Best way to permanently remove URLs from the Google index?
-
We have several subdomains we use for testing applications. Even if we block with robots.txt, these subdomains still appear to get indexed (though they show as blocked by robots.txt.
I've claimed these subdomains and requested permanent removal, but it appears that after a certain time period (6 months)? Google will re-index (and mark them as blocked by robots.txt).
What is the best way to permanently remove these from the index? We can't use login to block because our clients want to be able to view these applications without needing to login.
What is the next best solution?
-
I agree with Paul, The Google is re indexing the pages because you have few linking pointing back to these sub domains. The best idea us to restrict Google crawler by using no-index , no-follow tag and remove the instruction available in the robots.txt...
This way Google will neither crawl nor follow the activity on the page and it will get permanently remove from Google Index.
-
Yup - Chris has the solution. The robots.txt disallow directive simply instructs the crawler not to crawl, it doesn't have any instructions regarding removing URLs from the index. I'm betting there are other pages linking in to the subdomains that the bots are following to find and index as the URL Removal requests are expiring.
Do note though that when you add the no-index meta-robots tag, you're going to need to remove the robots.txt disallow directive. Otherwise the crawlers won't make any attempt to crawl all the pages and so won't even discover most of the no-index requests.
Paul
[Edited to add - there's no reason you can't implement the no-index meta-tags and then also again request removal via the Webmaster Tools removal tool. Kind of a "belt & suspenders approach. The removal request will get it out quicker, and the meta-no-index will do the job of keeping it out. Remember to do this in Bing Webmaster Tools as well.]
-
Wouldn't a noindex meta tag on each page take care of it?
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
-
Getting Google to index our sitemap
Hi, We have a sitemap on AWS that is retrievable via a url that looks like ours http://sitemap.shipindex.org/sitemap.xml. We have notified Google it exists and it found our 700k urls (we are a database of ship citations with unique urls). However, it will not index them. It has been weeks and nothing. The weird part is that it did do some of them before, it said so, about 26k. Then it said 0. Now that I have redone the sitemap, I can't get google to look at it and I have no idea why. This is really important to us, as we want not just general keywords to find our front page, but we also want specific ship names to show links to us in results. Does anyone have any clues as to how to get Google's attention and index our sitemap? Or even just crawl more of our site? It has done 35k pages crawling, but stopped.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shipindex0 -
Does google ignore ? in url?
Hi Guys, Have a site which ends ?v=6cc98ba2045f for all its URLs. Example: https://domain.com/products/cashmere/robes/?v=6cc98ba2045f Just wondering does Google ignore what is after the ?. Also any ideas what that is? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CarolynSC0 -
Proper 301 in Place but Old Site Still Indexed In Google
So i have stumbled across an interesting issue with a new SEO client. They just recently launched a new website and implemented a proper 301 redirect strategy at the page level for the new website domain. What is interesting is that the new website is now indexed in Google BUT the old website domain is also still indexed in Google? I even checked the Google Cached date and it shows the new website with a cache date of today. The redirect strategy has been in place for about 30 days. Any thoughts or suggestions on how to get the old domain un-indexed in Google and get all authority passed to the new website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kchandler0 -
Why are bit.ly links being indexed and ranked by Google?
I did a quick search for "site:bit.ly" and it returns more than 10 million results. Given that bit.ly links are 301 redirects, why are they being indexed in Google and ranked according to their destination? I'm working on a similar project to bit.ly and I want to make sure I don't run into the same problem.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JDatSB1 -
Huge google index with un-relevant pages
Hi, i run a site about sport matches, every match has a page and the pages are generated automatically from the DB. pages are not duplicated, but over time some look a little bit similar. after a match finishes it has no internal links or sitemap entry, but it's reachable by direct URL and continues to be on google index. so over time we have more than 100,000 indexed pages. since past matches have no significance and they're not linked and a match can repeat and it may look like duplicate content....what you suggest us to do: when a match is finished - not linked, but appears on the index and SERP 301 redirect the match Page to the match Category which is a higher hierarchy and is always relevant? use rel=canonical to the match Category do nothing.... *301 redirect will shrink my index status, some say a high index status is good... *is it safe to 301 redirect 100,000 pages at once - wouldn't it look strange to google? *would canonical remove the past matches pages from the index? what do you think? Thanks, Assaf.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stassaf0 -
What is the best way to run a blog?
Hi, I was wondering what is the best way to run a blog? The options I thought of are: Completely separate domain with many links to my main site. blog.domain.com www.domain.com/blog Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet1 -
Best practice for removing pages
I've got some crappy pages that I want to delete from a site. I've removed all the internal links to those pages and resubmitted new site maps that don't show the pages anymore, however the pages still index in search (as you would expect). My question is, what's the best practice for removing these pages? Should I just delete them and be done with it or make them 301 re-direct to a nicer generic page until they are removed from the search results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeterAlexLeigh0 -
Best way to host multiple sites for maximum seo
We have over 100 websites we built for clients that we currently host on 1 shared godaddy hosting account. They each have a link to us but since they are all under one shared account, we feel that we are not maximizing the inbound link potential. I've looked into c class hosting but found that either the ip's were flagged as spam, or they shared nameservers which defeats the purpose. I've also been told that since the c class ip's a hosting company gives to you are all owned by them, that also defeats the purpose. Anyone have any solutions besides opening 130 accounts with different hosting companies? Also, will it make any difference changing existing sites onto different hosts now or are they already tainted?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seopet0