How to fix google index filled with redundant parameters
-
Hi All
This follows on from a previous question (http://moz.com/community/q/how-to-fix-google-index-after-fixing-site-infected-with-malware) that on further investigation has become a much broader problem. I think this is an issue that may plague many sites following upgrades from CMS systems.
First a little history. A new customer wanted to improve their site ranking and SEO. We discovered the site was running an old version of Joomla and had been hacked. URL's such as http://domain.com/index.php?vc=427&Buy_Pinnacle_Studio_14_Ultimate redirected users to other sites and the site was ranking for buy adobe or buy microsoft. There was no notification in webmaster tools that the site had been hacked. So an upgrade to a later version of Joomla was required and we implemented SEF URLs at the same time. This fixed the hacking problem, we now had SEF url's, fixed a lot of duplicate content and added new titles and descriptions. Problem is that after a couple of months things aren't really improving. The site is still ranking for adobe and microsoft and a lot of other rubbish and the urls like http://domain.com/index.php?vc=427&Buy_Pinnacle_Studio_14_Ultimate are still sending visitors but to the home page as are a lot of the old redundant urls with parameters in them. I think it is default behavior for a lot of CMS systems to ignore parameters it doesn't recognise so http://domain.com/index.php?vc=427&Buy_Pinnacle_Studio_14_Ultimate displays the home page and gives a 200 response code.
My theory is that Google isn't removing these pages from the index because it's getting a 200 response code from old url's and possibly penalizing the site for duplicate content (which don't showing up in moz because there aren't any links on the site to these url's) The index in webmaster tools is showing over 1000 url's indexed when there are only around 300 actual url's. It also shows thousands of url's for each parameter type most of which aren't used.
So my question is how to fix this, I don't think 404's or similar are the answer because there are so many and trying to find each combination of parameter would be impossible. Webmaster tools advises not to make changes to parameters but even so I don't think resetting or editing them individually is going to remove them and only change how google indexes them (if anyone knows different please let me know)
Appreciate any assistance and also any comments or discussion on this matter.
Regards, Ian
-
Thanks again Alan.
I've checked the site with screaming frog and it doesn't return any url's with parameters so at this stage I might be ok. I am getting a message in webmaster tools saying "severe health issues" but it doesn't appear to be affecting the urls I want to keep. I'll likely remove the entry once things have cleared up some more.
Thanks Jeff
At the moment I'm stuck with Zeus web server (insert expletives here) so no htaccess file or I'd be in a better position. After messing around with it and very limited documentation I can only get the site operating with index.php in the url but with SEF url's for the remainder of it. I'm investigating migration to an apache server so that might make it easier.
Regards
Ian
-
the ability to remove the index.php is built into the stock joomla .htaccess file.
In the joomla backend, global config / site tab/ seo settings > enable "Use URL rewriting".
-
I can see it fixed your problem, but its a ugly fix, you mean need to use parameters in the future, you may already be using them but unaware.
-
OK Might have a solution that would at least work for my situation.
Since implementing SEF URL's on the site I have no real need for any URL's with parameters. By adding the following to robots.txt it should prevent any indexing of old pages or pages with parameters.
Disallow: /index.php?*
Tested it in webmaster tools with some of the offending URL's and it seems to work. I'll wait until the next indexing and post back or mark it as answered.
-
Thanks for your input Alan
There lies my problem. The URL's don't exist but give a 200 response.
http://domain.com/index.php?vc=427&Buy_Pinnacle_Studio_14_Ultimate is the same as
http://domain.com/index.php which is the same as
http://domain.com/?type_anything_here_and it still gives a 200 response. Joomla seems to just ignore parameters from non existing pages after the ?. I found a lot of people are having similar problems here http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=618&t=699954.
Once in googles index I can't see a way of getting rid of thousands or redundant entries. I have the added problem of the site being hosted on a Zeus Web Server which isn't as well documented as apache.
I'm currently looking into wild cards in robots.txt. It will be a slow process to get rid of them all but might finally help me clean up the index.
Ian
-
If the site is returning 200's then that is where the problem lies, you need to find out why.
I can see any other fix, removing the urls is only a temp fix, you must make them return 404's
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
-
Is my website indexed correctly in Google - www.couponshop.co.uk
Our website www.couponshop.co.uk has just had a relaunch after a change of direction.
Technical SEO | | LaurenGT
A lot of the pages were redirected. When I checked the indexing of the website on Google, I put site:couponshop.co.uk and only two pages come up, but when I put site:www.couponshop.co.uk they all show up.
Is this correct or are we doing something wrong?0 -
How do I get my pages to go from "Submitted" to "Indexed" in Google Webmaster Tools?
Background: I recently launched a new site and it's performing much better than the old site in terms of bounce rate, page view, pages per session, session duration, and conversions. As suspected, sessions, users, and % new sessions are all down. Which I'm okay with because the the old site had a lot of low quality traffic going to it. The traffic we have now is much more engaged and targeted. Lastly, the site was built using Squarespace and was launched the middle of August. **Question: **When reviewing Google Webmaster Tools' Sitemaps section, I noticed it says 57 web pages Submitted, but only 5 Indexed! The sitemap that's submitted seems to be all there. I'm not sure if this is a Squarespace thing or what. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!!
Technical SEO | | Nate_D0 -
Google Still Taking 2 - 3 Days to Index New Posts
My website is fairly new, it was launched about 3.5 months ago. I've been publishing new content daily (except on weekends) since then. Is there any reason why new posts don't get indexed faster? All of my posts gets +1's and they're shared on G+, FB and Twitter. My website's at www.webhostinghero.com
Technical SEO | | sbrault740 -
Does Google index has expiration?
Hi, I have this in mind and I think you can help me. Suppose that I have a pagin something like this: www.mysite.com/politics where I have a list of the current month news. Great, everytime the bot check this url, index the links that are there. What happens next month, all that link are not visible anymore by the user unless he search in a search box or google. Does google keep those links? The current month google check that those links are there, but next month are not, but they are alive. So, my question is, Does google keep this links for ever if they are alive but nowhere in the site (the bot not find them anymore but they work)? Thanks
Technical SEO | | informatica8100 -
Google Sitelinks
We have an e-commerce site that has about 50k pageviews of our main shop page every week. However in our Google sitelinks we have one for 'Shop'. However, for the Shop sitelink Google is linking to a random URL that we have never & would never use as a URL and not to our Shop page. I can't work out why Google would pick up this random url as we have so many links etc to the main shop page. Why are they not linking to the right page? I have blocked that url in webmaster tools and done a redirect but I want to understand why it happened in the first place. It included 'swedish+fish' so it seems weirdly spammy?! Any thoughts would be really helpful (and I am only mildly techy). Many thanks
Technical SEO | | ahamill0 -
Removing a site from Google's index
We have a site we'd like to have pulled from Google's index. Back in late June, we disallowed robot access to the site through the robots.txt file and added a robots meta tag with "no index,no follow" commands. The expectation was that Google would eventually crawl the site and remove it from the index in response to those tags. The problem is that Google hasn't come back to crawl the site since late May. Is there a way to speed up this process and communicate to Google that we want the entire site out of the index, or do we just have to wait until it's eventually crawled again?
Technical SEO | | issuebasedmedia0 -
Google Sandboxing
I have a new site with a new domain that ranked well the 1st week or so after it was indexed then it totally dropped off the SERP. My question is, does Google Sandboxing affect new sites on new domains that don't have any incoming links? The site dropped off before I began link building - from what I've read unnatural link build is often the cause. Can you still be sandboxed without any link building? If this is the case, are there things I can do to get out of the sandbox? Thanks folks, Jason
Technical SEO | | OptioPublishing0