Google Webmaster Tools Parameters
-
We have several large ecommerce websites, and we've added some tracking parameters to GWT for google to ignore. All pages are correctly canonicaled.
Google has been ignoring the parameters and the canonicals, and still ranks many parametered pages for us. Has anyone run into this?
-
Building on Patrick's answer using Robots.txt was the fastest way for things to take effect, but if implemented wrong can impact you pretty bad.
In addition to adding the exclusions in the Robots.txt, I also put in a removal request to remove the pages with parameters from googles index using the Google Url Removal tool, this combined with the other options helped clean up my results in the google index.
Hope this helps.
-
Patrick:
I set up the "clicksource" parameter in Google Webmaster Tools in March, and we still have 2400 pages with parameters indexed.
-
Very often, it isn't enough to only try and complete this through parameter handling. As Patrick said, you can look at adding sets of 'disallows' in Robots.txt and no-index at a page level, if you want to have pages de-indexed, but be careful how you do this and make sure that Google can see and action a no-index before blocking access to the page.
-Andy
-
Hi there
When did you put these parameters in place? Sometimes it can take Google some time to crawl your site and see these requests via your GWMT. So, depending on how recently you implemented these parameters, you may still see some of these URLs ranking.
Do you have these parameters in your sitemap or internal links where they are not needed? If so, make sure you correct them.
You can also look into robots.txt opportunities with your web development team to block these parameters, although I would really research this so you don't accidentally block important URLs.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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
-
What should I do if same content ranked twice or more on Google?
I have a Bangla SEO related blog where I have written article like "Domain Selection" "SEO Tools" "MOZ" etc. All the article has been written in Bengali language. I have used wp tag for every post. I have submit xml site map generated by Yoast SEO. However I kept "no index" for category. I know well duplicate content is a major problem for SEO. After publishing my content Google ranked them on 1st page. But my fear is that most of the content twice or more. The keywords are ranked by post, wp post tag and Archive. Now I have a fear of penalty. Please check the screenshot and please suggest me what to do. uRCHf yq7m2 rSLKFLG
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AccessTechBD0 -
Using disavow tool for 404s
Hey Community, Got a question about the disavow tool for you. My site is getting thousands of 404 errors from old blog/coupon/you name it sites linking to our old URL structure (which used underscores and ended in .jsp). It seems like the webmasters of these sites aren't answering back or haven't updated their sites in ages so it's returning 404 errors. If I disavow these domains and/or links will it clear out these 404 errors in Google? I read the GWT help page on it, but it didn't seem to answer this question. Feel free to ask any questions that may help you understand the issue more. Thanks for your help,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IceIcebaby
-Reed0 -
Google images
Hi, I am working on a website with a large number (millions) of images. For the last five months Ihave been trying to get Google Images to crawl and index these images (example page: http://bit.ly/1ePQvyd). I believe I have followed best practice in the design of the page, naming of images etc. Whilst crawlng and indexing of the pages is going reasonably well with the standard crawler, the image bot has only crawled about half a million images and indexed only about 40,000. Can anyone suggest what I could do to increase this number 100 fold? Richard
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichardTay0 -
Google Places - Advanced Question
Hi All, Ive found multiple threads about previous issues but I haven't found any tailored to my specific question.I know there are a large amount of factors so I wanted to see if any other individuals had ran into this previously. We are currently in a centralized position in a major city. We are discussing moving the main office about 15 miles away into another city, moving us out of the main city where we have been for the past 3 years. The city where we are currently located has a lot more GEO search volume compared to the new city search terms and variants of. If we move will our local rankings drop when someone searches in the city where we were previously? How long would it take for this ranking to fall? Or would we still rank because we are moving a short distance away and have a large amount of citations there? I know we would need to change over all our online directories, on page etc..Any other suggestions on a smooth transition? I know there are many factors that go into this and any past experience, guidance and/or assistance is greatly appreciated. Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PRKEL0 -
Blocked from google
Hi, i used to get a lot of trafic from google but sudantly there was a problem with the website and it seams to be blocked. We are also in the middle of changing the root domain because we are making a new webpage, i have looked at the webmaster tools and corrected al the errors but the page is still not visible in google. I have also orderd a new crawl. Anyone have any trics? do i loose a lot when i move the domainname, or is this a good thing in this mater? The old one is smakenavitalia.no The new one is Marthecarrara.no Best regards Svein Økland
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sveinokl0 -
Question about Google Search Results
I have a question regarding google search results. I have a website www.911signalusa.com when you type this into google search box the URL comes up repeatedly. I have several competitors here is one of them www.emergencycity.com when you type in their name it only come up as the first result. How did our SEO guys make this happen? I have another site tha when we type in the URL it only comes up as the first result. However when you do site:www.------.com All of these site are indexed in Google. It is not causing any problem we knoe of but it appears to me that our 1 site has it better? Or is it that maybe there are very minimal links to the site? Thank you for your time and consideration in answering my quesiton.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | scamper0 -
Is Google Webmaster tools Accurate?
Is Google webmaster Tools data completely inaccurate, or am I just missing something? I noticed a recent surge in 404 errors detected 3 days ago (3/6/11) from pages that have not existed since November 2011. They are links to tag and author archives from pages initially indexed in August 2011. We switched to a new site in December 2011 and created 301 redirects from categories that no longer exist, to new categories. I am a little perplexed since the Google sitemap test shows no 404 errors, neither does SEO MOZ Crawl test, yet under GWT site diagnostics, these errors, all 125 of them, just showed up. Any thought/insights? We've worked hard to ensure a smooth site migration and now we are concerned. -Jason
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jimmyjohnson0 -
Magic keywords in Google Webmaster Tools
Hi All, Recently moved a friend to a new WP back-end website as they were on Flash which is pretty, but not necessarily the best for SEO. http://francesphotography.com My question is that once Google finally indexed the site, I noticed in Google Webmaster tools that it found the most significant keyword to be: automatically On the following top pages: | tag/snow-boarding-photography/ |
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BoulderJoe
| tag/style-photography/ |
| tag/underwater-photography/ |
| tag/vacation-photography/ |
| tag/wedding-photography-beaver-creek/ |
| tag/wedding-photography-copper-mountain/ |
| tag/wedding-photography-denver/ |
| tag/wedding-photography/ |
| underwater-photography-scuba-diving-cozumel-mexico/ |
| wedding-photography/ | The goofy thing is I can find anywhere that "automatically" is used - perhaps it is coming from a plug-in or magically keyword beans that Google found? Any guidance is appreciated.0