Timely use of robots.txt and meta noindex
-
Hi,
I have been checking every possible resources for content removal, but I am still unsure on how to remove already indexed contents.
When I use robots.txt alone, the urls will remain in the index, however no crawling budget is wasted on them, But still, e.g having 100,000+ completely identical login pages within the omitted results, might not mean anything good.
When I use meta noindex alone, I keep my index clean, but also keep Googlebot busy with indexing these no-value pages.
When I use robots.txt and meta noindex together for existing content, then I suggest Google, that please ignore my content, but at the same time, I restrict him from crawling the noindex tag.
Robots.txt and url removal together still not a good solution, as I have failed to remove directories this way. It seems, that only exact urls could be removed like this.
I need a clear solution, which solves both issues (index and crawling).
What I try to do now, is the following:
I remove these directories (one at a time to test the theory) from the robots.txt file, and at the same time, I add the meta noindex tag to all these pages within the directory. The indexed pages should start decreasing (while useless page crawling increasing), and once the number of these indexed pages are low or none, then I would put the directory back to robots.txt and keep the noindex on all of the pages within this directory.
Can this work the way I imagine, or do you have a better way of doing so?
Thank you in advance for all your help.
-
Hi Deb,
Thank you for your reply.
I have never thought, that Google would crawl the robots.txt this rarely. I actually read it somewhere, which makes complete sense, that before they start crawling, they validate the process against robots.txt. This is one page only, but basically one of the most important ones.
This is now a shocking experience for me, thank you for drawing my attention to it. Anyway, I have submitted the page through 'Fetch as Google' now.
Regarding your url suggestion, I do not want them to be 404-d, at least not all of them, as for examply the login pages I still want to use, and why we have individual urls, is that because we would like our visitors to return back the page they left, before we asked them to log in. So status 200 is ok, because these pages we have for customers, but the very same pages are totally useless for Google to crawl or to index.
I hope this clarifies.
-
It seems like the latest Robots.txt file has not been cached by Google so far .. this is what it has –
So, you need to use Fetch As Google Bot and Submit this Robots.txt file to index to fix this issue at the earliest.
What concerns me that defunct URLs like this - http://www.kozelben.hu/login?r=%2Fceg%2Fdrink-island-bufe-whisky-bar-alkotas-utca-17-1123-budapest-126126%23addComment or http://www.kozelben.hu/supplier/nearby/supplierid/127493/type/geo are returning 200 Ok server side response code whereas they should be returning 404 server side response. The problem would have stopped here for once and all.
However assuming the fact that the CMS of your website does not offer you any such option [in that case, this is a bad CMS], you need to apply Meta noindex tag against them and wait patiently for search engine to catch them.
_Can’t you fix the 404 thing? Let us know. _
-
Really good article, indeed!
I have been thinking about the whole concept during the weekend, and now I have a further concept, definetely worth considering.
Thank you again, Ryan.
-
Lindsay wrote a great article on the topic which I am sure you will enjoy: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/serious-robotstxt-misuse-high-impact-solutions
-
Thank you for the further info, Ryan.
Although I see your point and can accept lots of truth in it, checking all the competitors and even the largest sites all around the web, they still keep using robots.txt (even Google does so).
I however accept noindex to be a superior solution to robots.txt and will use it for all the contents I do not want to be indexed.
I will then see, if I need and how I might need to use robots.txt. I hope, it does not hurt having a noindexed page included in robots.txt (at a later time, when it is already out of the index).
-
I understand your concern Andras. The two questions I would focus on with respect to crawl budget:
1. Is all your content being indexed properly?
2. Is your content being indexed in a timely manner?
If the answer to the above two questions is yes, I would not spend any more time thinking about crawl budget. Either way, using the "noindex" meta tag is going to be the best way to handle the issue you originally presented.
On a related note, does the content on your "useful" pages change frequently? If so, ensure you are optimizing your links (both internal and external) to these pages. When you demonstrate these are important pages to your site, Google will crawl the pages more frequently.
-
Hi Ryan,
Thank you for your reply.
The only worry I have regarding the crawl budget, that I currently have three times more indexed pages than useful pages, due to the issues I have mentioned earlier.
It is true, that I do not have daily content updates on all of my useful pages, however I have thought that Google allocates individual crawling budget to all sites, based on the value he assigns to them.
I just want this budget to be spent wisely, and not causing my useful pages to be crawled less frequently, due to crawling no-value (but noindexed) content instead.
-
Hi Andras,
The first thing to know is a general rule....the best robots.txt file is a blank one. There is almost always a better method of managing a situation without using robots.txt. There are numerous reasons, one of which is search engines do not always see the robots.txt file.
Regarding the noindex meta tag, that is the proper solution. I understand your concern over crawl budget, but I suggest in this instance, your concerns are not warranted. It is a waste of crawl budget to have search engines spend extra time due to slow servers, bad code, thin content, etc. If you have pages which should not be indexed, adding the noindex tag is likely the best solution.
Without being familiar with your site, it is not possible to offer a definitive answer, but generally speaking this response should be accurate. Keep in mind many sites have millions of pages, and Google has the ability to crawl the entire site each month.
-
Can you show us examples of URLs that are causing you trouble? That would be easier for us to provide a solution.
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
-
Easy Question: regarding no index meta tag vs robot.txt
This seems like a dumb question, but I'm not sure what the answer is. I have an ecommerce client who has a couple of subdirectories "gallery" and "blog". Neither directory gets a lot of traffic or really turns into much conversions, so I want to remove the pages so they don't drain my page rank from more important pages. Does this sound like a good idea? I was thinking of either disallowing the folders via robot.txt file or add a "no index" tag or 301redirect or delete them. Can you help me determine which is best. **DEINDEX: **As I understand it, the no index meta tag is going to allow the robots to still crawl the pages, but they won't be indexed. The supposed good news is that it still allows link juice to be passed through. This seems like a bad thing to me because I don't want to waste my link juice passing to these pages. The idea is to keep my page rank from being dilluted on these pages. Kind of similar question, if page rank is finite, does google still treat these pages as part of the site even if it's not indexing them? If I do deindex these pages, I think there are quite a few internal links to these pages. Even those these pages are deindexed, they still exist, so it's not as if the site would return a 404 right? ROBOTS.TXT As I understand it, this will keep the robots from crawling the page, so it won't be indexed and the link juice won't pass. I don't want to waste page rank which links to these pages, so is this a bad option? **301 redirect: **What if I just 301 redirect all these pages back to the homepage? Is this an easy answer? Part of the problem with this solution is that I'm not sure if it's permanent, but even more importantly is that currently 80% of the site is made up of blog and gallery pages and I think it would be strange to have the vast majority of the site 301 redirecting to the home page. What do you think? DELETE PAGES: Maybe I could just delete all the pages. This will keep the pages from taking link juice and will deindex, but I think there's quite a few internal links to these pages. How would you find all the internal links that point to these pages. There's hundreds of them.
Technical SEO | | Santaur0 -
The use of robots.txt
Could someone please confirm that if I do not want to block any pages from my URL, then I do not need a robots.txt file on my site? Thanks
Technical SEO | | ICON_Malta0 -
Re-using site code.
Hi, I'm looking at launching a new website, and am keen to understand whether re-using the basic code behind one of my other sites will cause me an issue. I'll be changing the directory structure/ file names, etc - but it will basically leave me with a very similar-looking site to another in my portfolio - using code thats all ready out there, etc. Thanks, David
Technical SEO | | newstd1000 -
Meta Description,Title
If I changed the meta description and title of the post from the existing one how long will it may take to get indexed in Google. How can I fasten the process of indexing the changed meta description and title. Thanks, Venkee.
Technical SEO | | Venkee0 -
How ro write a robots txt file to point to your site map
Good afternoon from still wet & humid wetherby UK... I want to write a robots text file that instruct the bots to index everything and give a specific location to the sitemap. The sitemap url is:http://business.leedscityregion.gov.uk/CMSPages/GoogleSiteMap.aspx Is this correct: User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | Nightwing
Disallow:
SITEMAP: http://business.leedscityregion.gov.uk/CMSPages/GoogleSiteMap.aspx Any insight welcome 🙂0 -
Duplicate Meta Description in GWMT
We've just discovered that there are multiple duplicate URLs indexed for a site that we're working on. It seems that when new versions of the site was developed in the last couple of years, there were new page names and URL structures that were used. All of these seem to be showing up as Duplicate Meta Descriptions in Google's WMT, which is not surprising as they are basically the same page with the same content that are just sitting on different page names/URLs. This is an example of the situation, where URL 5 is the current version. Note: all the others are still live and resolve, although they are not linked to from the current site. URL 1: www.example.com/blue-tshirts.html (Version 1 - January 2010) URL 2: www.example.com/blue-t-shirts.html (Version 2 - July 2010) URL 3: www.example.com/blue_t_shirts.html (Version 3 - November 2010) URL 4: www.example.com/buy/blue_tshirts.html (Version 4 - January 2011) URL 5: www.example.com/buy/bluetshirts.html (Version 5 - April 2011) Presumably, this is a clear case of duplicate content. QUESTION: In order to solve it, shall we 301 all of the previous URLs to the current one - ie. Redirect URLs 1-4 to URL 5? Or, should some of them be NoIndexed? To complicate matters, there is Pagination on most of them. For example: URL 1: www.example.com/blue-tshirts.html (Version 1 - January 2010) URL 1a: www.example.com/page-1/blue-tshirts.html URL 1b: www.example.com/page-2/blue-tshirts.html URL 1c: www.example.com/page-3/blue-tshirts.html URL 4: www.example.com/buy/blue_tshirts.html URL 4a: www.example.com/buy/page-1/blue_tshirts.html URL 4b: www.example.com/buy/page-2/blue_tshirts.html URL 4c: www.example.com/buy/page-3/blue_tshirts.html URL 5: www.example.com/buy/bluetshirts.html URL 5a: www.example.com/buy/page-1/bluetshirts.html URL 5b: www.example.com/buy/page-2/bluetshirts.html URL 5c: www.example.com/buy/page-3/bluetshirts.html Since URL 5 is the current site, we are going to 'NoIndex, Follow' URLs 5a, 5b and 5c, which is what we understand to be the correct thing to do for paginated pages. QUESTION: What shall we do with URLs 1a, 1b and 1c? Should we apply the same "No Index, Follow" OR should they be 301'd to their respective counterparts in 5a, 5b and 5c? QUESTION: In the same way, since URL 4 is the version just before the current live Version 5, does it make a different on whether the paginated pages (ie 4a, 4b and 4c) should be No Indexed or 301'd? Thanks in advance for all responses and suggestions, it's greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | orangechew0 -
Robots.txt and canonical tag
In the SEOmoz post - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/robot-access-indexation-restriction-techniques-avoiding-conflicts, it's being said - If you have a robots.txt disallow in place for a page, the canonical tag will never be seen. Does it so happen that if a page is disallowed by robots.txt, spiders DO NOT read the html code ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Subdomain Robots.txt
If I have a subdomain (a blog) that is having tags and categories indexed when they should not be, because they are creating duplicate content. Can I block them using a robots.txt file? Can I/do I need to have a separate robots file for my subdomain? If so, how would I format it? Do I need to specify that it is a subdomain robots file, or will the search engines automatically pick this up? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | JohnECF0