Pages getting into Google Index, blocked by Robots.txt??
-
Hi all,
So yesterday we set up to Remove URL's that got into the Google index that were not supposed to be there, due to faceted navigation... We searched for the URL's by using this in Google Search.
site:www.sekretza.com inurl:price=
site:www.sekretza.com inurl:artists=So it brings up a list of "duplicate" pages, and they have the usual: "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more."
So we removed them all, and google removed them all, every single one.
This morning I do a check, and I find that more are creeping in - If i take one of the suspecting dupes to the Robots.txt tester, Google tells me it's Blocked. - and yet it's appearing in their index??
I'm confused as to why a path that is blocked is able to get into the index?? I'm thinking of lifting the Robots block so that Google can see that these pages also have a Meta NOINDEX,FOLLOW tag on - but surely that will waste my crawl budget on unnecessary pages?
Any ideas?
thanks.
-
Oh, ok. If that's the case, pls don't worry about those in the index. You can get them removed using remove URL feature in webmaster tools account.
-
It doesn't show any result for the "blocked page" when I do that in Google.
-
Hi,
Please try this and let us know the results:
Suppose this is one of the pages in discussion:
http://www.yourdomain.com/blocked-page.html
Go to Google, type the following along with double quotes. Replace with the actual page:
"yourdomain.com/blocked-page.html" -site:yourdomain.com
-
Hi!
From what I could tell, it wasn't that many pages already in the index, so it could be worth trying to lift the block, at least for a short while, to see if it will have an impact.
In addition - how about configuring how GoogleBot should threat your URLs via the URL parameter tool in Google Webmaster Tools. Here's what Google has to say about this. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1235687
Best regards,Anders
-
Hi Devanur.
What I'm guessing is the problem here, is that as of now, GoogleBot is restricted from accessing the pages (because of robots.txt), leading to it never going into the page and updateing its index regarding the "noindex, follow" declaration in the that seems to be in place.
One other thing that could be considered, is to add "rel=nofollow" to all the faceted navigation links on the left.
Fully agreeing with you on the "crawl budget" part
Anders
-
Hi guys,
Appreciate your replies, but as far as I checked last time, if the URL is blocked by a Robots.txt file, it cannot read the Meta Noindex, Follow tag within the page.
There are no external references to these URL's, so Google is finding them within the site itself.
In essence, what you are recommending is that I lift the robots block and let google crawl these pages (which could be infinite as it is faceted navigation).
This will waste my crawl budget.
Any other ideas?
-
Anderss has pointed out to the right article. With robots.txt blocking, Google bot will not do the crawl (link discovery) from within the website but what if references to these blocked pages are found else where on third-party websites? This is the case you have been into. So to fully block Google from doing the link discovery and indexing these blocked pages, you should go in for the page-level meta robots tag to block these pages. Once this is in place, this issue will fade away.
This issue has been addressed many times here on Moz.
Coming to your concern about the crawl budget. There is nothing to worry about this as Google will not crawl those blocked pages while its on your website as these are already been blocked using robots.txt file.
Hope it helps my friend.
Best regards,
Devanur Rafi
-
Hi!
It could be that that pages has already been indexed before you added the directives to robots.txt.
I see that you have added the rel=canonical for the pages and that you now have noindex,follow. Is that recently added? If so, it could be wise to actually let GoogleBot access and crawl the pages again - and then they'll go away after a while. Then you could add the directive again later. See https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710?hl=en&ref_topic=4598466 for more about this.
Hope this helps!
Anders -
For example:
http://www.sekretza.com/eng/best-sellers-sekretza-products.html?price=1%2C1000Is blocked by using:
Disallow: /*price=.... ?
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
-
Why does Google display the home page rather than a page which is better optimised to answer the query?
I have a page which (I believe) is well optimised for a specific keyword (URL, title tag, meta description, H1, etc). yet Google chooses to display the home page instead of the page more suited to the search query. Why is Google doing this and what can I do to stop it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
Website Ranks and gets de indexed ??
Hi My website is almost 3-4 months old . Whats strange is that as soon as it get Crawled it ranks for few terms for 1-2 days and all of a sudden gets de Indexed for these same terms or Rank drops like drops from page 5 to page 10 . Nothing shows up in Webmater tools under Manual Action . Assuming its a Algorithmic penalty, How to deal with this kind of stuff. Should I stop working on this site all together ? Or assuming its a New website, google does not want it to rank for medium or high volume keywords ? What keywords I am after have 300 -2k searches per month .
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aus00070 -
Robots.txt
What would be a perfect robots.txt file my site is propdental.es Can i just place: User-agent: * Or should i write something more???
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Google Site Extended Listing Not Indexed
I am trying to get the new Site map to be picked up by Google for the extended listing as its pulling from the old links and returning 404 errors. How can I get the site listing indexed quickly and have the extended listing get updated to point to the right places. This is the site - http://epaperflip.com/Default.aspx This is the search with the extended listing and some 404's - Broad Match search for "epaperflip"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Intergen0 -
Will disallowing in robots.txt noindex a page?
Google has indexed a page I wish to remove. I would like to meta noindex but the CMS isn't allowing me too right now. A suggestion o disallow in robots.txt would simply stop them crawling I expect or is it also an instruction to noindex? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brocberry0 -
1200 pages no followed and blocked by robots on my site. Is that normal?
Hi, I've got a bunch of notices saying almost 1200 pages are no-followed and blocked by robots. They appear to be comments and other random pages. Not the actual domain and static content pages. Still seems a little odd. The site is www.jobshadow.com. Any idea why I'd have all these notices? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | astahl110 -
Robots.txt disallow subdomain
Hi all, I have a development subdomain, which gets copied to the live domain. Because I don't want this dev domain to get crawled, I'd like to implement a robots.txt for this domain only. The problem is that I don't want this robots.txt to disallow the live domain. Is there a way to create a robots.txt for this development subdomain only? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Partouter0 -
Should I prevent Google from indexing blog tag and category pages?
I am working on a website that has a regularly updated Wordpress blog and am unsure whether or not the category and tag pages should be indexable. The blog posts are often outranked by the tag and category pages and they are ultimately leaving me with a duplicate content issue. With this in mind, I assumed that the best thing to do would be to remove the tag and category pages from the index, but after speaking to someone else about the issue, I am no longer sure. I have tried researching online, but there isn't anything that provided any further information. Please can anyone with any experience of dealing with issues like this or with any knowledge of the topic help me to resolve this annoying issue. Any input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PaulRogers0