Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
No-indexed pages are still showing up as landing pages in Google Analytics
-
Hello,
My website is a local job board. I de-indexed all of the job listing pages on my site (anything that starts with http://www.localwisejobs.com/job/).
When I search site:localwisejobs.com/job/, nothing shows up. So I think that means the pages are not being indexed.
When I look in Google Analytics at Acquisition > Search Engine Optimization > Landing Pages, none of the job listing pages show up.
But when I look at Acquisition > Channels > Organic and then click Landing Page as the primary dimension, the /job pages show up in there.
Why am I seeing this discrepency in Organic Landing pages? And why would the /job pages be showing up as landing pages even though they aren't indexed?
-
I generally recommend meta noindex without blocking via robots.txt for reasons like this.
First, click secondary dimension and check out source / medium. Are they coming from Google? If all you did was use the remove tool on Google Webmaster Tools, Bing/Yahoo don't get the message yet.
Search engines cannot see a noindex tag on the page if they're blocked from crawling the page. They can't access the page to read the tag. So it can sit around in the index despite not having been crawled for a while. (Though usually it's removed eventually).
Also keep in mind that you see some landing page traffic from instances where GA fails to fire the first time. It's usually a VERY tiny percentage, but I often see traffic to some (virtual pageview) popups that can't even load without entering info on our site (e.g. it's not even a possible landing page).
Might I also ask why you removed the job listing from the index? I was thinking this might be a good time to use rather than blocking crawlers outright. That assumes, of course, that you keep listing up for a fixed time. If you know when the job listing is going to expire, you can just tell the search engine. They might even send some traffic to your individual listings while live.
-
Not completely relevant, but might be good to be aware of this, the site is serving me a HTTP authentication form to login into your domain on port 80 when I visit the site.
-
We'd find the landing page in organic landing page reports as something like:
http://www.blablahsitewhatever.com/landingpage?s=bing|display|20150826
instead of
http://www.blablahsitewhatever.com/landingpageIt's clearly not an organic hit since it came through a paid channel, and yet gets classified as organic. (We got around it by building a custom report for organic landing pages that specifically filters out landing pages with those extra parameters.) So from this we know it's entirely possible for traffic to be misattributed as organic when it's clearly not. But unless you can clearly see it in the URL like that, it's really hard to suss out.
-
Thanks Rebecca. We removed via Manual removal using Google Webmaster Console AND added a noindex entry in robotos.txt. When you say the "organic landing page had campaign parameters attached specific to paid Bing campaigns" where were these campaign parameters attached? In the URL leading to the page from the paid source or in a link embedded somewhere in the page or in some analytics javascript that was firing somewhere or something else?
-
How exactly did you do the no-index? Robots.txt? Meta robots tag? Manual removal via Google Webmaster Console?
Beyond that, I have seen some paid traffic misattributed as organic before, which we caught because the organic landing page had campaign parameters attached specific to paid Bing campaigns.
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
-
UTM Links Showing Up as Separate Pages in Google Analytics
Hey everyone, I was just looking at landing pages in Google Analytics, and in addition to just the URL of the landing page, the UTM links are being listed as separate pages. Is this normal? I anticipated seeing the landing page URL and then using the secondary dimension to see source/medium. If this isn't normal, what would I check next?
Reporting & Analytics | | rachelmeyer0 -
What is Local SEO in Google Analytics (Organic Source)
Recently, I saw "Local SEO" is mentioned as the organic source. Can someone please tell what is this and from where Google is fetching data for this source?
Reporting & Analytics | | Kevin.Monks0 -
% Change - Google analytics - how to calculate?
Hi All,
Reporting & Analytics | | JohnPalmer
I have two dates with two different numbers I want to calculate the "% Change" like google analytics, The numbers of June 2015 - 127,931 sessions
The numbers of June 2014 - 90914 sessions please tell me what is the %Change. Best. J0 -
On google analytics what is Mozilla Compatible Agent under browser and OS?
On my Google Analytics (I know this is not SEOMOZ) I have a lot of visits from mozilla compatible agent with 100% bounce rate. Does anybody know what this is?
Reporting & Analytics | | essentialworld0 -
Google Analytics for example.com and www.example.com
Hello. I have had a Google Analytics account set up to track the property www.example.com for several years. In Google Webmaster Tools, I recently set the preferred domain to example.com (without the www), and we put in a rewrite from www to no-www in the .htaccess file. Should I now change the url of the property in Google Analytics to example.com (without the www), or does Google Analytics see the two urls as the same? Thank you!
Reporting & Analytics | | nyc-seo0 -
Custom Variables to track Vimeo plays on website with Google Analytics?
Hello Everyone, I'm trying to track how many times a Vimeo video is played on my site via GA. Does any of you have any knowledge of how can this be achieved? I've read the documentation and came up with this: After the iframe embed i insert this: Of course the GA is loaded in the header. Does not work, at least i cant see anything in analytics. I have set up the segment as per the attached image. Thanks in advance! Alex E6XnO.png
Reporting & Analytics | | pwpaneuro0 -
Why does Google Analytics think PPC traffic is organic?
I have a bastard of a problem... Google Analytics is incorrectly tracking PPC traffic as SEO which is screwing up all my reporting . I don't care for rankings, I care for actual SEO traffic and I can't be sure that what i am seeing is correct which is driving me nuts. Any ideas?
Reporting & Analytics | | Red_Mud_Rookie1