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.
How to check if the page is indexable for SEs?
-
Hi, I'm building the extension for Chrome, which should show me the status of the indexability of the page I'm on.
So, I need to know all the methods to check if the page has the potential to be crawled and indexed by a Search Engines. I've come up with a few methods:
- Check the URL in robots.txt file (if it's not disallowed)
- Check page metas (if there are not noindex meta)
- Check if page is the same for unregistered users (for those pages only available for registered users of the site)
Are there any more methods to check if a particular page is indexable (or not closed for indexation) by Search Engines?
Thanks in advance!
-
I understand the difference between what you're doing and what Google shows, I guess I'm just not sure when I'd want to know that something could technically be indexed, but isn't?
I guess I'm not your target market!
Good luck with your tool.
-
With "site:site.com" you can only see if the page is indexED, but to know if it's indexABLE you need to dig deeper. That is why I've decided to automate this process.
As I already told, this gonna be a browser extension, once you got on any page, this ext. automatically checks the page, and show the status (with color, I guess), if this page indexed, if not - it shows if its indexABLE. When I'm looking for linkbuilding resources, this little tool should help a lot
-
Ah, gotcha. Personally, I use Google itself to find out if something is indexable: if it's my own site, I can use Fetch as Google, and the robots.txt tester; if it's another site, you can search for "site:[URL]" to see if Google's indexed it.
I think this tool could be really good if you keep it as an icon and it glows or something if you've accidentally deindexed the page? Then it's helping you proactively.
Hope this helps!
Kristina
-
Actually I'm not. That's why I'm asking, to not to miss this basic stuff, so I really appreciate your advice. Thank you!
If I get your question correctly, you are asking why this extension is need for?
Well, 2 main aims:
-
When I want to check any of pages on my own websites, I just visit the page and see if it's ok with all the robots stuff. (or if it should be closed from robots, see if it really is)
-
For linkbuilding purposes. When I come to the page and see a link from it to external website and I know for sure that I can get the same link to my site, I'm asking myself, if it worth getting link from the page like this, if it's gonna be indexed. Why waste your time on getting links from pages that are closed from indexation.
-
-
Hello Peter,
First of all, thank you for the great ideas.
I don't think it's necessary to call the API, as this check references to only one URL (so no aggressiveness) , I need it to be done as fast as possible. But the idea with Structured Data - bravo!
Thanks a lot!
-
You're probably already doing this, but make sure that all of your tests are using the Googlebot user agent! That could cause different results, especially with the robots.txt check.
A sense check: what is your plugin going to offer over Google Search Console's Fetch as Google and robots.txt Tester?
-
You also can check for HTTP header results for crawling too:
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/robots_meta_tagAlso you can use some of Google services for this. Specially PageSpeed API:
https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/v2/reference/Once you call this API it return JSON with list of blocked resources. It's little bit slower but i found that this is safe. Some hostings have IDS (intruder detection systems) and when some crawl them little bit aggressive they block whole IP or IP range. I know few cases when site is OK to be seen from users, but blocked from Google IP. Webmasters wasn't happy when they discover this. They call hosting few times and got "there isn't issues from our side, we didn't block anything". And 6 hours later they get "seems that another department was blocked this server for few specific IPs".
About checking for logged/nonloged users. You can use StructuredData Testing Tool. Also one call to get JSON with full HTTP response and then compare it with your result.
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
-
URL structure - Page Path vs No Page Path
We are currently re building our URL structure for eccomerce websites. We have seen a lot of site removing the page path on product pages e.g. https://www.theiconic.co.nz/liberty-beach-blossom-shirt-680193.html versus what would normally be https://www.theiconic.co.nz/womens-clothing-tops/liberty-beach-blossom-shirt-680193.html Should we be removing the site page path for a product page to keep the url shorter or should we keep it? I can see that we would loose the hierarchy juice to a product page but not sure what is the right thing to do.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ashcastle0 -
Google indexing pages from chrome history ?
We have pages that are not linked from site yet they are indexed in Google. It could be possible if Google got these pages from browser. Does Google takes data from chrome?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vivekrathore0 -
Do internal links from non-indexed pages matter?
Hi everybody! Here's my question. After a site migration, a client has seen a big drop in rankings. We're trying to narrow down the issue. It seems that they have lost around 15,000 links following the switch, but these came from pages that were blocked in the robots.txt file. I was wondering if there was any research that has been done on the impact of internal links from no-indexed pages. Would be great to hear your thoughts! Sam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
No-index pages with duplicate content?
Hello, I have an e-commerce website selling about 20 000 different products. For the most used of those products, I created unique high quality content. The content has been written by a professional player that describes how and why those are useful which is of huge interest to buyers. It would cost too much to write that high quality content for 20 000 different products, but we still have to sell them. Therefore, our idea was to no-index the products that only have the same copy-paste descriptions all other websites have. Do you think it's better to do that or to just let everything indexed normally since we might get search traffic from those pages? Thanks a lot for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EndeR-0 -
How to find all indexed pages in Google?
Hi, We have an ecommerce site with around 4000 real pages. But our index count is at 47,000 pages in Google Webmaster Tools. How can I get a list of all pages indexed of our domain? trying to locate the duplicate content. Doing a "site:www.mydomain.com" only returns up to 676 results... Any ideas? Thanks, Ben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
XML Sitemap index within a XML sitemaps index
We have a similar problem to http://www.seomoz.org/q/can-a-xml-sitemap-index-point-to-other-sitemaps-indexes Can a XML sitemap index point to other sitemaps indexes? According to the "Unique Doll Clothing" example on this link, it seems possible http://www.seomoz.org/blog/multiple-xml-sitemaps-increased-indexation-and-traffic Can someone share an XML Sitemap index within a XML sitemaps index example? We are looking for the format to implement the same on our website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Lakshdeep0 -
Duplicate Content From Indexing of non- File Extension Page
Google somehow has indexed a page of mine without the .html extension. so they indexed www.samplepage.com/page, so I am showing duplicate content because Google also see's www.samplepage.com/page.html How can I force google or bing or whoever to only index and see the page including the .html extension? I know people are saying not to use the file extension on pages, but I want to, so please anybody...HELP!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebbyNabler0 -
Why does my home page show up in search results instead of my target page for a specific keyword?
I am using Wordpress and am targeting a specific keyword..and am using Yoast SEO if that question comes up.. and I am at 100% as far as what they recommend for on page optimization. The target html page is a "POST" and not a "Page" using Wordpress definitions. Also, I am using this Pinterest style theme here http://pinclone.net/demo/ - which makes the post a sort of "pop-up" - but I started with a different theme and the results below were always the case..so I don't know if that is a factor or not. (I promise .. this is not a clever spammy attempt to promote their theme - in fact parts of it don't even work for me yet so I would not recommend it just yet...) I DO show up on the first page for my keyword.. however.. instead of Google showing the page www.mywebsite.com/this-is-my-targeted-keyword-page.htm Google shows www.mywebsite.com in the results instead. The problem being - if the traffic goes only to my home page.. they will be less likely to stay if they dont find what they want immediately and have to search for it.. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chunkyvittles0