Deleting 30,000 pages all at once - good idea or bad idea?
-
We have 30,000 pages that we want to get rid of. Each product within our database has it's own page. And these particular 30,000 products are not relevant anymore. They have very little content on them and are basically the same exact page but with a few title changes.
We no longer want them weighing down our database so we are going to delete them.
My question is - should we get rid of them in smaller batches like 2,000 pages at a time, or is it better to get rid of all them in one fell swoop? Which is least likely to raise a flag to Google? Anyone have any experience with this?
-
Hi
This happened to a co. I was working with recently who deleted thousands of pages without notifying the SEO team, this led to lots of work in WMT and lots of digging around to understand where we had lost links. If you've got a load of inbound links pointing at these pages and nothing has been done 301s etc then watch your DA fall, as happened to this company. Ouch. This is what happens when Tech don't "like" marketing.
-
To make it look organic for Google I would say it would depend on how large the site is. If you have a site that only has an additional 30,000 pages, then it would be really odd for half the site to be removed at once. To be safe, do a batch of say 10,000 and let it index before doing the next batch. If it seems like you've been penalized, do a smaller batch the next time.
Then again, if you are already being penalized and are desperate for a change, you are already falling out of control into the black whole of Google SERPs, then do them all at once. After all, your already doing poorly, any corrective action would be better than nothing.
Just my thoughts. There are prolly better experts here than me. lol
-
I would delete all of them at once. BAM!
-
Not a problem. Any advice on deleting all at once or deleting in bits and pieces?
-
In that case, I agree with EGOL. Just drop them all.
-
Sorry, I edited after you posted... I agree... If the 301 is more work then no need to do it.
Good luck.
-
This is more of a theoretical question, but if we're not getting traffic to these pages and there wasn't a way for people to get there, do we need to 301?
Adding 301's will increase the work we'll need to do from the dev standpoint and I'm not sure if it's worth the effort. Any ideas?
-
I would delete these pages as soon as possible, since you have determined that they are not of value. It is possible that all of these pages are dead weight on your site.
Chop chop.
-
Visitors can't actually get to these pages, so it wouldn't be an issue for them. We also have researched and have not had any traffic to any of these pages for over 2 years. So we're not worried about it from a user-facing standpoint.
We're planning on 404ing them because the likelihood of having any backlinks are as close to zero as possible. I'm just wondering if it's better to 404 them in batches or all at once.
-
I suppose the most important question is What will be replacing them?
You don't necessarily want 30k 404 pages appearing overnight like that and causing issues for visitors. Personally I'd say you should go through all the pages to determine what the most relevant alternative page is and then 301 redirect the old pages to the new ones. That'll be a lot of work for 30,000 pages but it would probably be the best way to save from inadvertently losing traffic, backlinks and positive link equity.
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
-
Duplicate Home Page
Hi everyone! So, I;m using the crawl diagnostics in Moz and it's telling that I've got duplicate content for these two pages: http://www.bridgelanguages.com/
Technical SEO | | Bridge_Education_Group
http://www.bridgelanguages.com/index.php?p=3233&source=3 Would a redirect from the 2nd page to the 1st one be a solution? I'm not even sure where that 2nd link is on the site? Any suggestions or has anyone experienced the same? Thanks! Kelly0 -
Local City Pages
Anyone have any input on the tactics being used for a national company trying to target local city pages. For instance, you might be a national printing company and you are trying to compete against local printers in cities by creating a specific page for that city + print keywords.
Technical SEO | | waqid0 -
Help! Pages not being indexed
Hi Mozzers, I need your help.
Technical SEO | | bshanahan
Our website (www.barnettcapitaladvisors.com) stopped being indexed in search engines following a round of major changes to URLs and content. There were a number of dead links for a few days before 301 redirects were properly put in place. And now, only 3 pages show up in bing when I do the search "site:barnettcapitaladvisors.com". A bunch of pages show up in Google for that search, but they're not any of the pages we want to show up. Our home page and most important services pages are nowhere in search results. What's going on here?
Our sitemap is at http://www.barnettcapitaladvisors.com/sites/default/files/users/AndrewCarrillo/sitemap/sitemap.xml
Robots.txt is at: http://www.barnettcapitaladvisors.com/robots.txt Thanks!0 -
SITEMAP.asp having 10,000 pages
A website having more than 10,000 pages, as per the Google Algorithm If I restrict the page links to 100 for sitemap.asp then I have to generate 100 pages, any idea to shorten the process. Please advice.
Technical SEO | | younus0 -
Too many on page links
Hello I have about 800 warnings with this. Example of one url with this problem is: http://www.theprinterdepo.com/clearance?dir=asc&order=price I was checking and I think all links are important. But I suppose that if I put a nofollow on the links on the left which are only for navigation purposes I can get rid of these warnings. Any other idea?
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
Too Many On-Page Links
Hello. My Seomoz report this week tells me that I have about 500 pages with Too Many On-Page Links One of the examples is this one: https://www.theprinterdepo.com/hp-9000mfp-refurbished-printer (104 links) If you check, all our products have a RELATED products section and in some of them the related products can be UP to 40 Products. I wonder how can I solve this. I thought that putting nofollow on the links of the related products might fix all of these warnings? Putting NOFOLLOW does not affect SEO?
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
Use of + in url good or bad?
Hi, I am working on a SEO project for a client.
Technical SEO | | MaartenvandenBos
Some of the urls have a + between the keyword.
like www.example.com/make+me+happy/ Is this good or bad for seo?
Or is it maybe better to use - ? Thanks!0 -
Keywords Ranking Dropped from 1st Page to Above 5th Page
Hello, My site URL is http://bit.ly/161NeE and our site was ranked first page for over hundred keywords before March, 30. But all of a sudden, all the keywords on first page dropped to 5th or 6th page. When we search for our site name without ".com", the results appeared on first page are all from other sites. And our page can only be seen on 6th page. We think we have been penalized by Google. But we don't know the exact reason. Can anyone please help? Some extra info on our site: 1. We have been building links by posting blog, articles and PR. All the articles are unique, written by the writers we hire. It has been working fine all the time. We also varied the anchor text a lot. 2. We didn't make any change to the website. But one real problem with our site is that the server is very slow recently and when google crawl our website, many errors were found, mostly 503, 404 errors. And the total number of errors have reach to over 50,000. Do you think this might be a problem for Google not displaying us on first page? Our technicals are working hard to solve server problem. And if it is solved, shall our rankings be back? Please advise. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Milanoocom0