NOINDEX content still showing in SERPS after 2 months
-
I have a website that was likely hit by Panda or some other algorithm change. The hit finally occurred in September of 2011. In December my developer set the following meta tag on all pages that do not have unique content:
name="robots" content="NOINDEX" />
It's been 2 months now and I feel I've been patient, but Google is still showing 10,000+ pages when I do a search for site:http://www.mydomain.com
I am looking for a quicker solution. Adding this many pages to the robots.txt does not seem like a sound option. The pages have been removed from the sitemap (for about a month now). I am trying to determine the best of the following options or find better options.
- 301 all the pages I want out of the index to a single URL based on the page type (location and product). The 301 worries me a bit because I'd have about 10,000 or so pages all 301ing to one or two URLs. However, I'd get some link juice to that page, right?
- Issue a HTTP 404 code on all the pages I want out of the index. The 404 code seems like the safest bet, but I am wondering if that will have a negative impact on my site with Google seeing 10,000+ 404 errors all of the sudden.
- Issue a HTTP 410 code on all pages I want out of the index. I've never used the 410 code and while most of those pages are never coming back, eventually I will bring a small percentage back online as I add fresh new content. This one scares me the most, but am interested if anyone has ever used a 410 code.
Please advise and thanks for reading.
-
Just wanted to let you know that submitting all the sites I wanted removed into an XML sitemap worked. I then submitted that sitemap to webmaster tools and listed it in the robots.txt. When doing query "site:domain.com" index pages went from 20k+ down to 700 in a matter of days.
-
I could link to them then, but what about creating a custom sitemap for just content that I want removed? Would that have the same effect?
-
If they are not linked to then spiders will not find the noindex code. They could suffer in the SERPs for months and months.
-
If all these pages are under a directory structure than you have the option to remove a complete directory in URL removal option. See if that is feasible in your case.
-
I suppose I'll wait longer. Crawl rate over the last 90 days is a high of 3,285 and average of 550 with a low of 3 according to webmaster tools.
-
Yeah the pages are low PR and are not linked to at all from the site. I've never heard of removing a page via webmaster tools. How do I do that? I also have to remove several thousand.
*edit: It looks like I have to remove them one at a time which is not feasible in my case. Is there a faster way?
-
If you want a page out of the index fast the best way is to do it through webmaster tools. It's easy and lasts for about six months. Then, if they find your page again it will register the noindex and you should be fine.
As EGOL said, if it's a page that isn't crawled very often then it could be a LONG time before it gets deindexed.
-
I removed some pages from the index and used the same line of code...
name="robots" content="NOINDEX" />
My pages dropped from the index within 2 or 3 days - but this is a site that has very heavy spider activity.
If your site is not crawled very much or these are low PR pages (such as PR1, PR2) it could take google a while to revisit and act upon your noindex instructions - but two months seems a bit long.
Is your site being crawled vigorously? Look in webmaster tools to see if crawling declined abruptly when your rankings fell. Check there also for crawl problems.
If I owned your site and the PR of these pages is low I would wait a while longer before doing anything. If my patience was wearing thin I would do the 301 redirect because that will transfer the linkjuice from those pages to the target URL of the redirect - however, you might wait quite a while to see the redirect take effect. That's why my first choice would be to wait longer.
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
-
Title page google serp
Why does Google change the titles automatically? I have <title>Canyoning Açores - São Jorge | Discover Experience Açores</title> but google show Discover Experience Açores: Canyoning Açores - São Jorge
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tiagoarruda0 -
Links to my site still showing in Webmaster Tools from a non-existent site
We owned 2 sites, with the pages on Site A all linking over to similar pages on Site B. We wanted to remove the links from Site A to Site B, so we redirected all the links on Site A to the homepage on Site A, and took Site A down completely. Unfortunately we are still seeing the links from Site A coming through on Google Webmaster Tools for Site B. Does anybody know what else we can do to remove these links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pedstores0 -
Noindex Valuable duplicate content?
How could duplicate content be valuable and why question no indexing it? My new client has a clever african safari route builder that you can use to plan your safari. The result is 100's of pages that have different routes. Each page inevitably has overlapping content / destination descriptions. see link examples. To the point - I think it is foolish to noindex something like this. But is Google's algo sophisticated enough to not get triggered by something like this? http://isafari.nathab.com/routes/ultimate-tanzania-kenya-uganda-safari-july-november
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rich_Coffman
http://isafari.nathab.com/routes/ultimate-tanzania-kenya-uganda-safari-december-june0 -
My site still out of rank
Hello, I am working on a site for past 3 months, here are the problems with this site, 1. It had a forum full of spam becuase initially captcha was not included, 10000 spam backlinks 2. Affiliate page was also hit by spam about 4000 spam backlinks which were either not existing or porn etc.... 3. Too many internal links which were indexed, these additional links were generated due to tags, ids, filters etc. Existing SEO team decided to remove the forum and after 30 days they blocked it in robots. But within 30 days the site moved from 3rd page to no where. Now after few days lator internal links are also cleaned by putting following in the robots, Dissallow: / *? Dissallow: / *id Dissallow: / *tag Links are now cleaning up, all the spam and bad links are now put into disavow file and sent to google via disavow tool. On daily bases good quality links are been produced such as through content, article submission, profile linking, Bookmarks etc. The site is still not any where on top 50 results. The impressions are decreasing, traffic also do not rise as much. How do you see all this situation. What do you suggest and how long do you think it will take to return to top 10 when good linking is being done and all preventive measures are being taken. I would appreciate any feedback on it. Thank you. Site URL: http://www.creativethemes.net keywords: magento themes, magento templates
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MozAddict0 -
Joomla duplicate content
My website report says http://www.enigmacrea.com/diseno-grafico-portafolio-publicidad and http://www.enigmacrea.com/diseno-grafico-portafolio-publicidad?limitstart=0 Has the same content so I have duplicate pages the only problem is the ?limitstart=0 How can I fix this? Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kuavicrea0 -
Aggregators outranking me for my own content
WARNING : The follow question is for an adult website. If you are at work, near children or are offended by such material, DO NOT CLICK Hey guys, This one has had me stumped for awhile. I operate www.deviantclip.com. Its a very old and trusted domain by google with loads of history. However, in the past year, Google has been giving me the cold shoulder. One major problem I've noticed is that I've lost all longtail traffic. Its even gotten to the point where aggregators are outranking me in google for my own custom titles and content. **Example A : ** Google Link 1 This search has my own sitename in the title and my site ranks somewhere on page 2 or further. **Example B : ** Google Link 2 This content originated from our site and has a unique title, yet we're dead last in the serps. I submitted my site for reconsideration a few times, and the outcome everytime is that Google tells me they have not applied any manual penalty. There are a TON of issues to adress with this site, but obviously, getting my own content to rank first is the primary problem I would like to fix. Your time and advice is greatly appreciated. If you need furter info, don't be afraid to ask.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CrakJason0 -
Duplicate Content Issue
Why do URL with .html or index.php at the end are annoying to the search engine? I heard it can create some duplicate content but I have no idea why? Could someone explain me why is that so? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Guest blogging and duplicate content
I have a guest blog prepared and several sites I can submit it to, would it be considered duplicate content if I submitted one guest blog post to multipul blogs? and if so this content is not on my site but is linking to it. What will google do? Lets say 5 blogs except the same content and post it up, I understand that the first blog to have it up will not be punished, what about the rest of the blogs? can they get punished for this duplicate content? can I get punished for having duplicate content linking to me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0