Should I remove these pages from the Google index?
-
Hi there,
Please have a look at the following URL http://www.elefant-tours.com/index.php?callback=imagerotator&gid=65&483. It's a "sitemap" generated by a Wordpress plug-in called NextGen gallery and it maps all the images that have been added to the site through this plugin, which is quite a lot in this case. I can see that these "sitemap" pages have been indexed by Google and I'm wondering whether I should remove these or not? In my opinion these are pages that a search engine would never would want to serve as a search result and pages that a visitor never would want to see. Attracting any traffic through Google images is irrelevant in this case. What is your advice? Block it or leave it indexed or something else?
-
Thanks for your responses.
I'm not too worried about users finding these sitemaps as they only appear very far into the search results. The only worry I had was that these pages could be seen as low-quality/thin pages of content. I guess David-Kley's suggestion of naming the images properly could kill two birds with one stone; Have relevant content indexed on these pages and perhaps attract a few more visitors through google image search. Thanks for the suggestion!
-
A few questions:
How many pages back in a site search do you see these? Meaning if you do a site:www.yourdomain.com how many pages back do you see these appear? If it's like page 10 or more, I doubt a user would ever see the URL's at all.
Second, I am curious as to why you have an image sitemap, and went to that length to include images in your submissions, but didn't name the images in an SEO-friendly format? For example:
http://www.elefant-tours.com//gallery/keys-hotel/07_img_0949triesx.jpg
...is a young woman sitting at a table, getting served a drink. I would think that the image could be named "hotel food dining" or something of that nature. Just an idea, probably not a huge deal, but every bit counts. You have no idea what a user might type in to get to a site. Someone might skip web results altogether, and go straight to Google images to find what they are looking for, especially in the hotel industry. They will be looking for what appears to be the most relaxing, and luxurious experience.
You could always disable the plugin, and make one big image sitemap. The sitemap URL you listed shows the image son that particular page. In a "all-in-one" image sitemap, you would list out the images and image location (URL) individually. Might work out better for you, as Google would get the big picture (pun intended) all at once.
Hope this helps!
-
I wouldn't worry too much about it. Google can tell what a sitemap looks like. If it bothers you, you can remove it from WMT. I don't believe you can put meta data that Google follows in an XML file.
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
-
Should search pages be indexed?
Hey guys, I've always believed that search pages should be no-indexed but now I'm wondering if there is an argument to index them? Appreciate any thoughts!
Technical SEO | | RebekahVP0 -
Redesigned and Migrated Website - Lost Almost All Organic Traffic - Mobile Pages Indexing over Normal Pages
We recently redesigned and migrated our site from www.jmacsupply.com to https://www.jmac.com It has been over 2 weeks since implementing 301 redirects, and we have lost over 90% of our organic traffic. Google seems to be indexing the mobile versions of our pages over our website pages. We hired a designer to redesign the site, and we are confident the code is doing something that is harmful for ranking our website. F or Example: If you google "KEEDEX-K-DS-FLX38" You should see our mobile page ranking: http://www.jmac.com/mobile/Product.aspx?ProductCode=KEEDEX-K-DS-FLX38 but the page that we want ranked (and we think should be, is https://www.jmac.com/Keedex_K_DS_FLX38_p/keedex-k-ds-flx38.htm) That second page isn't even indexed. (When you search for: "site:jmac.com Keedex K-DS-FLX38") We have implemented rel canonical, and rel alternate both ways. What are we doing wrong??? Thank you in advance for any help - it is much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | jmaccom0 -
Pages to be indexed in Google
Hi, We have 70K posts in our site but Google has scanned 500K pages and these extra pages are category pages or User profile pages. Each category has a page and each user has a page. When we have 90K users so Google has indexed 90K pages of users alone. My question is. Should we leave it as they are or should we block them from being indexed? As we get unwanted landings to the pages and huge bounce rate. If we need to remove what needs to be done? Robots block or Noindex/Nofollow Regards
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Google is indexing my directories
I'm sure this has been asked before, but I was looking at all of Google's results for my site and I found dozens of results for directories such as: Index of /scouting/blog/wp-includes/js/swfupload/plugins Obviously I don't want those indexed. How do I prevent Google from indexing those? Also, it only seems to be doing it with Wordpress, not any of the directories on my main site. (We have a wordpress blog, which is only a portion of the site)
Technical SEO | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Home page deindexed by google
when I search my website on google by site:www.mydomain.com I have found my domain with www has been de-indexed by google, but when I search site:mydomain.com, my home page--**mydomain.com **show up on the search results without www, put it simple, google only index my domain without www, I wonder how to make my domain with www being indexed, and how to prevent this problem occure again.
Technical SEO | | semer0 -
Why is our page not visible in Google-ranking? www.loseweight.com.
using Wordpress as platform. Using the URL gets into the site,- but seems to be non-existent for public... No comments at all, seems to be "invisible"?
Technical SEO | | gewi0 -
Homepage/Root domain de-indexed by Google
This morning I discovered that the homepage/root domain of our company site, http://www.collegeplus.org/, has been de-indexed by Google and Bing. Out IT dept. is claiming it's our fault because we changed the meta title on our homepage. But they will not give me access to GWT to see if there's any issues. I believe the issue lies within our robots.txt file - http://www.collegeplus.org/robots.txt I also don't believe we're suffering a penalty because all of our tier 2 pages are still indexed when any type of branded search is performed. We don't do things that can get a site de-indexed like this. Any ideas on what the issue may be? Or at least something to convince our IT dept. that simply changing a meta title won't get your homepage totally de-indexed? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | explorionary0 -
Why is Google only indexing 3 of 8 pages?
Hi everyone, I have a small 8 page website I launched about 6 months ago. For the life of me I can not figure out why google is only indexing 3 of the 8 pages. The pages are not duplicate content in any way. I have good internal linking structure. At this time I dont have many inbound links from others, that will come in time. Am I missing something here? Can someone give me a clue? Thanks Tim Site: www.jparizonaweddingvideos.com
Technical SEO | | fasctimseo0