Can you see the 'indexing rules' that are in place for your own site?
-
By 'index rules' I mean the stipulations that constitute whether or not a given page will be indexed.
If you can see them - how?
-
Unfortunately, that would be specific to your own platform and server-side code. When you look at the SEOmoz source code, you're either going to see a nofollow or you're not. The code that drives that is on our servers and is unique to our build (PHP/Cake, I think).
You'd have to dig into the source code generating the Robots.txt file. I don't think you can have a fully dynamic Robots.txt (it has to have a .txt extension), so there must be a piece of code that generates a new Robots.txt file, probably on a timer. It could be called something similar, like Robots.php, Robots.aspx, etc. Just a guess.
FYI, dynamic Robots.txt could be a little dicey - it might be better to do this with a META NOINDEX in the header of the user profile pages. That would also avoid the timer approach. The pages would dynamically NOINDEX themselves as they're created.
-
To hopefully clarify what I'm talking about, I want to provide this example: SEOmoz will remove the "no-follow" tag from the first link in your profile if you get 200 mozpoints.
This is a set rule which I believe will automatically occur once a user reaches the minimum. On my site, a similar rule exists where the meta noindex tag will be removed from a user page if you submit 10 'files'.
There were other rules similar to this created and I need to know what they are. How?
-
On my site, there was a rule created where users are blocked by robots unless they have submitted a minimum number of 'files'. This was done to ensure that only quality user profile pages are being indexed and not just spam/untouched profiles.
There have been other rules like this created but I don't know what they are and I'd like to find out.
-
Hi David,
Do you mean how robots.txt is configured and if the robots file is blocking a certain page from being indexed? If so, yes. If the file is complex and you're not sure if it's blocking a particular page, you can go into Google Webmaster Tool and they have a robots.txt utility where you can input a particular URL and it will tell you if the robots.txt file you are using (or proposing) blocks that URL.
If you mean whether the page is quality enough for a search engine to choose to index it? No, that's part of the algorithm and none of the major engines are that nice and open.
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
-
Can anyone help me diagnose an indexing/sitemap issue on a large e-commerce site?
Hey guys. Wondering if someone can help diagnose a problem for me. Here's our site: https://www.flagandbanner.com/ We have a fairly large e-commerce site--roughly 23,000 urls according to crawls using both Moz and Screaming Frog. I have created an XML sitemap (using SF) and uploading to Webmaster Tools. WMT is only showing about 2,500 urls indexed. Further, WMT is showing that Google is indexing only about 1/2 (approx. 11,000) of the urls. Finally (to add even more confusion), when doing a site search on Google (site:) it's only showing about 5,400 urls found. The numbers are all over the place! Here's the robots.txt file: User-agent: *
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webrocket
Allow: /
Disallow: /aspnet_client/
Disallow: /httperrors/
Disallow: /HTTPErrors/
Disallow: /temp/
Disallow: /test/ Disallow: /i_i_email_friend_request
Disallow: /i_i_narrow_your_search
Disallow: /shopping_cart
Disallow: /add_product_to_favorites
Disallow: /email_friend_request
Disallow: /searchformaction
Disallow: /search_keyword
Disallow: /page=
Disallow: /hid=
Disallow: /fab/* Sitemap: https://www.flagandbanner.com/images/sitemap.xml Anyone have any thoughts as to what our problems are?? Mike0 -
Viewing search results for 'We possibly have internal links that link to 404 pages. What is the most efficient way to check our sites internal links?
We possibly have internal links on our site that point to 404 pages as well as links that point to old pages. I need to tidy this up as efficiently as possible and would like some advice on the best way to go about this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath0 -
My Website Has a Google Penalty, But I Can't Disavow Links
I have a client who has definitely been penalized, rankings dropped for all keywords and hundreds of malicious backlinks when checked with WebMeUp....However, when I run the backlink portfolio on Moz, or any other tool, they don't appear anyone, and all the links are dead when I click on the actual URL. That being said, I can't disavow links that don't exist, and they don't show up in Webmaster Tools, but I KNOW this site has been penalized. Also- I noticed this today (attached). Any suggestions? I've never come across this issue before. xT6JNJC.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 01023450 -
Malicious site pointed A-Record to my IP, Google Indexed
Hello All, I launched my site on May 1 and as it turns out, another domain was pointing it's A-Record to my IP. This site is coming up as malicious, but worst of all, it's ranking on keywords for my business objectives with my content and metadata, therefore I'm losing traffic. I've had the domain host remove the incorrect A-Record and I've submitted numerous malware reports to Google, and attempted to request removal of this site from the index. I've resubmitted my sitemap, but it seems as though this offending domain is still being indexed more thoroughly than my legitimate domain. Can anyone offer any advice? Anything would be greatly appreciated! Best regards, Doug
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FranGen0 -
Why isn't google indexing our site?
Hi, We have majorly redesigned our site. Is is not a big site it is a SaaS site so has the typical structure, Landing, Features, Pricing, Sign Up, Contact Us etc... The main part of the site is after login so out of google's reach. Since the new release a month ago, google has indexed some pages, mainly the blog, which is brand new, it has reindexed a few of the original pages I am guessing this as if I click cached on a site: search it shows the new site. All new pages (of which there are 2) are totally missed. One is HTTP and one HTTPS, does HTTPS make a difference. I have submitted the site via webmaster tools and it says "URL and linked pages submitted to index" but a site: search doesn't bring all the pages? What is going on here please? What are we missing? We just want google to recognise the old site has gone and ALL the new site is here ready and waiting for it. Thanks Andrew
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Studio330 -
Can Dramatically Increasing Site Size Have Negative Effects?
I have a site with about 1000 pages. I'm planning to add about 30,000 pages to it. Can increasing the footprint by such an amount all of a sudden have any negative consequences for existing organic or hoped-for benefits from new pages? Would the site draw any increased scrutiny from Google for doing this? Any other considerations? Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Starting Over with a new site - Do's and Don'ts?
After six months, we've decided to start over with a new website. Here's what I'm thinking. Please offer any constructive Do's or Don'ts if you see that I'm about to make a mistake. Our original site,(call it mysite.com ) we have come to the conclusion, is never going to make a come back on Google. It seems to us a better investment to start over, then to to simply keep hoping. Quite honestly, we're freakin' tired of trying to fix this. We don't want to screw with it any more. We are creative people, and would much rather be building a new race car rather than trying to overhaul the engine in the old one. We have the matching .net domain, mysite.net, which has been aged about 6 years with some fairly general content on a single page. There are zero links to mysite.net, and it was really only used by us for FTP traffic -- nothing in the SERPS for mysite.net. Mysite.NET will be a complete redesign. All content and images will be totally redone. Content will be new, excellent writing, unique, and targeted. Although the subject matter will be similar to mysite.COM, the content, descriptions, keywords, images -- all will be brand spankin' new. We will have a clean slate to begin the long painful link building process.We will put in the time, and bite the bullet until mysite.NET rules Google once again. We'll change the URL in all of our Adwords campaigns mysite.net. My questions are: 1. Mysite.com still gets some ok traffic from Bing. Can I leave mysite.com substantially intact, or does it need to go? 2. If I have "bad links" pointing to mysite.com/123.html what would happen if I 301 that page to mysite.NET/abc.html ? Does the "bad link juice" get passed on to the clean site? It would be a better experience for users who know our URL if they could be redirected to the new site. 3. Should we put Mysite.net on a different server in a different clean IP block? Or doesn't matter? We're willing to spend for the new server if it would help 4. What have I forgotten? Cheers, all
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DarrenX0 -
I can't help but think something is wrong with my SEO
So we re-launched our site about a month ago, and ever since we've seen a dramatic drop in search results (probably due to some errors that were made) when changing servers and permalink structure. But, I can't help but think something else is at play here. When we write something, I can check 24 hours later, and if I copy the Title verbatim, but we don't always show up in SERPs. In fact, I looked at a post today, and the meta description showing is not the same, but when I check the source code, it's right. What shows up in Google: http://d.pr/i/jGJg What's actually in the source code: http://d.pr/i/p4s8 Why is this happening? Website is The Tech Block
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ttb0