How can a Page indexed without crawled?
-
Hey moz fans,
In the google getting started guide it says**"
Note: **Pages may be indexed despite never having been crawled: the two processes are independent of each other. If enough information is available about a page, and the page is deemed relevant to users, search engine algorithms may decide to include it in the search results despite never having had access to the content directly. That said, there are simple mechanisms such as robots meta tags to make sure that pages are not indexed.
"How can it happen, I dont really get the point.
Thank you -
Pleasure is all mine my friend. You are most welcome. Moz SEO community is an indispensable asset and weapon in any SEO's inventory in my opinion. We learn a great deal here while helping others. I am really thankful to each and everyone here on Moz community. Long live Moz and Mozzers. YOU ROCK!!
-
Ov man, you always come tome with great ideas I never thought about that .
Thank you very much stay rock! -
Yes, of course my friend, Google has to crawl the page to see the page-level meta robots tag but till date I have not seen any page in Google's index that has been blocked using the robots.txt file and page-level meta robots tag. Password protecting your .htaccess file would be an overkill if you just want Google not to index a page. If you want Google to remove any particular page from its index, you can get it done from webmaster tools account. Here you go for more: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663419?hl=en
Good Luck to you my friend.
Best regards,
Devanur Rafi
-
Thank you guyz,
Devanur You've got the point let me correct you at one point.
You can't say google that remove my index just using meta robots tag, because It can't read the meta tag till it crawl.
So only solution looks like .htaccess password protect.
Anyway thanks for your efforts. -
I'm also thinking site maps, but I'm not really sure if they trust them that much to list links in it that they haven't crawled.
-
Hi friend,
If a page has been blocked using Robots.txt file, then Google will not crawl and index the page from within the website but what if a reference of that page is found on a third-party website? In cases like this, link discovery will happen and the page will be indexed without a Description snippet and such pages will have the following text in the place of a description in the search results pages:
"A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more"
So inorder to completely stop Google from crawling and indexing a page, you should should block the page by implementing, page-level meta robots tag.
Here you go for more: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156449?hl=en
Please feel free to post back if you have any other queries in this regards.
Best regards,
Devanur Rafi
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
-
Site move-Redirecting and Indexing dynamic pages
I have an interesting problem I would like to pick someone else’s brain. Our business has over 80 different products, each with a dedicated page (specs, gallery, copy etc.) on the main website. Main site itself, is used for presentation purpose only and doesn’t offer a direct path to purchase. A few years ago, to serve a specific customer segment, we have created a site where customers can perform a quick purchase via one of our major strategic partners. Now we are looking to migrate this old legacy service, site and all its pages under the new umbrella (main domain/CMS). Problem #1 Redirects/ relevancy/ SEO equity Ideally, we could simply perform 1:1 - 301 redirect from old legacy product pages to the relevant new site products pages. The problem is that Call to action (buy), some images and in some cases, parts of the copy must be changed to some degree to accommodate this segment. The second problem is in our dev and creative team. There are not enough resources to dedicate for the creation of the new pages so we can perform 1:1 301 redirects. So, the potential decision is to redirect a visitor to the dynamic page URL where parent product page will be used to apply personalization rules and a new page with dynamic content (buy button, different gallery etc.) is displayed to the user (see attached diagram). If we redirect directly to parent URL and then apply personalization rules, URL will stay the same and this is what we are trying to avoid (we must mention in the URL that user is on purchase path, otherwise this redirect and page where the user lands, can be seen as deceptive). Also Dynamic pages will have static URLs and unique page/title tag and meta description. Problem #2 : Indexation/Canonicalization The dynamic page is canonicalized to the parent page and does have nearly identical content/look and feel, but both serve a different purpose and we want both indexed in search. Hope my explanation is clear and someone can chip in. Any input is greatly appreciated! vCm2Dt.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bgvsiteadmin1 -
Can you index a Google doc?
We have updated and added completely new content to our state pages. Our old state content is sitting in a our Google drive. Can I make these public to get them indexed and provide a link back to our state pages? In theory it sounds like a great link building strategy... TIA!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LindsayE1 -
Can Google Bot View Links on a Wix Page?
Hi, The way Wix is configured you can't see any of the on-page links within the source code. Does anyone know if Google Bots still count the links on this page? Here is the page in question: https://www.ncresourcecenter.org/business-directory If you do think Google counts these links, can you please send me URL fetcher to prove that the links are crawlable? Thank you SO much for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fiyyazp0 -
Google Search Console - Indexed Pages
I am performing a site audit and looking at the "Index Status Report" in GSC. This shows a total of 17 URLs have been indexed. However when I look at the Sitemap report in GSC it shows 9,000 pages indexed. Also, when I perform a site: search on Google I get 24,000 results. Can anyone help me to explain these anomalies?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | richdan0 -
Why is page still indexing?
Hi all, I have a few pages that - despite having a robots meta tag and no follow, no index, they are showing up in Google SERPs. In troubleshooting this with my team, it was brought up that another page could be linking to these pages and causing this. Is that plausible? How could I confirm that? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SSFCU
Sarah0 -
Domain Authority: 23, Page Authority: 33, Can My Site Still Rank?
Greetings: Our New York City commercial real estate site is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. Key MOZ metric are as follows: Domain Authority: 23
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Page Authority: 33
28 Root Domains linking to the site
179 Total Links. In the last six months domain authority, page authority, domains linking to the site have declined. We have focused on removing duplicate content and low quality links which may have had a negative impact on the above metrics. Our ranking has dropped greatly in the last two months. Could it be due to the above metrics? These numbers seem pretty bad. How can I reverse without engaging in any black hat behavior that could work against me in the future? Ideas?
Thanks, Alan Rosinsky0 -
Do you add 404 page into robot file or just add no index tag?
Hi, got different opinion on this so i wanted to double check with your comment is. We've got /404.html page and I was wondering if you would add this page to robot text so it wouldn't be indexed or would you just add no index tag? What would be the best approach? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rubix0 -
How to have pages re-indexed
Hi, my hosting company has blocked one my web site seeing it has performance problem. Result of that, it is now reactivated but my pages had to be reindexed. I have added my web site to Google Webmaster tool and I have submitted my site map. After few days it is saying: 103 number of URLs provided 39 URLs indexed I know Google doesn't promesse to index every page but do you know any way to increase my chance to get all my pages indexed? By the way, that site include pages and post (blog). Thanks for your help ! Nancy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EnigmaSolution0