Huge google index with un-relevant pages
-
Hi,
i run a site about sport matches, every match has a page and the pages are generated automatically from the DB. pages are not duplicated, but over time some look a little bit similar. after a match finishes it has no internal links or sitemap entry, but it's reachable by direct URL and continues to be on google index. so over time we have more than 100,000 indexed pages.
since past matches have no significance and they're not linked and a match can repeat and it may look like duplicate content....what you suggest us to do:
when a match is finished - not linked, but appears on the index and SERP
-
301 redirect the match Page to the match Category which is a higher hierarchy and is always relevant?
-
use rel=canonical to the match Category
-
do nothing....
*301 redirect will shrink my index status, some say a high index status is good...
*is it safe to 301 redirect 100,000 pages at once - wouldn't it look strange to google?
*would canonical remove the past matches pages from the index?
what do you think?
Thanks,
Assaf.
-
-
In terms of what you've written, blocking a page via robots.txt doesn't remove it from the index. It simply prevents the crawlers from reaching the page. So if you block a page via robots.txt, the page remains in the index, Google just can't go back to the page and see if anything has changed. So if you were to block the page via robots.txt, and add a noindex tag to the page, Google won't be able to see the page with the noindex tag to remove it from the index because it's blocked via robots.txt.
If you moved all of your old content to a different folder, and block that folder via robots.txt, Google won't remove those pages from the index. In order to remove them from the index, you would have to go in to Webmaster Tools and use the URL removal tool to remove that new folder from the index - if they see it's blocked via robots.txt, then and only then they'll remove the content from the index - it has to be blocked via robots.txt first in order to remove the whole folder with the URL removal tool.
I'm not sure though if this would work for the future - if you removed a folder from the index, and then added more content that was indexed previously afterwards, I'm not sure what would happen to that new content moved to that folder. Either way, Google will have to come back and recrawl the page to see that it has moved to the new folder, and then remove it from the index. So either way, the content will only be removed once Google recrawls the old content.
So I still think a better way to remove the content from the index is to add the noindex tag to the old pages. To facilitate the search engines reaching these old pages, I'd make sure there is a way the engines can get to them - make sure there is a path they can take to reach them.
Another good idea I saw on a forum post here a while ago would be to create a sitemap containing all of these old pages you have indexed and want removed. Add the noindex tag to the sitemap - using the Webmaster tools sitemap interface, you'll then be able to monitor the progress of deindexation over time - by checking how many pages on the sitemap/s of the old content are originally indexed as reported by webmaster tools, and then you can see later on how many of those pages are still indexed, this will be a good indicator for you of the progress of the deindexation.
-
Dear Mark,
*i've sent you a private message.
i'm starting to understand i've a much bigger problem.
*my index status contain 120k pages while only 2000 are currently relevant.
your suggestion is - after a match finishes pragmatically add to the page and google will remove it from it's index. it could work for relatively new pages but since very old pages don't have links OR sitemap entry it could take a very long time to clear the index cause they're rarely crawled - if at all.
- more aggressive approach would be to change this site architecture and restrict by robot.txt the folder that holds all the past irrelevant pages.
so if today a match URL is like this: www.domain.com/sport/match/T1vT2
restrict www.domain.com/sport/match/ on robots.txt
and from now on create all new matches on different folder like: www.domain.com/sport/new-match-dir/T1vT2
-
is this a good solution?
-
wouldn't google penalize me for removing a directory with 100k pages?
-
if it's a good approach, how much time it will take for google to clear all those pages from it's index?
I know it's a long one and i'll really appreciate your response.
Thanks a lot,
Assaf.
-
there are a bunch of articles out there, but each case is different - here are a few:
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-holy-grail-of-panda-recovery-a-1-year-case-study/45683/
You can contact me via private message here on the forum and I can try to take a more in depth look at your site if you can give me some more detailed info.
-
yes. when the 1st Panda update was rolled out i've lost 50% of the traffic from google and haven't really recovered since.
-
Are you sure you got hit by Panda before we talk about a Panda hit?
-
Thanks Mark!
any good article about how to recover from Panda?
-
Exactly - I'd build a strategy more around promoting pages that will have long lasting value.
If you use the tag noindex, follow, it will continue to spread link juice throughout the site, it's just the individual page with the tag will not be included in the search results and will not be part of the index. In order for the tag to work, they first have to crawl the page and see the tag - so it doesn't happen instantaneously - if they crawl these deeper pages once every few weeks, once a month, or even longer, it may take a while for these pages to be removed from the index.
-
Hi Mark
-
these pages are very important when they are relevant (before the match finished) - they are the source of most of our traffic which come from long tail searches.
-
some of these pages have inbound link and it would be a shame to lose all this juice.
-
would noindex remove the pages from the google index? how much time it would take? wouldn't a huge noindex also look suspicious?
-
by "evergreen pages" - you mean pages that are always relevant like League page / Sport page etc...?
Thanks,
Assaf.
-
-
Hi Assaf,
(I'm not stalking you, I just think you've raised another interesting question)
In terms of index status/size, you don't want to create a massive index of empty/low value pages - this is food for Google's Panda algorithm, and will not be good for your site in the long run. It'll get a Panda smack if it hasn't already.
To remove these pages from the index, instead of doing hundreds of thousands of 301 redirects, which your server won't like either, I'd recommend adding the noindex meta tag to the pages.
I'd put a rule in your cms that after a certain point in time, you noindex those pages. Make sure you also have evergreen pages on your site that can serve as landing pages for the search engines and which won't need to be removed after a short period of time. These are the pages you'll want to focus your outreach and link building efforts on.
Mark
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
-
Does redirecting a duplicate page NOT in Google‘s index pass link juice? (External links not showing in search console)
Hello! We have a powerful page that has been selected by Google as a duplicate page of another page on the site. The duplicate is not indexed by Google, and the referring domains pointing towards that page aren’t recognized by Google in the search console (when looking at the links report). My question is - if we 301 redirect the duplicate page towards the one that Google has selected as canonical, will the link juice be passed to the new page? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Lewald10 -
Can Google Bot View Links on a Wix Page?
Hi, The way Wix is configured you can't see any of the on-page links within the source code. Does anyone know if Google Bots still count the links on this page? Here is the page in question: https://www.ncresourcecenter.org/business-directory If you do think Google counts these links, can you please send me URL fetcher to prove that the links are crawlable? Thank you SO much for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fiyyazp0 -
How would you handle these pages? Should they be indexed?
If a site has about 100 pages offering specific discounts for employees at various companies, for example... mysite.com/discounts/target mysite.com/discounts/kohls mysite.com/discounts/jcpenney and all these pages are nearly 100% duplicates, how would you handle them? My recommendation to my client was to use noindex, follow. These pages tend to receive backlinks from the actual companies receiving the discounts, so obviously they are valuable from a linking standpoint. But say the content is nearly identical between each page; should they be indexed? Is there any value for someone at Kohl's, for example, to be able to find this landing page in the search results? Here is a live example of what I am talking about: https://www.google.com/search?num=100&safe=active&rlz=1C1WPZB_enUS735US735&q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fpoi8.petinsurance.com%2Fbenefits%2F&oq=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fpoi8.petinsurance.com%2Fbenefits%2F&gs_l=serp.3...7812.8453.0.8643.6.6.0.0.0.0.174.646.3j3.6.0....0...1c.1.64.serp..0.5.586...0j35i39k1j0i131k1j0i67k1j0i131i67k1j0i131i46k1j46i131k1j0i20k1j0i10i3k1.RyIhsU0Yz4E
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FPD_NYC0 -
Why isn't my site being indexed by Google?
Our domain was originally pointing to a Squarespace site that went live in March. In June, the site was rebuilt in WordPress and is currently hosted with WPEngine. Oddly, the site is being indexed by Bing and Yahoo, but is not indexed at all in Google i.e. site:example.com yields nothing. As far as I know, the site has never been indexed by Google, neither before nor after the switch. What gives? A few things to note: I am not "discouraging search engines" in WordPress Robots.txt is fine - I'm not blocking anything that shouldn't be blocked A sitemap has been submitted via Google Webmaster Tools and I have "fetched as Google" and submitted for indexing - No errors I've entered both the www and non-www in WMT and chose a preferred There are several incoming links to the site, some from popular domains The content on the site is pretty standard and crawlable, including several blog posts I have linked up the account to a Google+ page
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jtollaMOT0 -
Pages are Indexed but not Cached by Google. Why?
Here's an example: I get a 404 error for this: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.qjamba.com/restaurants-coupons/ferguson/mo/all But a search for qjamba restaurant coupons gives a clear result as does this: site:http://www.qjamba.com/restaurants-coupons/ferguson/mo/all What is going on? How can this page be indexed but not in the Google cache? I should make clear that the page is not showing up with any kind of error in webmaster tools, and Google has been crawling pages just fine. This particular page was fetched by Google yesterday with no problems, and even crawled again twice today by Google Yet, no cache.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood2 -
How do i prevent Google and Moz from counting pages as duplicates?
I have 130,000 profiles on my site. When not Connected to them they have very few differences. So a bot - not logged in, etc, will see a login form and "Connect to Profilename" MOZ and Google call the links the same, even though theyre unique such as example.com/id/328/name-of-this-group example.com/id/87323/name-of-a-different-group So how do i separate them? Can I use Schema or something to help identify that these are profile pages, or that the content on them should be ignored as its help text, etc? Take facebook - each facebook profile for a name renders simple results: https://www.facebook.com/public/John-Smith https://www.facebook.com/family/Smith/ Would that be duplicate data if facebook had a "Why to join" article on all of those pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inmn0 -
Merging your google places page with google plus page.
I have a map listing showing for the keyword junk cars for cash nj. I recently created a new g+ page and requested a merge between the places and the + page. now when you do a search you see the following. Junk Cars For Cash NJ LLC
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | junkcars
junkcarforcashnj.com/
Google+ page - Google+ page the first hyperlink takes me to the about page of the G+ and the second link takes me to the posts section within g+. Is this normal? should i delete the places account where the listing was originally created? Or do i leave it as is? Thanks0 -
Will Google Visit Non-Canonicalized Page Again and Return Its Page's Original Ranking?
I have 2 questions about canonicalization. 1. Will Google ever visit Page A again if after it has been canonicalized to Page B? 2. If Google will still visit Page A and found that it is not canonicalizing to Page B already, will the original rankings and traffic of Page A returned to the way before it's canonicalized? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | globalsources.com0