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.
Partial Match or RegEx in Search Console's URL Parameters Tool?
-
So I currently have approximately 1000 of these URLs indexed, when I only want roughly 100 of them.
Let's say the URL is www.example.com/page.php?par1=ABC123=&par2=DEF456=&par3=GHI789=
All the indexed URLs follow that same kinda format, but I only want to index the URLs that have a par1 of ABC (but that could be ABC123 or ABC456 or whatever). Using URL Parameters tool in Search Console, I can ask Googlebot to only crawl URLs with a specific value. But is there any way to get a partial match, using regex maybe?
Am I wasting my time with Search Console, and should I just disallow any page.php without par1=ABC in robots.txt?
-
No problem
Hope you get it sorted!
-Andy
-
Thank you!
-
Haha, I think the train passed the station on that one. I would have realised eventually... XD
Thanks for your help!
-
Don't forget that . & ? have a specific meaning within regex - if you want to use them for pattern matching you will have to escape them. Also be aware that not all bots are capable of interpreting regex in robots.txt - you might want to be more explicit on the user agent - only using regex for Google bot.
User-agent: Googlebot
#disallowing page.php and any parameters after it
disallow: /page.php
#but leaving anything that starts with par1=ABC
allow: page.php?par1=ABC
Dirk
-
Ah sorry I missed that bit!
-Andy
-
Disallowing them would be my first priority really, before removing from index.
The trouble with this is that if you disallow first, Google won't be able to crawl the page to act on the noindex. If you add a noindex flag, Google won't index them the next time it comes-a-crawling and then you will be good to disallow
I'm not actually sure of the best way for you to get the noindex in to the page header of those pages though.
-Andy
-
Yep, have done. (Briefly mentioned in my previous response.) Doesn't pass
-
I thought so too, but according to Google the trailing wildcard is completely unnecessary, and only needs to be used mid-URL.
-
Hi Andy,
Disallowing them would be my first priority really, before removing from index. Didn't want to remove them before I've blocked Google from crawling them in case they get added back again next time Google comes a-crawling, as has happened before when I've simply removed a URL here and there. Does that make sense or am I getting myself mixed up here?
My other hack of a solution would be to check the URL in the page.php, and if URL includes par1=ABC then insert noindex meta tag. (Not sure if that would work well or not...)
-
My guess would be that this line needs an * at the end.
Allow: /page.php?par1=ABC* -
Sorry Martijn, just to jump in here for a second - Ria, you can test this via the Robots.txt testing tool in search console before going live to make sure it work.
-Andy
-
Hi Martijn, thanks for your response!
I'm currently looking at something like this...
**user-agent: *** #disallowing page.php and any parameters after it
disallow: /page.php #but leaving anything that starts with par1=ABC
allow: /page.php?par1=ABCI would have thought that you could disallow things broadly like that and give an exception, as you can with files in disallowed folders. But it's not passing Google's robots.txt Tester.
One thing that's probably worth mentioning really is that there are only two variables that I want to allow of the par1 parameter. For example's sake, ABC123 and ABC456. So would need to be either a partial match or "this or that" kinda deal, disallowing everything else.
-
Hi Ria,
I have never tried regular expressions in this way, so I can't tell you if this would work or not.
However, If all 1000 of these URL's are already indexed, just disallowing access won't then remove them from Google. You would ideally be able to place a noindex tag on those pages and let Google act on them, then you will be good to disallow. I am pretty sure there is no option to noindex under the URL Parameter Tool.
I hope that makes sense?
-Andy
-
Hi Ria,
What you could do, but it also depends on the rest of your structure is Disallow these urls based on the parameters (what you could do in a worst case scenario is that you would disallow all URLs and then put an exception Allow in there as well to make sure you still have the right URLs being indexed).
Martijn.
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
-
Should I include URLs that are 301'd or only include 200 status URLs in my sitemap.xml?
I'm not sure if I should be including old URLs (content) that are being redirected (301) to new URLs (content) in my sitemap.xml. Does anyone know if it is best to include or leave out 301ed URLs in a xml sitemap?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jonathan.Smith0 -
Why is /home used in this company's home URL?
Just working with a company that has chosen a home URL with /home latched on - very strange indeed - has anybody else comes across this kind of homepage URL "decision" in the past? I can't see why on earth anybody would do this! Perhaps simply a logic-defying decision?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
How can I get a list of every url of a site in Google's index?
I work on a site that has almost 20,000 urls in its site map. Google WMT claims 28,000 indexed and a search on Google shows 33,000. I'd like to find what the difference is. Is there a way to get an excel sheet with every url Google has indexed for a site? Thanks... Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
A few questions on Google's Structured Data Markup Helper...
I'm trying to go through my site and add microdata with the help of Google's Structured Data Markup Helper. I have a few questions that I have not been able to find an answer for. Here is the URL I am referring to: http://www.howlatthemoon.com/locations/location-chicago My company is a bar/club, with only 4 out of 13 locations serving food. Would you mark this up as a local business or a restaurant? It asks for "URL" above the ratings. Is this supposed to be the URL that ratings are on like Yelp or something? Or is it the URL for the page? Either way, neither of those URLs are on the page so I can't select them. If it is for Yelp should I link to it? How do I add reviews? Do they have to be on the page? If I make a group of days for Day of the Week for Opening hours, such as Mon-Thu, will that work out? I have events on this page. However, when I tried to do the markup for just the event it told me to use itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Event" on the body tag of the page. That is just a small part of the page, I'm not sure why I would put the event tag on the whole body? Any other tips would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | howlusa0 -
Do links to PDF's on my site pass "link juice"?
Hi, I have recently started a project on one of my sites, working with a branch of the U.S. government, where I will be hosting and publishing some of their PDF documents for free for people to use. The great SEO side of this is that they link to my site. The thing is, they are linking directly to the PDF files themselves, not the page with the link to the PDF files. So my question is, does that give me any SEO benefit? While the PDF is hosted on my site, there are no links in it that would allow a spider to start from the PDF and crawl the rest of my site. So do I get any benefit from these great links? If not, does anybody have any suggestions on how I could get credit for them. Keep in mind that editing the PDF's are not allowed by the government. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayvensoft0 -
Removing Dynamic "noindex" URL's from Index
6 months ago my clients site was overhauled and the user generated searches had an index tag on them. I switched that to noindex but didn't get it fast enough to avoid being 100's of pages indexed in Google. It's been months since switching to the noindex tag and the pages are still indexed. What would you recommend? Google crawls my site daily - but never the pages that I want removed from the index. I am trying to avoid submitting hundreds of these dynamic URL's to the removal tool in webmaster tools. Suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeTheBoss0 -
Adding index.php at the end of the url effect it's rankings
I have just had my site updated and we have put index.php at the end of all the urls. Not long after the sites rankings dropped. Checking the backlinks, they all go to (example) http://www.website.com and not http://www.website.com/index.php. So could this change have effected rankings even though it redirects to the new url?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | authoritysitebuilder0 -
To subnav or NOT to subnav... that's my question.... :)
We are working on a new website that is golf related and wondering about whether or not we should set up a subnavigation dropdown menu from the main menu. For example: GOLF PACKAGES
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesO
>> 2 Round Packages
>> 3 Round Packages
>> 4 Round Packages
>> 5 Round Packages GOLF COURSES
>> North End Courses
>> Central Courses
>> South End Courses This would actually be very beneficial to our users from a usability standpoint, BUT what about from an SEO standpoint? Is diverting all the link juice to these inner pages from the main site navigation harmful? Should we just create a page for GOLF PACKAGES and break it down on that page?0