better.

                        Hope it helps.

                        MadeLoud 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                        • 1 / 1
                        • First post
                          Last post

                        Got a burning SEO question?

                        Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                        Start my free trial


                        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.

                        • See all categories

                        Related Questions

                        • fayfr

                          Nofollow/Noindex Category Listing Pages with Filters

                          Our e-commerce site currently has thousands of duplicate pages indexed because category listing pages with all the different filters selected are indexed. So, for example, you would see indexed: example.com/boots example.com/boots/black example.com/boots/black-size-small etc. There is a logic in place that when more than one filter is selected all the links on the page are nofollowed, but Googlebot is still getting to them, and the variations are being indexed. At this point I'd like to add 'noindex' or canonical tags to the filtered versions of the category pages, but many of these filtered pages are driving traffic. Any suggestions? Thanks!

                          Technical SEO | | fayfr
                          0
                        • RoxBrock

                          Robots.txt & meta noindex--site still shows up on Google Search

                          I have set up my robots.txt like this: User-agent: *
                          Disallow: / and I have this meta tag in my on a Wordpress site, set up with SEO Yoast name="robots" content="noindex,follow"/> I did "Fetch as Google" on my Google Search Console My website is still showing up in the search results and it says this: "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt" This site has not shown up for years and now it is ranking above my site that I want to rank for this keyword. How do I get Google to ignore this site? This seems really weird and I'm confused how a site with little content, that has not been updated for years can rank higher than a site that is constantly updated and improved.

                          Technical SEO | | RoxBrock
                          1
                        • BWallacejr

                          SERP Title shows up-with-dashes

                          Occasionally I see the our 'listings' on Google where the Title line shows up with dashes... like sony-professional-hard-drive - TapeandMedia.com It appears to be the URL shortened and rehashed.  This example was after I searched for "Sony PSZ-HA1T"  without the quotes.  The title for this page is <title></span><span class="html-tag">Sony 1TB Professional Portable External Hard Disk Drive (PSZ-HA1T)</span><span class="html-tag"></title> and the url is http://www.tapeandmedia.com/sony-1tb-professional-portable-hard-drive.asp Link to image: http://i.imgur.com/FmvAn6c.jpg Other searches (like "Sony 1tb PSZ-HA1T") yield normal looking SERP Titles Does anyone know why this happens and what I can do to avoid this? FmvAn6c.jpg

                          Technical SEO | | BWallacejr
                          0
                        • VanadiumInteractive

                          Low page impressions

                          Hey there MOZ Geniuses; While checking my webmaster data I noticed that almost all my Google impressions are generated by the home page, most other content pages are showing virtually no impression data <50 (the home page is showing around 1500 - a couple of the pages are in the 150-200 range).  the site has been up for about 8 months now.  Traffic on average is about 500 visitors, but I'm seeing very little entry other then the home page. Checking the number Sitemap section 27 of 30 are index Webmaster tools are not reporting errors Webmaster keyword impressions are also extremely low 164 keywords with the highest impression count of 79 and dropping from there. MOZ is show very few minor issues although it says that it crawled 10k pages? -- we only have 30 or so. The answer seems obvious, Google is not showing my content ... the question is why and what steps can I take to analyze this?  Could there be a possibility of some type of penalty? I welcome all your suggestions:  The site is www.calibersi.com

                          Technical SEO | | VanadiumInteractive
                          0
                        • solution.advisor

                          Keyword not showing

                          Hi, we are trying to rank this keyword "Human Resource Books" for Silvercreek.ca for a long time. But somehow, the keyword is not ranked by google at all. Is there  a reason why Google is denying our site? What did we do wrong? Can anyone help to see what wrong with tis siet www.silvercreekpress.ca? thanks

                          Technical SEO | | solution.advisor
                          0
                        • Dan-Lawrence

                          Can you 301 redirect a page to an already existing/old page ?

                          If you delete a page (say a sub department/category page on an ecommerce store) should you 301 redirect its url to the nearest equivalent page still on the site or just delete and forget about it ? Generally should you try and 301 redirect any old pages your deleting if you can find suitable page with similar content to redirect to. Wont G consider it weird if you say a page has moved permenantly to such and such an address if that page/address existed before ? I presume its fine since say in the scenario of consolidating departments on your store you want to redirect the department page your going to delete to the existing pages/department you are consolidating old departments products into ?

                          Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
                          0
                        • ProjectLabs

                          Determining When to Break a Page Into Multiple Pages?

                          Suppose you have a page on your site that is a couple thousand words long. How would you determine when to split the page into two and are there any SEO advantages to doing this like being more focused on a specific topic. I noticed the Beginner's Guide to SEO is split into several pages, although it would concentrate the link juice if it was all on one page. Suppose you have a lot of comments. Is it better to move comments to a second page at a certain point? Sometimes the comments are not super focused on the topic of the page compared to the main text.

                          Technical SEO | | ProjectLabs
                          1
                        • ttb

                          Tags showing up in Google

                          Yesterday a user pointed out to me that Tags were being indexed in Google search results and that was not a good idea. I went into my Yoast settings and checked the "nofollow, index" in my Taxanomies, but when checking the source code for no follow, I found nothing. So instead, I went into the robot.txt and disallowed /tag/ Is that ok? or is that a bad idea? The site is The Tech Block for anyone interested in looking.

                          Technical SEO | | ttb
                          0

                        Get started with Moz Pro!

                        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                        Start my free trial
                        Products
                        • Moz Pro
                        • Moz Local
                        • Moz API
                        • Moz Data
                        • STAT
                        • Product Updates
                        Moz Solutions
                        • SMB Solutions
                        • Agency Solutions
                        • Enterprise Solutions
                        • Digital Marketers
                        Free SEO Tools
                        • Domain Authority Checker
                        • Link Explorer
                        • Keyword Explorer
                        • Competitive Research
                        • Brand Authority Checker
                        • Local Citation Checker
                        • MozBar Extension
                        • MozCast
                        Resources
                        • Blog
                        • SEO Learning Center
                        • Help Hub
                        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                        • How-to Guides
                        • Moz Academy
                        • API Docs
                        About Moz
                        • About
                        • Team
                        • Careers
                        • Contact
                        Why Moz
                        • Case Studies
                        • Testimonials
                        Get Involved
                        • Become an Affiliate
                        • MozCon
                        • Webinars
                        • Practical Marketer Series
                        • MozPod
                        Connect with us

                        Contact the Help team

                        Join our newsletter
                        Moz logo
                        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                        • Accessibility
                        • Terms of Use
                        • Privacy

                        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.