404's being re-indexed
-
Hi All,
We are experiencing issues with pages that have been 404'd being indexed. Originally, these were /wp-content/ index pages, that were included in Google's index. Once I realized this, I added in a directive into our htaccess to 404 all of these pages - as there were hundreds. I tried to let Google crawl and remove these pages naturally but after a few months I used the URL removal tool to remove them manually.
However, Google seems to be continually re/indexing these pages, even after they have been manually requested for removal in search console. Do you have suggestions? They all respond to 404's.
Thanks
-
Just to follow up - I have now actually 410'd the pages and the 410's are still being re-indexed.
-
I'll check this one out as well, thanks! I used a header response extension which reveals the presence of x-botots headers called web developer.
-
First it would be helpful to know how you are detecting that it isn't working. What indexation tool are you using to see whether the blocks are being detected? I personally really like this one: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/seo-indexability-check/olojclckfadnlhnlmlekdihebmjpjnoa?hl=en-GB
Or obviously at scale - Screaming Frog
-
Thank you for the quick response,
The pages are truly removed, however, because there were so many of these types of pages that leaked into the index, I added a redirect to keep users on our site - no intentions of being "shady", I just didn't want hundreds of 404's getting clicked and causing a very high bounce rate.
For the x-robots header, could you offer some insight into why my directive isn't working? I believe it's a regex issue on the wp-content. I have tried to troubleshoot to no avail.
<filesmatch <strong="">"(wp-content)">
Header set X-Robots-Tag: "noindex, nofollow"</filesmatch>I appreciate the help!
-
Well if a page has been removed and has not been moved to a new destination - you shouldn't redirect a user anyway (which kind of 'tricks' users into thinking the content was found). That's actually bad UX
If the content has been properly removed or was never supposed to be there, just leave it at a 410 (but maybe create a nice custom 410 page, in the same vein as a decent UX custom 404 page). Use the page to admit that the content is gone (without shady redirects) but to point to related posts or products. Let the user decide, but still be useful
If the content is actually still there and, hence you are doing a redirect - then you shouldn't be serving 404s or 410s in the first place. You should be serving 301s, and just doing HTTP redirects to the content's new (or revised) destination URL
Yes, the HTTP header method is the correct replacement when the HTML implementation gets stripped out. HTTP Header X-Robots is the way for you!
-
Thank you! I am in the process of doing so, however with a 410 I can not leave my JS redirect after the page loads, this creates some UX issues. Do you have any suggestions to remedy this?
Additionally, after the 410 the non x-robots noindex is now being stripped so it only resolves to a 410 with no noindex or redirect. I am still working on a noindex header, as the 410 is server-side, I assume this would be the only way, correct?
-
You know that 404 means "temporarily gone but will be coming back" right? By saying a page is temporarily unavailable, you actively encourage Google to come back later
If you want to say that the page is permanently gone use status code 410 (gone)
Leave the Meta no-index stuff in the HTTP header via X-Robots, that was a good call. But it was a bad call to combine Meta no-index and 404, as they contradict each other ("don't index me now but then do come back and index me later as I'll probably be back at some point")
Use Meta no-index and 410, which agree with each other ("don't index me now and don't bother coming back")
-
Yes, all pages have a noindex. I have also tried to noindex them using htaccess, to add an extra layer of security, but it seems to be incorrect. I believe it is an issue with the regex. Attempting to match anything with wp-content.
<filesmatch "(wp-content)"="">Header set X-Robots-Tag: "noindex, nofollow"</filesmatch>
-
Back to basics. Have you marked those pages/posts as 'no-index'. With many wp plugins, you can no-index them in bulk then submit for re-indexation.
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
-
How to replace a custom platform's homepage with another homepage from another platform domain?
I have a question regarding 301 permanent redirection. I currently have three websites, each hosted by different platform/CMS: one by Wix, another by WordPress, and a custom built CMS. I want to have all my three websites to be under the the custom build CMS's URL. What I am most concerned about is that I would like to have the home page of my Wix website to become my custom build CMS's new home page and the original content currently under my custom build CMS would be updated under new sub directories (in which I have access to the custom build CMS's source code). I have never done a 301 redirect before and I would like to know if there is any additional thing I need to do to my current custom build CMS besides assigning all my current content under my custom build CMS to new directories before executing 301 redirects?
Technical SEO | | sihanedutech0 -
What's Moz's Strategy behind their blog main categories?
I've only just noticed that the Moz' blog categories have been moved within a pull down menu. See it underneath : 'Explore Posts by Category' on any blog page. This means that the whole list of categories under that pull-down is not crawlable by bots, and therefore no link-juice flows down onto those category pages. I imagine that the main drive behind that move is to sculpt page rank so that the business/money pages or areas of the website get greater link equity as opposed to just wasting it all throwing it down to the many categories ? it'd be good to hear about more from Rand or anyone in his team as to how they came onto engineering this and why. One of the things I wonder is: with the sheer amount of content that Moz produces, is it possible to contemplate an effective technical architecture such as that? I know they do a great job at interlinking content from one post onto another, so effectively one can argue that that kind of supersedes the need for hierarchical page rank distribution via categories... but I wonder : "is it working better this way vs having crawlable blog category links on the blog section? have they performed tests" some insights or further info on this from Moz would be very welcome. thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | carralon
David0 -
Disallowing WP 'author' page archives
Hey Mozzers. I want to block my author archive pages, but not the primary page of each author. For example, I want to keep /author/jbentz/ but get rid of /author/jbentz/page/4/. Can I do that in robots by using a * where the author name would be populated. ' So, basically... my robots file would include something like this... Disallow: /author/*/page/ Will this work for my intended goal... or will this just disallow all of my author pages?
Technical SEO | | Netrepid0 -
Removing a staging area/dev area thats been indexed via GWT (since wasnt hidden) from the index
Hi, If you set up a brand new GWT account for a subdomain, where the dev area is located (separate from the main GWT account for the main live site) and remove all pages via the remove tool (by leaving the page field blank) will this definately not risk hurting/removing the main site (since the new subdomain specific gwt account doesn't apply to the main site in any way) ?? I have a new client who's dev area has been indexed, dev team has now prevented crawling of this subdomain but the 'the stable door was shut after the horse had already bolted' and the subdomains pages are on G's index so we need to remove the entire subdomain development area asap. So we are going to do this via the remove tool in a subdomain specific new gwt account, but I just want to triple check this wont accidentally get main site removed too ?? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Why is the report telling I have duplicate content for 'www' and No subdomain?
i am getting duplicate content for most of my pages. when i look into in your reports the 'www' and 'no subdomian' are the culprit. How can I resolve this as the www.domain.com/page and domain.com/page are the same page
Technical SEO | | cpisano0 -
Web page is showing up on Google but doesn't show when it was cached, so is it indexed?
Hey everyone So I created a new page on a WordPress website, it was live for a few hours till I changed my mind & switched it back to a draft. Just out of curiosity I did the Site:www.example.com/Example search on Google to see if it had been indexed & apparently it had but when I click on cached to see what time it got indexed at exactly it's showing me an error. So does this mean it is indexed or not?
Technical SEO | | conversiontactics0 -
Why do I have one page showing as two url's?
My SEOMoz stats show that I have duplicate titles for the following two url's: http://www.rmtracking.com/products.php and http://www.rmtracking.com/products I have checked my server files, and I don't see a live page without the php. A while back, we converted our site from html to php, but the html pages have 301's and as you can see the page without the php is properly redirecting to the php page. Any ideas why this would show as two separate url's?
Technical SEO | | BradBorst0 -
Basically duplicate sites that act like they're two different businesses. How do they not get dinged?
I bought supplies recently at barcodesinc.com. While searching I noticed it is clearly the same site as barcodediscount.com. How do they not get hurt by duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | jotham20