How to remove my site's pages in search results?
-
I have tested hundreds of pages to see if Google will properly crawl, index and cached them. Now, I want these pages to be removed in Google search except for homepage. What should be the rule in robots.txt?
I use this rule, but I am not sure if Google will remove the hundreds of pages (for my testing).
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
Allow: /$ -
Why not just 404/410 those pages?
-
Hi Matt! I've already tried your suggestion. I'll let you know what's the result. Thanks a lot man!
-
why don't you try adding a meta robots tag on those pages with "NOINDEX".
i would also do remove url with WMT
-
These are just test pages and I need them to be private and not visible in Google after I test. I understand that there will be a drop in SERP rankings.
-
I would do
User-agent: *
Disallow: /?
Allow: /But test it first in WMT first to be safe. However, you must be sure that this is the route you want to go down. Robots.txt will prevent all of those pages from being indexed, which means that none of their content will count. Any links to these pages may also be devalued. The result is a potential drop in SERPs.
What is the reason why you don't want them appearing? That way we may find an alternative solution.
-
This is basically a duplicate of your other thread where I gave you that code. Yes, it should block the other pages. Put that in, fetch in WMT and you should be right.
Also, you can test it before you implement in WMT as well. I tried it on my end and it works.
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
-
Do I need to remove pages that don't get any traffic from the index?
Hi, Do I need to remove pages that don't get any traffic from the index? Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut1 -
What is the proper way to execute 'page to page redirection'
I need to redirection every page of my website to a new url of another site I've made. I intend to add:"Redirect 301 /oldpage.html http://www.example.com/newpage.html"I will use the 301 per page to redirect every page of my site, but I'm confused that if I add:"Redirect 301 / http://mt-example.com/" it will redirect all of my pages to the homepage and ignore the URLs i have separately mentioned for redirection.Please guide me.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NABSID0 -
Blocking Certain Site Parameters from Google's Index - Please Help
Hello, So we recently used Google Webmaster Tools in an attempt to block certain parameters on our site from showing up in Google's index. One of our site parameters is essentially for user location and accounts for over 500,000 URLs. This parameter does not change page content in any way, and there is no need for Google to index it. We edited the parameter in GWT to tell Google that it does not change site content and to not index it. However, after two weeks, all of these URLs are still definitely getting indexed. Why? Maybe there's something we're missing here. Perhaps there is another way to do this more effectively. Has anyone else ran into this problem? The path we used to implement this action:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jbake
Google Webmaster Tools > Crawl > URL Parameters Thank you in advance for your help!0 -
Google search results
I have been doing some searches on google to see where my new site shows up, I started using the search words "graphic design firm st. louis" as a gauge, because my title is St. Louis Missouri Graphic Design Firm. I showed up on about page 5 to start , if I include the word "firm" and a few pages further back if I just search "graphic design st. louis", without the word firm. It seemed i was slowly moving up pages with both searches and then a few days ago I jumped to page 1 for search "graphic design firm st. louis" the thing is it doesnt show up at all now if i search "graphic design st. louis" without the word firm. what would cause the one search to jump so high while the other one dissapeared completely?? and what can i do? my keyword density is same for both , any ideas.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eric69660 -
When removing a product page from an ecommerce site?
What is the best practice for removing a product page from an Ecommerce site? If a 301 is not available and the page is already crawled by the search engine A. block it out in the robot.txt B. let it 404
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bryan_Loconto0 -
Killing 404 errors on our site in Google's index
Having moved a site across to Magento, obviously re-directs were a large part of that, ensuring all the old products and categories linked up correctly with the new site structure. However, we came up against an issue where we needed to add, delete, then re-add products. This, coupled with a misunderstanding of the csv upload processing, meant that although the old urls redirected, some of the new Magento urls changed and then didn't redirect: For Example: mysite/product would get deleted re-added and become: mysite/product-1324 We now know what we did wrong to ensure it doesn't continue to happen if we weret o delete and re-add a product, but Google contains all these old URLs in its index which has caused people to search for products on Google, click through, then land on the 404 page - far from ideal. We kind of assumed, with continual updating of sitemaps and time, that Google would realise and update the URL accordingly. But this hasn't happened - we are still getting plenty of 404 errors on certain product searches (These aren't appearing in SEOmoz, there are no links to the old URL on the site, only Google, as the index contains the old URL). Aside from going through and finding the products affected (no easy task), and setting up redirects for each one, is there any way we can tell Google 'These URLs are no longer a thing, forget them and move on, let's make a fresh start and Happy New Year'?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seanmccauley0 -
I'm afraid I may have messed up my site's organization
So I recently started working on an existing site for a company, and I'm afraid I may have done something to lose some backlinks. So to start off, say the website is www.domain.net and when I arrived domain.net and www.domain.net showed up as two separate sites so I changed my web.config file to direct all domain.net to www.domain.net The homepage was called default.asp, and I wanted the homepage to always show up as www.domain.net instead of www.domain.net/default.asp. Of course they both showed the same thing but I couldn't figure it out. So I removed www.domain.net/default.asp from indexing and changed the my internal links to the homepage to point at www.domain.net instead of simply pointing at the file default.asp. So now www.domain.net/default.asp still brings up the page, but I want it to revert to www.domain.net. I'm also a little worried because I noticed that one of my incoming links points at www.domain.net/default.asp and it doesn't get passed along to www.domain.net and I think i may have damaged my sites SEO I guess this is a very complicated and roundabout way of saying this, but how can I get www.domain.net/default.asp to take you to www.domain.net
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bcrabill0 -
Is it possible for a multi doctor practice to have the practice's picture displayed in Google's SERP?
Google now includes pictures of authors in the results of the pages. Therefore, a single practice doctor can include her picture into Google's SERP (http://markup.io/v/dqpyajgz7jkd). How can a multi doctor practice display the practice's picture as opposed to a single doctor? A search for Plastic Surgery Chicago displayed this (query: plastic surgery Chicago) http://markup.io/v/bx3f28ynh4w5. I found one example of a search result showing a picture of both doctors for a multi doctor practice (query: houston texas plastic surgeon). http://markup.io/v/t20gfazxfa6h
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CakeWebsites0