Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
De-indexing millions of pages - would this work?
-
Hi all,
We run an e-commerce site with a catalogue of around 5 million products.
Unfortunately, we have let Googlebot crawl and index tens of millions of search URLs, the majority of which are very thin of content or duplicates of other URLs. In short: we are in deep. Our bloated Google-index is hampering our real content to rank; Googlebot does not bother crawling our real content (product pages specifically) and hammers the life out of our servers.
Since having Googlebot crawl and de-index tens of millions of old URLs would probably take years (?), my plan is this:
- 301 redirect all old SERP URLs to a new SERP URL.
- If new URL should not be indexed, add meta robots noindex tag on new URL.
- When it is evident that Google has indexed most "high quality" new URLs, robots.txt disallow crawling of old SERP URLs. Then directory style remove all old SERP URLs in GWT URL Removal Tool
- This would be an example of an old URL:
www.site.com/cgi-bin/weirdapplicationname.cgi?word=bmw&what=1.2&how=2 - This would be an example of a new URL:
www.site.com/search?q=bmw&category=cars&color=blue
I have to specific questions:
- Would Google both de-index the old URL and not index the new URL after 301 redirecting the old URL to the new URL (which is noindexed) as described in point 2 above?
- What risks are associated with removing tens of millions of URLs directory style in GWT URL Removal Tool? I have done this before but then I removed "only" some useless 50 000 "add to cart"-URLs.Google says themselves that you should not remove duplicate/thin content this way and that using this tool tools this way "may cause problems for your site".
And yes, these tens of millions of SERP URLs is a result of a faceted navigation/search function let loose all to long.
And no, we cannot wait for Googlebot to crawl all these millions of URLs in order to discover the 301. By then we would be out of business.Best regards,
TalkInThePark -
Thanks a lot, Tom. Time will tell...
Just one last thing:
what damage are you (and Google) thinking of when advising against removing URLs on a large scale through GWMT?Personally, I think Google says so only because they want to keep as much information possible in their index.
-
Thanks for the PM, I can now appreciate the problem a little more.
I think it's something that you should not rush. What you've done seems the best thing you can do for now.
Longer term, I'd look at your CMS options!
-
Yes, I have put a conditional meta robots "noindex" on all pages whose URL contains more than 2 GET elements. It is also present on URLs containing parameters of little or no SEO value (e.g. the "price" parameter).
Regarding the nofollow directive, my plan is to not put it in the head but on the individual links pointing to URLs that should not be indexed. If we happen to get a backlink to one of these noindexed pages, I want the link value to get passed on to listed product pages.
My big worrie is what should I do if this de-indexation process takes forever...
-
If you could put a conditional meta tag in to the source code, that will show the nofollow tag if the URL contains more than 3 GET elements, then that might help?
You seem to have already thought hard about your options, and they sound ok. Let's just wait to see whether any Gurus are about to shout stop!
-
Thanks for answering that quickly, Tom!
We cannot robots.txt disallow all URLs. We get quite a lot of organic traffic to these URLs. In july, organic traffic landing on results pages gave us approximately $85 000 in revenue. Also, what is good to know is that pages resulting from searching and browsing share the same URL - the search phrase is treated as just another filtering parameter in the URL.
Keeping the same URL structure is part of my preferred, 2-step solution:
- Meta Robots "noindex" unwanted results pages (the overwhelming majority)
- When our Google index has shrunken enough, put rel=nofollow on internal links pointing to those results pages in order to prevent bots from crawling them.
I have actually implemented step 1 (as of yesterday). The solution I was describing in my original post is my last resort solution. I wanted to get a professional opinion on that one in order to know if I should rule it out or not.
Unfortunately, I cannot disclose our company name here (I have a feeling our competitors use Seomoz as well :)). But I'll send you some links in a private message.
-
If I were you I'd keep the same URL structure. You're correct in thinking this won't be a quick fix.
First, use the robots.txt to disallow robots access to the search pages.
Don't remove all results just yet from GWT, this will be a long task and might damage your sites performance.
Could you provide some links to your site? I'll have a closer look.
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
-
URLs dropping from index (Crawled, currently not indexed)
I've noticed that some of our URLs have recently dropped completely out of Google's index. When carrying out a URL inspection in GSC, it comes up with 'Crawled, currently not indexed'. Strangely, I've also noticed that under referring page it says 'None detected', which is definitely not the case. I wonder if it could be something to do with the following? https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ranking-index-drop-30192.html - It seems to be a bug affecting quite a few people. Here are a few examples of the URLs that have gone missing: https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/sexual-harassment-awareness-training https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/conflict-resolution-training https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/prevent-duty-training Any help here would be massively appreciated!
Technical SEO | | iHasco0 -
Google has deindexed a page it thinks is set to 'noindex', but is in fact still set to 'index'
A page on our WordPress powered website has had an error message thrown up in GSC to say it is included in the sitemap but set to 'noindex'. The page has also been removed from Google's search results. Page is https://www.onlinemortgageadvisor.co.uk/bad-credit-mortgages/how-to-get-a-mortgage-with-bad-credit/ Looking at the page code, plus using Screaming Frog and Ahrefs crawlers, the page is very clearly still set to 'index'. The SEO plugin we use has not been changed to 'noindex' the page. I have asked for it to be reindexed via GSC but I'm concerned why Google thinks this page was asked to be noindexed. Can anyone help with this one? Has anyone seen this before, been hit with this recently, got any advice...?
Technical SEO | | d.bird0 -
Sudden Indexation of "Index of /wp-content/uploads/"
Hi all, I have suddenly noticed a massive jump in indexed pages. After performing a "site:" search, it was revealed that the sudden jump was due to the indexation of many pages beginning with the serp title "Index of /wp-content/uploads/" for many uploaded pieces of content & plugins. This has appeared approximately one month after switching to https. I have also noticed a decline in Bing rankings. Does anyone know what is causing/how to fix this? To be clear, these pages are **not **normal /wp-content/uploads/ but rather "index of" pages, being included in Google. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | Tom3_150 -
Pages are Indexed but not Cached by Google. Why?
Hello, We have magento 2 extensions website mageants.com since 1 years google every 15 days cached my all pages but suddenly last 15 days my websites pages not cached by google showing me 404 error so go search console check error but din't find any error so I have cached manually fetch and render but still most of pages have same 404 error example page : - https://www.mageants.com/free-gift-for-magento-2.html error :- http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.mageants.com%2Ffree-gift-for-magento-2.html&rlz=1C1CHBD_enIN803IN804&oq=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.mageants.com%2Ffree-gift-for-magento-2.html&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.1569j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 so have any one solutions for this issues
Technical SEO | | vikrantrathore0 -
Getting high priority issue for our xxx.com and xxx.com/home as duplicate pages and duplicate page titles can't seem to find anything that needs to be corrected, what might I be missing?
I am getting high priority issue for our xxx.com and xxx.com/home as reporting both duplicate pages and duplicate page titles on crawl results, I can't seem to find anything that needs to be corrected, what am I be missing? Has anyone else had a similar issue, how was it corrected?
Technical SEO | | tgwebmaster0 -
How to stop google from indexing specific sections of a page?
I'm currently trying to find a way to stop googlebot from indexing specific areas of a page, long ago Yahoo search created this tag class=”robots-nocontent” and I'm trying to see if there is a similar manner for google or if they have adopted the same tag? Any help would be much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Iamfaramon0 -
Should i index or noindex a contact page
Im wondering if i should noindex the contact page im doing SEO for a website just wondering if by noindexing the contact page would it help SEO or hurt SEO for that website
Technical SEO | | aronwp0 -
How to determine which pages are not indexed
Is there a way to determine which pages of a website are not being indexed by the search engines? I know Google Webmasters has a sitemap area where it tells you how many urls have been submitted and how many are indexed out of those submitted. However, it doesn't necessarily show which urls aren't being indexed.
Technical SEO | | priceseo1