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 safely exclude search result pages from Google's index?
-
Hello everyone,
I'm wondering what's the best way to prevent/block search result pages from being indexed by Google. The way search works on my site is that search form generates URLs like:
/index.php?blah-blah-search-results-blahI wanted to block everything of that sort, but how do I do it without blocking /index.php ?
Thanks in advance and have a great day everyone!
-
Hi Louise,
If you can ID the parameters, you can also look at blocking these in Webmaster Tools. This page explains more. As with any blocking of URLs, of course, proceed with caution.
-
I agree that can be effective. The reason I suggested the robots.txt is because Louise mentioned "blocking and preventing" as an objective. Robots.txt are particularly useful in the example where results from a search bar or something of that nature is involved. A NOINDEX, FOLLOW will not prevent bots from getting tired and dizzy, whereas the robots.txt can "block and prevent" bots from crawling certain parameters.
With all of that said, I think it is important to understand whether you need the bots to crawl and not index (in which case Spencer's answer is correct), or if you need to prevent bots from crawling the parameters altogether.
Hope that is more clear
-
I'm not sure that robots.txt is effective when url parameters are involved.
I would just add a meta robots tag to the head section of the search results template:
-
If you are able to identify a url parameter, you may excluded them using robots.txt. Here is a great resource on Robots.txt - http://moz.com/learn/seo/robotstxt
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
-
Website excluded from indexing, google-selected canonical: N/A
The google search console revealed to me that none of my pages was indexed, all pages are listed in the 'excluded' section "duplicate, google chose different canonical than user".
Reporting & Analytics | | Fibigrus
But in the URL-inspection tab it shows me google-selected canonical: N/A Indexing and crawling is both allowed. Don't know how to get my pages to be indexed correctly. (by the way, they do NOT exist in other languages, so that can't be a reason why google might think they are a duplicate. There's definitively no other version of those pages available)0 -
Paid traffic or "Paid Search" is not showing in my Google Analytics
Hi, I have two campaigns running in Google Adwords or Google Ads now and I saw in Google Ads account that I had 5 clicks today (09/18/2018) but when I try to search for this clicks in my Google Analytics in ACQUISITION > All Traffic > Channels I don't find nothing about "Paid Search" or something like that. Bellow is a picture of my Google Analytics account to prove it. The accounts are linked and I can find the 2 campaigns in the Analytics. How can I interpret this picture? Where the paid traffic is showing? or not showing there? Thanks Leandro uvAtrsg
Reporting & Analytics | | lmoraes0 -
Redirecting all URLs appended with index.htm or index.html
It has come to my attention with one of my clients (WordPress website) that for some time they have within their Landing Page report (of GA - Google Analytics) URLs that should all be pointing to the one page, example: domain.com/about-us, also has a listing in GA as domain.com/about-us/index.htm Is this some kind of indication of a subdirectory issue? Has anyone had experience with this in such wordpress plugins as Yoast SEO, or other SEO plugin? My thoughts here are to simply redirect any of these non-existent files with a redirect in .htaccess - but what I'm using isn't working. I will insert the redirect here - - and any help would be greatly appreciated. RewriteEngine onRewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html?
Reporting & Analytics | | cceebar
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html?$ http://www.dupontservicecenter.com/$1 [R=301,L] and this rewrite doesn't work: RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.+).htm$ http://dupontservicecenter.com/$1.php [R,NC] _Cindy0 -
Tasks for Google Analytics training
Hi Mozzers, I'm delivering some Google Analytics (Fundamentals level) training, and trying to make it was fun and as interesting as possible... which is quite a challenge when it comes to GA. I was just wondering if you're aware of training tasks, or interactions, I could bring into this kind of training session? The group are particularly interested in user journeys and the effectiveness of content. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | A_Q0 -
In Google Search Console: Total Clicks differ from the sum clicks on search queries
Hi.This may be a google technical question, but I've searched a lot and I couldn't find any certain information about that.The problem appears when you look at two stats in Search Console ( WebMasters Tools, some months ago), particulary in the Search Analysis.1- Total clicks2- Sum of clicks at every search query.I attached an image to make me clear.8IZsxs6.png
Reporting & Analytics | | NachoRetta2 -
Is it possible to use Google Tag Manager to pass a user’s text input into a form field to Google analytics?
Hey Everyone, I finally figured out how to use auto event tracking with Google Tag Manager, but didn't get the data I wanted. I want to see what users are typing into the search field on my site (the URL structure of my site isn't set up properly to use GA's built-in site search tracking). So, I set up the form submit event tracking in Google Tag Manager and used the following as my event tracking parameters: Category: Search Action: Search Value When I test and look in Google Analytics I just see: "search" and "search value." I wanted to see the text that I searched on my site. Not just the Action and Category of the event.... Is what I'm trying to do even possible? Do I need to set up a different event tracking parameter? Thanks everyone!
Reporting & Analytics | | DaveGuyMan0 -
Comparing % Change, Google Analytics
Hey Mozzers, Is there a simple way to compare the "% Change" in traffic when comparing two separate time periods in a single Google Analytics report? When comparing data from two separate time periods, an exported CSV doesn't include the % Change (booo!), and there's no option to sort by % Change within the GA report, essentially forcing you to scroll through all the results to pinpoint the major movers and shakers. I'm not averse to using spreadsheets to sort this data, but I'm thinking that I'd likely need a macro to make this work, something like this. However, none of the macros on that page are working (possibly because they were designed for a previous version of Analytics). All suggestions are appreciated. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | dangaul0 -
Google Analytics: how many visits from country Google domains?
Hello, I manage a site with visitors from many different countries. With Google Analytics, it is normal to see the number of visitors from each search engine. However, I would like to identify the number of visitors from each Google-search contry domain. How many visitors from Google.com? How many from Google.co.uk. And from Google.co.zm? And so on. Anybody knows if this is possible and if yes, how can it be done? Thank you in advance, Dario
Reporting & Analytics | | Darioz0