Webmaster Tools - Clarification of what the top directory is in a calender url

[Mitty]

Hi all,

I had an issue where it turned out a calender was used on my site historically (a couple of years ago) but the pages were still present, crawled and indexed by google to this day.

I want to remove them now from the index as it really clouds my analysis and as I have been trying to clean things up e.g. by turning modules off, webmaster tools is throwing up more and more errors due to these pages.

Below is an example of the url of one of the pages:

http://www.example.co.uk/index.php?mact=Calendar,m1a033,default,1&m1a033year=2084&m1a033month=3&m1a033returnid=59&page=59?phpMyAdmin=xxyyzz

The closest question I have found on the topic in Seomoz is:

http://www.seomoz.org/q/duplicate-content-issue-6

I want to remove all these pages from the index by targeting their top level folder. From the historic question above would I be right in saying that it is:

http://www.example.co.uk/index.php?mact=Calendar

I want to be certain before I do a directory level removal request in case it actually targets index.php instead and deindexes my whole site (or homepage at the very least).

Thanks

[Dr-Pete]

Unfortunately, "index.php?mact=Calendar" is not a folder, it's a page+parameter. If you tried to block that as a folder in GWT, it would mostly just not work. If it went really wrong, you'd block anything driven from index.php (including your home-page).

A couple of options:

(1) Programmatically META NOINDEX anything that calls the calendar parameters. This would have to be done selectively in the index.php header with code, so that ONLY the calendar pages were affected.

(2) Block "mact=" or "year=" with parameter handling in GWT. under "Configuration" > "URL Parameters". ONLY do this if these parameters drive the calendar and no other pages. You can basically tell Google to ignore pages with "year=" in them.

You can also block parameters in Robots.txt, but honestly, once the pages have been indexed, it doesn't work very well.

[Mitty]

Thanks Thomas, I have uploaded a new site map to GMWT and hopefully that will cause Google to ignore those disappeared pages.

Best,

Mitty

[BlueprintMarketing]

I would not use googles disavow or remove links tool  Lightly at all.

in my opinion it would be easier to fix the problems you're talking about on the site internally and to ask Google to ignore or disavow. They can basically penalize you because have essentially admitted you've done something wrong just by using the tips about tool. I don't mean to scare you and I don't think you've done anything wrong and if I were you I would let Google know that what you have done is simply try to picture website up to the bust your abilities for the end-user's experienced not for hiding any malicious actions in the past.

Sorry to be so alerted by this but you really do want to stay on top of what you tell Google and what they perceive you're telling them.

I hope this has been of help. The reason I gave the thing for treehouse which is available at an pro perks at the bottom of the page is they teach everything you need to fix the problems you have without using Google.

Sincerely,

Thomas

[Mitty]

Thanks for the advice and the links Thomas.

I've already gotten rid of the pages from my site and they are not malware inducing so not to worry.

My question is only concerned with webmaster tools. I can manually enter each link into the removal tool but that will take days.

I am aware that there is a option in GWMT to remove directories as well as individual urls i.e. if I had a site that had the following pages: www.example.com/plants/tulips & www.example.com/plants/roses

I could either enter both urls into the removal tool or simply put www.example.com/plants/ and designate it a directory both pages would be removed.

My question is to confirm if I have the following pages which have virtually identical pathways but for the dates 2084 and 3000:

http://www.example.co.uk/index.php?mact=Calendar,m1a033,default,1&m1a033year=2084&m1a033month=3&m1a033returnid=59&page=59?phpMyAdmin=xxyyzz

http://www.example.co.uk/index.php?mact=Calendar,m1a033,default,1&m1a033year=3000&m1a033month=3&m1a033returnid=59&page=59?phpMyAdmin=xxyyzz

Could I just simply use http://www.example.co.uk/index.php?mact=Calendar as a directory, saving me having to write out the full pathways for both the pages.

[BlueprintMarketing]

I just remembered where you can learn how to do this. And it's free.

http://teamtreehouse.com/

Pro perks at the bottom of the page will give you one month of free information from treehouse it is a mecca of videos and information on code to Seo to hosting to everything you ever wanted to know honestly take it advantage of this tool.

[BlueprintMarketing]

Well I believe the URLs you're talking about if the calendar took up the entire page or even part of it. It could harm other content on the page if there is any ask is there any?

Run your website through http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/scanner/

It will tell you immediately if you have any malware running on your website. If you do I strongly suggest purchasing sucuri  and cleaning up. However hopefully that's not the case and you simply need some tweaking Denchere website. I unfortunately am not gifted with the knowledge of code. But I know there is a option out there that is extremely inexpensive and very high-quality called tweak a five I will try to find the URL right now that for less than $100 I

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/category/code/

One of the better ones can be found by asking the guys at webdevStudios.com they are geniuses and it will lead you in the right direction. I don't want give you any advice that's wrong advice. Sincerely, Tom

[Mitty]

Thanks Thomas.

It was a calender module with my CMS CMS Made Simple, it seemed to have generated thousands of pages which all linked to each page of my site so webmaster tools had listed my less than 100 page site (or so I thought) as having over 40,000 internal links pointing to each page.

I have deactivated it and added a site map to webmaster tools (GWMT) and that seems to have generated thousands of errors in the GWMT.

There is a list of the top 1,000 urls which are pretty much the calender pages and they are now returning 404 errors (as I have switched off the module so they are effectively deleted) but I want to have them deindexed so as to see if there is anything else hidden in the background.

I'm not completely sure with what you've sent me below. Are you concurring that if I add the below URL to the removal tool and select directory removal it will just target all those 404'd pages?

http://www.example.co.uk/index.php?mact=Calendar

[BlueprintMarketing]

Bingo

http://php.tonnikala.org/manual/sl/function.mcal-delete-calendar.php

[BlueprintMarketing]

http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_ref_filesystem.asp

http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_ref_filter.asp

&

http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_ref_calendar.asp

Tell me if you need any help after this removing that calendar and I will give it a whirl. Sincerely, Tom

[BlueprintMarketing]

You are wise to be conscious. Be sure is your site hundred percent PHP? To you know what the calendar is made from meaning is it a third-party software? Or is it something you had Bill or had someone built for you a while back?

Try running your site through builtwith.com and it will give you the components of your website if the calendar shows up you can then Google  a way to remove it.

If you don't feel comfortable sharing your URL here send it to me in a private message I'd be happy to have a look at it and give you my best opinion. I am not going to tell you that I am king of coding but I can pick up on these types of things sometimes and I'd be happy to lend another set of eyes.

Sincerely,

Thomas