Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. Investigating a huge spike in indexed pages

    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.

    Investigating a huge spike in indexed pages

    Technical SEO
    2
    6
    1073
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • farbeseo
      farbeseo last edited by

      I've noticed an enormous spike in pages indexed through WMT in the last week. Now I know WMT can be a bit (OK, a lot) off base in its reporting but this was pretty hard to explain. See, we're in the middle of a huge campaign against dupe content and we've put a number of measures in place to fight it. For example:

      1. Implemented a strong canonicalization effort

      2. NOINDEX'd content we know to be duplicate programatically

      3. Are currently fixing true duplicate content issues through rewriting titles, desc etc.

      So I was pretty surprised to see the blow-up. Any ideas as to what else might cause such a counter intuitive trend? Has anyone else see Google do something that suddenly gloms onto a bunch of phantom pages?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • farbeseo
        farbeseo last edited by

        I haven't contacted the forum yet but that's my next step.

        Pages indexed: 91k

        Blocked by robots.txt: 8.4million

        I don't even know how you could create 8.4 million indexable pages from our content.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • FedeEinhorn
          FedeEinhorn @farbeseo last edited by

          Have you contacted the Google Webmaster Help forums? As that seems to be a glitch in Google.

          How many pages are scraped by Mozbot? If the amount that mozbot shows is different, then you should either sit and wait until Google removes those indexed pages or create a conversation on the forums so someone at google can give you a hint of what is going on.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • farbeseo
            farbeseo last edited by

            Any help out there? Since the original question was posted, I've seen some improvement but even with aggressive canonicalization and noindexing, I'm still seeing a boatload of indexed pages. I am still seeing pages indexed that I've asked explicitly to be omitted by robots.txt (/search.aspx and */filter). I'm guessing it's just going to take a while to deindex what's there. Still, 91k pages indexed is quite a lot when you consider we only have about 3-4k pages and some articles.

            Is anyone aware of any significant releases by Google?

            FedeEinhorn 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • farbeseo
              farbeseo last edited by

              Quite recent. We were actually seeing a nice downward trend in the huge number of pages indexed and then the number tripled. Crazy is an understatement. I would have thought the number of pages would fall given the number of pages that now use canonicals.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • FedeEinhorn
                FedeEinhorn last edited by

                How long have you waited since you applied all the rules to avoid duplicate content, as if it was just recently, then Google should be "rebuilding" the index of your site and stats may be a little crazy while that is happening.

                If it was over 2 month ago and you are seeing the increase now, then I'd suggest you revise the rules you created to see if your own Website isn't creating all those new pages.

                Hope that helps.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • iHasco

                  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 | | iHasco
                  0
                • muzzmoz

                  Indexed pages

                  Just started a site audit and trying to determine the number of pages on a client site and whether there are more pages being indexed than actually exist. I've used four tools and got four very different answers... Google Search Console: 237 indexed pages Google search using site command: 468 results MOZ site crawl: 1013 unique URLs Screaming Frog: 183 page titles, 187 URIs (note this is a free licence, but should cut off at 500) Can anyone shed any light on why they differ so much? And where lies the truth?

                  Technical SEO | | muzzmoz
                  1
                • tgwebmaster

                  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 | | tgwebmaster
                  0
                • CharmingGuy

                  How to block text on a page to be indexed?

                  I would like to block the spider indexing a block of text inside a page , however I do not want to block the whole page with, for example , a noindex tag. I have tried already with a tag like this : chocolate pudding chocolate pudding However this is not working for my case, a travel related website. thanks in advance for your support. Best regards Gianluca

                  Technical SEO | | CharmingGuy
                  0
                • franchisesolutions

                  What is the best way to find missing alt tags on my site (site wide - not page by page)?

                  I am looking to find all the missing alt tags on my site at once. I have a FF extension that use to do it page by page, but my site is huge and that will take forever. Thanks!!

                  Technical SEO | | franchisesolutions
                  1
                • MarieHaynes

                  How to identify orphan pages?

                  I've read that you can use Screaming Frog to identify orphan pages on your site, but I can't figure out how to do it.  Can anyone help? I know that Xenu Link Sleuth works but I'm on a Mac so that's not an option for me. Or are there other ways to identify orphan pages?

                  Technical SEO | | MarieHaynes
                  0
                • TalkInThePark

                  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

                  Technical SEO | | TalkInThePark
                  0
                • fugu

                  Dynamically-generated .PDF files, instead of normal pages, indexed by and ranking in Google

                  Hi, I come across a tough problem. I am working on an online-store website which contains the functionlaity of viewing products details in .PDF format (by the way, the website is built on Joomla CMS), now when I search my site's name in Google, the SERP simply displays my .PDF files in the first couple positions (shown in normal .PDF files format: [PDF]...)and I cannot find the normal pages there on SERP #1 unless I search the full site domain in Google. I really don't want this! Would you please tell me how to figure the problem out and solve it. I can actually remove the corresponding component (Virtuemart) that are in charge of generating the .PDF files. Now I am trying to redirect all the .PDF pages ranking in Google to a 404 page and remove the functionality, I plan to regenerate a sitemap of my site and submit it to Google, will it be working for me? I really appreciate that if you could help solve this problem. Thanks very much. Sincerely SEOmoz Pro Member

                  Technical SEO | | fugu
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                • Digital Marketers
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.