GWT URL Removal Tool Risky to Use for Duplicate Pages?
-
I was planning to remove lots of URL's via GWT that are highly duplicate alike pages (similar pages exist on other websites across the web). However, this Google article had me a bit concerned: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1269119?hl=en
I already have "noindex, follow" on the pages I want to remove from the index, but Google seems to take ages to remove pages from index, which appear to drag down unique content pages from my site.
-
Hi
I have used the URL removal tool in the past to remove URLs with success - as we know it helps speed things up. What you have done is right and if you are patient Google will start removing each page as it crawls it again. You might find this confirmation from Google reassuring in your situation - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710?hl=en
Reading the article you posted of when not to use the tool I can't see that your pages fall into any of these categories - but either way I personally can't see using it causing an issue to be honest but its your call.
-
adding "nofollow" as well makes it even easier to get out of the index?
-
Last time I used URL removal in GWT was a long time ago and at that time the URL will not get out of the index for ever but for 90 days only and after that it will come again.
The better idea in any case is to use no index, no follow tag on the pages that you want out from the Google’s index!
Hope this helps!
-
issue with having pages that are similar to pages on other websites is the ratio of unique vs duplicate content is low and that can drag down other more unique pages ranking. The pages I have without much unique content is what users want: http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu/honolulu/hawaii-kai-homes/ but since content isn't unique I - unfortunately - need to noindex those pages and instead rank for this type of page: http://www.honoluluhi5.com/hawaii-kai-homes-real-estate/
When a user is looking for "….for sale" type keyword they want that first URL. Not the 2nd URL with pictures and video and writing. The "noindex, follow" is on the 1st URL, but still indexed after 1 month. I want to get de-indexed and I am trying to establish the risk associated with using that GWT tool - based on the article where G seems to indicate one shouldn't so easily use that tool. Conclusion is probably I have to be patient and wait for G to noindex those pages of mine. I look forward to the day G's algorithm can see the layout of a page and understand the value for users, even though it lacks unique content….
-
There's really no problem with having pages on your site having content that can be seen on other sites. Since you have noindexed them already, it shouldn't be a problem.
If they aren't really getting any traffic for you or aren't really bringing in anything that helps the site overall, then just take them off.
Focus on your new and existing content.
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
-
Mixing up languages on the same page + possible duplicate content
I have a site in English hosted under .com with English info, and then different versions of the site under subdirectories (/de/, /es/, etc.) Due to budget constraints we have only managed to translate the most important info of our product pages for the local domains. We feel however that displaying (on a clearly identified tab) the detailed product info in English may be of use for many users that can actually understand English, and may help us get more conversions to have that info. The problem is that this detailed product info is already used on the equivalent English page as well. This basically means 2 things: We are mixing languages on pages We have around 50% of duplicate content of these pages What do you think that the SEO implications of this are? By the way, proper Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions as well as implementation of href lang tag are in place.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lauraseo0 -
Does it make sense to create new pages with friendlier URLs then redirect old pages to new?
Hi Moz! My client has messy URLs. does it make sense to write new clean URLs, then 301 redirect all old URLs to the new ones? Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Should I remove all meta descriptions to avoid duplicates as a short term fix?
I’m currently trying to implement Matt Cutt’s advice from a recent YouTube video, in which he said that it was better to have no meta descriptions at all than duplicates. I know that there are better alternatives, but, if forced to make a choice, would it be better to remove all duplicate meta descriptions from a site than to have duplicates (leaving a lone meta tag description on the home page perhaps?). This would be a short term fix prior to making changes to our CMS to allow us to add unique meta descriptions to the most important pages. I’ve seen various blogs across the internet which recommend removing all the tags in these circumstances, but I’m interested in what people on Moz think of this. The site currently has a meta description which is duplicated across every page on the site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO1 -
Canonical use when dynamically placing items on "all products" page
Hi all, We're trying to get our canonical situation straightened out. We have a section of our site with 100 product pages in it (in our case a city with hotels that we've reviewed), and we have a single page where we list them all out--an "all products" page called "all.html." However, because we have 100 and that's a lot for a user to see at once, we plan to first show only 50 on "all.html." When the user scrolls down to the bottom, we use AJAX to place another 50 on the page (these come from another page called "more.html" and are placed onto "all.html"). So, as you scroll down from the front end, you see "all.html" with 100 listings. We have other listings pages that are sorted and filtered subsets of this list with little or no unique content. Thus, we want to place a canonical on those pages. Question: Should the canonical point to "all.html"? Would spiders get confused, because they see that all.html is only half the listings? Is it dangerous to dynamically place content on a page that's used as a canonical? Is this a non-issue? Thanks, Tom
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomNYC0 -
Tool that can retrieve mysite URL's
Hi, Tool that can retrieve mysite URL's I am not talking about href,open explorer, Majestic etc I have a list of 1000 site URL's where my site name is mentioned. I want to get the exact URL of my site next to the URL i want to query with Example http://moz.com/community is the URL i have and if this page has mysite name then i need to get the complete URL captured. Any software or tool that can do this? I used one for sure which got me this info but now i don't remember it Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Duplicate page content query
Hi forum, For some reason I have recently received a large increase in my Duplicate Page Content issues. Currently it says I have over 7,000 duplicate page content errors! For example it says: Sample URLs with this Duplicate Page Content http://dikelli.com.au/accessories/gowns/news.html http://dikelli.com.au/accessories/news.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sterls
http://dikelli.com.au/gallery/dikelli/gowns/gowns/sale_gowns.html However there are no physical links to any of these page on my site and even when I look at my FTP files (I am using Dreamweaver) these directories and files do not exist. Can anyone please tell me why the SEOMOZ crawl is coming up with these errors and how to solve them?0 -
Should I use the canonical tag on all my mobile pages?
I've seen flavors of this question asked but did not see the exact response I was looking for. If I have a site at: www.site.com And I am creating a mobile version at: m.site.com (let's say a responsive design is not feasible at this time) And all the content on m.site.com is duplicative of the content on www.site.com What's the best way to handle that from an SEO perspective? Should I put a canonical tag on every mobile page pointing back to the www page? I assume that is better than a 'no index' tag on all pages of the mobile site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hbrown1080 -
301 a page and then remove the 301
I have a real estate website that has a city hub page. All the homes for sale within a city are linked to from this hub page. Certain small cities may have one home on the market for a month and then not have any homes on the market for months or years. I call them "Ghost Cities". This problem happens across many cities at any point in time. The resulting city hub pages are left with little to no content. We are throwing around the idea of 301 redirecting these "Ghost City" pages to a page higher up in the hierarchy (Think state or county) until we get new homes for sale in the city. At that point we would remove the 301. Any thoughts on this strategy? Is it bad to turn 301s on and off like that? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChrisKolmar0