To remove or not remove a redirected page from index
-
We have a promotion landing page which earned some valuable inbound links. Now that the promotion is over, we have redirected this page to a current "evergreen" page. But in the search results page on Google, the original promotion landing page is still showing as a top result. When clicked, it properly redirects to the newer evergreen page. But, it's a bit problematic for the original promo page to show in the search results because the snippet mentions specifics of the promo which is no longer active. So, I'm wondering what would be the net impact of using the "removal request " tool for the original page in GSC.
If we don't use that tool, what kind of timing might we expect before the original page drops out of the results in favor of the new redirected page?
And if we do use the removal tool on the original page, will that negate what we are attempting to do by redirecting to the new page, with regard to preserving inbound link equity?
-
-
Thanks so much for the update on this. So, so glad to hear that this was straightened out. Also good to know that it wasn't a linear / logical route on Google's part, and that it took 4-5 days. (Some people on the forum expect an immediate turnaround on this, I've noticed.)
Have a great day,
Zack -
Zack,
All is good with this now. Here's how it actually went:
On January 6, I used GSC to request the cache be removed
On January 7, the page still showed for keyword searches, with the page title, but without any snippet.
On January 7 I requested a re-index.
From January 7-10, the page still showed in search results with only a title
On January 11, the redirected page finally shows in the keyword search results, instead of the original page (desired end result).
So, in summary, it was fairly quick (4-5 days), and in the end the redirected page took the place of the original page, and in the interim the original page showed up with its title but with no snippet.
-
My pleasure. I agree, and honestly think it may be a newer feature in GSC, as I just noticed it for one of our client's needs today, and thought of your open question. Hope to hear how this goes -- no pressure of course.
-Zack
-
Thanks Zack. That option is a bit hidden, and I hadn't noticed it. I'm trying now to see what happens with just clearing cached URL until the next recrawl might do. I'm kind of curious what it will do with the page title, which also currently has details about the offer.
-
Hi there,
In GSC, are you aware that there is a "Clear Cached URL" option in Removals, that allows one to "Keep URL(s) in Google Search results, just clear current snippet and cached version until the next crawl."? Here is more information, just in case it's helpful:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9689846#clear_cache_request (You may already be aware of this)
While I don't know for sure, I would merit a guess that changing the snippet's title and description would certainly change the clickthrough on it, and possibly alter the positioning as well if it has changed enough between other ranking factors.
Does this help at all?
Best,
Zack
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
-
301 redirects and impact on page authority
I need to restructure a section of my website, changing some page titles and moving some pages to other sections. This will then change the URLs but the CMS I use will automatically create 301 redirects so the old URLs still work. The question is, will this have any negative impacts on page authority/page rank? From what I've read, it seems having 301's used to have a negative impact but doesn't anymore?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ciehmoz0 -
Htaccess - Redirecting TAG or Category pages
Hello Fellow Moz's, We have an issue redirecting some /TAG and /Category pages to inner pages. As an example we use: RedirectMatch 301 /category/Sample-Category(.*) https://OurDomain.com.au/New-Page//$1 That works well. The issue is we have other categories and tags that are named similar to /Sample-Category As an example, if we try to redirect /Sample-Category-1 to /New-Page-1 - it will not work, and redirects to /New-Page I assume this is because /Sample-Category is already being redirected, so anything after /Sample-Category like -1 or -2 or -3 etc, will not be recognized. Anyone know of a workaround?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jes-Extender-Australia0 -
Google Search Console - Indexed Pages
I am performing a site audit and looking at the "Index Status Report" in GSC. This shows a total of 17 URLs have been indexed. However when I look at the Sitemap report in GSC it shows 9,000 pages indexed. Also, when I perform a site: search on Google I get 24,000 results. Can anyone help me to explain these anomalies?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | richdan0 -
My blog is indexing only the archive and category pages
Hi there MOZ community. I am new to the QandA and have a question. I have a blog Its been live for months - but I can not get the posts to rank in the serps. Oddly only the categories rank. The posts are crawled it seems - but seen as less important for a reason I don't understand. Can anyone here help with this? See here for what i mean. I have had several wp sites rank well in the serps - and the posts do much better. Than the categories or archives - super odd. Thanks to all for help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | walletapp0 -
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 -
301 redirection pointing to noindexed pages
I have rather an unusual situation where a recently launched affiliate site does not have any unique content as its all syndicated content. For that reason we are currently using the noindex,nofollow meta tags to keep the pages out of the search engines index until we create unique content for the pages. The problem is that due to a very tight timeframe with rebranding, we are looking at 301 redirecting (on a page to page basis) another high authority legacy domain to this new site before we have had a chance to add unique content to it and remove the noindex,nofollow tags. I would assume that any link authority normally passed through the 301 would be lost in this scenario but Im uncertain of what the broader impact might be. Has anyone dealt with a similar scenario? I know this scenario is not ideal and I would rather wait until the unique content is up and noindex tags are removed before launching the 301 redirect of the legacy domain but there are a number of competing priorities at play outside of SEO.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LosNomads0 -
301 redirect Actinic HTML pages to ASP. Achievable?
Hi - I'm hoping someone can help me resolve an issue in relation to setting up 301 redirects. The client to whom I provide SEO services is being told by his developers that setting up 301 redirects is not achievable from old HTML pages to his new site running on a Windows server. My feeling is that it should be fine, and I have found documentation online that seems to support this, however I'm no developer, certainly no server admin, so I was wondering if anyone could advise me? Is it feasible to set up 301 redirects from Actinic sites (HTML pages) to a new site in NOP commerce running on a Windows server (ASP pages). Thank you for your help! Iain
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wynyard0 -
Getting 260,000 pages re-indexed?
Hey there guys, I was recently hired to do SEO for a big forum to move the site to a new domain and to get them back up to their ranks after this move. This all went quite well, except for the fact that we lost about 1/3rd of our traffic. Although I expected some traffic to drop, this is quite a lot and I'm wondering what it is. The big keywords are still pulling the same traffic but I feel that a lot of the small threads on the forums have been de-indexed. Now, with a site with 260,000 threads, do I just take my loss and focus on new keywords? Or is there something I can do to get all these threads re-indexed? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StefanJDorresteijn0