Please help :) Troubles getting 3 types of content de-indexed
-
Hi there,
I know that it takes time and I have already submitted a URL removal request 3-4 months ago.
But I would really appreciate some kind advice on this topic.Thank you in advance to everyone who contributes!
1) De-indexing archives
Google had indexed all my:
/tag/
/authorname/
archives.I have set them as no-index a few months ago but they still appear in search engine.
Is there anything I can do to speed up this de-indexing?2) De-index /plugins/ folder in wordpress site
They have also indexed all my /plugins/ folder. So I have added a disallow /plugin/ in my robots.txt 3-4 months ago, but /plugins/ still appear in search engine.
What can I do to get the /plugins/ folder de-indexed?
Is my disallow /plugins/ in robots.txt making it worse because google has already indexed it and not it can't access the folder? How do you solve this?3) De-index a subdomain
I had created a subdomain containing adult content, and have it completely deleted it from my cpanel 3months ago, but it still appears in search engines.
Anything else I can do to get it de-indexed?
Thank you in advance for your help!
-
Hi Fabio
If the content is gone when you visit your old URLs do you get a 404 code? You can plug the old URLs into urivalet.com to see what code is returned. If you do, then you're all set. If you don't, see if you can just upload a robots.txt file to that subdomain and block all search engines. Here's info on how to do that http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html
-Dan
-
Hey Dan,there is no content.
The whole website has been deleted, but it still appears in search results.What should I do?
should I put back some content and then de-index it?Thanks!
fabio -
Hi There
You should ensure the content either;
- has meta noindex tags
- or is blocked with robots.txt
- or 404's or 410's (is missing)
And then use the URL removal tool again and see if that works.
-
Hey Dan thanks a lot for all your help!
There still is a problem though. A while ago I had created an adult subdomain: adult.mywebsite.comThen I completely deleted everything inside it (even though I noticed the subfolder is still in my account).
A few days ago, when I started this thread, I also created a GWMT account for adult.mywebsite.com and submitted a removal request for all those URLs (about 15).Now today when I check:
site:mywebsite.com
or
site.adult.mywebsite.comthe URLs still appear in search results.
When I check
cache:adult.mywebsite.comit sends me to a google 404 page:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?/complete/search?client=hp&hl=en&gs_rn=31&gs_ri=hp&cp=26&gs_id=s xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxSo I don't know what this means...
Does it mean google hasn't deindexed them?
How do I get them deindexed?
Is it possible google is having troubles de-indexing them because they have no content in them or something like that?What should I do to get rid of them?
Thanks a lot!!!!!!!!!!
Fabio -
Hey Fabio
Regarding #2 I'd give it a little bit more time. 301's take a little longer to drop out, so maybe check back in a week or two Technically the URL removal will mainly work if the content now 404's, is noindexed or blocked in robots.txt but with a redirdect you can do none of those, so you just have to wait for them to pick up on the redirects.
-Dan
-
Hi Dan,
1. Ok! I will.
2. When I click on the /go/ link in search results it redirects me to the affiliate website. I asked for the removal of /go/ a few days ago, but they (about 30 results) still appear in google when I search with the site:mywebsite.com trick.
What should I do about it? How can I get rid of them? They were created with the SimpleUrl plugin which I deleted about 3 months ago though.
3. Got it!
Thanks!
Fabio -
Hi There
1. For the flash file NoReflectLight.swf - I would do a removal request in WMT and maintain the blocking in robots.txt of /plugins/
2. When you do a URL removal in WMT the files need to either be blocked in robots.txt or have a noindex on them or 404. Doesn't that sort of link redirect to your affiliate product? In other words, if I were to try to visit /go/affiliate-product/ it would redirect to www.affiliateproductwebsite.com ?Or does /go/affiliate-product/ load it's on page on your site?
3. I would maintain the robots.txt bloking on /plugins/ - if no other files from there are indexed, they will not be in the future.
-Dan
-
Hey Dan,
thanks for the quick reply.I have gone trough site:mywebsite.com and I found that tags and categories disappeared but there still is some content that shouldn't be indexed like this:
mywebsite.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-flash-countdown/counter_cs3_v2_NoReflectLight.swf
and this:
mywebsite.com/go/affiliate-product/and I found this:Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
in my robots.txtThing is that:
- I have deleted that wp-flash-countdown plugin at least 9 months ago
- I have manually removed all the urls with /go/ from GWMT and when I search for a cached version of them they are not there
- If I remove Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/ from my robots.txt won't that get all my plugins' pages to be indexed? So how do I make sure they are not indexed?
Thank you so much for your help!So far you have been the most helpful answerer in this forum.
-
Hey There
You want to look for this;
You can just do a cntrl-f (to search text in the source) and type in "noindex" and it should be present on the Tag archives.
-Dan
-
Hey Dan, thanks a lot for your help.
I have tried the cache trick on my home page and the cached version was about 4-5 days old.
I have then tried to cache:mywebsite/tag/ and it gives me a google 404 not found which I suppose is a good sign.
But if they have been de-indexed why do they appear in search results then?
I am not sure how to check the double SEO no-index in the source code though. How do I do that exactly? What should I look for after right-clicking -> source code?
Thanks for your help!
My MOZ account ends in two days so I may not be able to reply back next time.
-
Hi There
Should have explained better
if you type cache: in front of any web URL for example cache:apple.com you get;
And see the "cache" date? This is not the same as the crawl date, but it can give you a rough indication of how often Google might be looking at your pages.
So try that on some of your tag archives and if the cache date is say 4+ weeks ago maybe Google isn't looking at the site very often.
But it's odd they haven't been removed yet, especially with the URL removal tool - that tool usually only takes a day. Noindex tags usually only take a week or two.
Have you examined the source code to make sure it does in fact say "noindex" by the robots tag - or that there is not a conflicting duplicate robots noindex tag? Sometimes wordpress themes and plugins both try adding SEO tags and you can end up with duplicates.
-Dan
-
Hey Dan thanks,
well, so google had indexed all my tags, categories and stuff.The only things I had blocked in my robots was
/go/ for affiliate links
and
/plugins/ for pluginsso I did let google see that categories and archives pages were no-indexed.
I have also submit the removal request many months ago but I haven't quite understood what you say about the cache dates. What should I check?
Thanks for your help!
-
Hi There
For all these cases above, this may be a situation where you've BOTH blocked these in robots.txt and added noindex tags. You can not block the directories in robots.txt and get them deindexed, because Google can not then crawl the URLs to see the noindex tag.
If this is the case, I would remove any disallows to /tag/ etc in robots.txt, allow Google to crawl the URLs to see the nodinex tags - wait a few weeks and see what happens.
As far as the URL removal not working, make sure you have the correct subdomain registered - www or non-www etc for the URLs you want removed.
If neither one of those is the issue, please write back so I can try to help you more with that. Google should noindex the pages in a week or two under normal situations. The other thing is, check the cache date of the pages. If the cache dates are prior to the date you added the noindex, Google might not have seen the noindex directives yet.
-Dan
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
-
Please help us undertsand the things we need to improve so that google crawler visit us more often to reindex pages from our domain
we are currently in the process of a massive project which involves us migrating our domain, we realised that Google crawlwer has not been crawling our pages Quiet often. i have observed some cases where google crawled these pages about 6 months back and then never visited the pages again
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bhaskaran
and we had to manually submit these pages for reindexing in some geographies. can you please help us undertsand the things we need to improve so that google crawler visit us more often to reindex pages from our domain0 -
How to Get Permalinks Indexed?
Hey Everyone, I'm so happy to be apart of this community and assert knowledge where and when I can. I joined the community for one specific reason and I hope to employ the help of everyone here in conjunction with solving my SEO problem. I have a few years experience in SEO/SEM and have been continuously learning, while learning to adapt to continuous changes (I think we can all relate lol). At any rate, here is what I am experiencing frustration with. I'm the SEO Analyst for a company that is trying to compete for the keyword phrase "Lyft Promo Code". We have been trying to place page one on google for over a year now to no avail. I have gotten my direct domain url to appear on pages 1 & 2, but can't seem to get permalinks or "Sub-URL's" indexed. If you google this phrase you will see what I mean. The top result is:http://rideshareapps.com/lyft-promo-code-credit/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Number_One_Deisgns
This url has an aggregated rating and appears page one for the phrase aforementioned above. What we have managed to do, as I mentioned is get www.couponcodeshero.com on page two. However, we have noticed that the page one trend is all permalinks. However when we have tried to emulate the pages structure and index priority, we are unable too. Our page:
http://couponcodeshero.com/lyft-promo-code-rideshare-guide/ I have ran multiple on-page graders from many resources and have not been able to get this page indexed as a permalink on any page that directly correlates with the Keyword Phrase. In essence, I'm looking for some direction from individuals who may have experienced this before. I have spent a good amount of time Googling and searching forum databases but can not find any direct content that explains how to index a permalink. I hope to get some great ideas from the individuals here! If you do know of any articles or even previously answered questions here please direct me there. it is only my intention to add value to the community! Schieler Mew
Number One Designs0 -
Please help need experienced eyes
We own discount banner printing and we are trying to rank 1 for pvc banners or vinyl banners and cannot understand for example how the below is correct, we did suffer a link penalty years ago but we fixed this and the domain has some good links (more and better quality than the sites above us) and cannot understand how we rank below most of the sites above us? If we type on for example pvc banners we get http://www.bannershop.co.uk/cats/pvc_banners.htm https://www.hfe-signs.co.uk/banners.php http://bannerprintingandroid.co.uk/pvc-banners/ http://www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk/banners/vinyl-pvc-banners.html (our website) And if we type in vinyl banners we get http://www.vistaprint.co.uk/banners.aspx http://www.bigvaluebanners.co.uk/ http://vinylbannersprinting.co.uk/ http://www.discountdisplays.co.uk/html/vinyl_banners.html https://www.buildasign.co.uk/banners http://www.monkey-print.com/outdoor banners/budget-outdoor-banners http://www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk/banners/vinyl-pvc-banners.html (Our website)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Alternative HTML Structure for indexation of JavaScript Single Page Content
Hi there, we are currently setting up a pure html version for Bots on our site amazine.com so the content as well as navigation will be fully indexed by google. We will show google exactly the same content the user sees (except for the fancy JS effects). So all bots get pure html and real users see the JS based version. My questions are first, if everyone agrees that this is the way to go or if there are alternatives to this to get the content indexed. Are there best practices? All JS-based websites must have this problem, so I am hoping someone can share their experience. The second question regards the optimal number of content pieces ('Stories') displayed per page and the best method to paginate. Should we display e.g. 10 stories and use ?offset in the URL or display 100 stories to google per page and maybe use rel=”next”/"pref" instead. Generally, I would really appreciate any pointers and experiences from you guys as we haven't done this sort of thing before! Cheers, Frank
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FranktheTank-474970 -
Website Displayed by Google as Https: when all Secure Content is Blocked - Causing Index Prob.
Basically, I have no inbound likes going to https://www.mysite.com , but google is indexing the Homepage only as https://www.mysite.com In June, I was re included to the google index after receiving a penalty... Most of my site links recovered fairly well. However my homepage did not recover for its top keywords. Today I notice that when I search for my site, its displayed as https:// Robots.txt blocks all content going to any secure page. Leaving me sort of clueless what I need to do to fix this. Not only does it pose a problem for some users who click, but I think its causing the homepage to have an indexing problem. Any ideas? Redirect the google bot only? Will a canonical tag fix this? Thx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
Getting backlinks without content marketing
Hey i have a client who currently has a large ecommerce store with over 50,000 hits a months. I've made the recommendation that they should consider adding a blog and invest in content activities. However they won't be able to do so for quite some time. In the mean time what are some ways i can get backlinks (whitehat only). I'm thinking guest posting on high DA blogs and sites is the best bet. Also sponsorship, CSR activties, and the occasional press release. Can anyone recommend any other ways, or methods i can use to obtain good quality links, or articles which discuss this topic. Thanks, Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | monster990 -
Duplicate Content
http://www.pensacolarealestate.com/JAABA/jsp/HomeAdvice/answers.jsp?TopicId=Buy&SubtopicId=Affordability&Subtopicname=What%20You%20Can%20Afford http://www.pensacolarealestate.com/content/answers.html?Topic=Buy&Subtopic=Affordability I have no idea how the first address exists at all... I ran the SEOMOZ tool and I got 600'ish DUPLICATE CONTENT errors! I have errors on content/titles etc... How do I get rid of all the content being generated from this JAABA/JSP "jibberish"? Please ask questions that will help you help me. I have always been 1st on google local and I have a business that is starting to hurt very seriously from being number three 😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JML11790 -
Is it fine to use an iframe for video content? Will it still be indexed on your URL?
If we host a video on a third party site and use an iframe to display it on our site, when the video is indexed in SERPs will it show on our site or on the third party site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0