Why are new pages not being indexed, and old pages (now in robots.txt) remain in the index?
-
I currently have a site that was recently restructured, causing much of its content to be reposted, creating new URL's for each page.
To avoid duplicates, all of the existing pages were added to the robots file. That said, it has now been over a week - I know Google has recrawled the site - and when I search for term X, it is stil the old page that is ranking, with the new one nowhere to be seen. I'm assuming it's a cached version, but why are so many of the old pages still appearing in the index?
Furthermore, all "tags" pages (it's a Q&A site, like this one) were also added to the robots a few months ago, yet I think they are all still appearing in the index. Anyone got any ideas about why this is happening, and how I can get my new pages indexed?
-
Is there a way for the search engines to find the new content? If you're blocking the old content from being crawled, even if there are redirects, it makes it that much harder for the new URLs to be found. Also, do you have a sitemap with the new URLs?
-
SE's dont take notive first crawl, they need to see resulst a few times before they take notive, this i think is make sure thet you mean what the see, and not just a mistake.
I would not exclude any pages with robots, this is a very crude way of doing things. if the page does not exists then it will drop out of index, if it does exist, then you would lose link juice thought all the links that point to those pages. If you have to no-index a page, use the meta tag "no-index,follow" so that links are still flollowed back out of the page.
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
-
Moving site to new domain without access to redirect from old to new. How can I do this with as little loss to SERP results as possible?
I've been hired to build a new site for a customer. They were duped by some shady characters at goglupe.com (If you can reach them, tell them they are rats--phone is disconnected, address is a comedy club on Mission in SF). Glupe owns the domain name and would not transfer or give FTP access prior to dropping off the face of the earth. The customer doesn't want to chase after them with lawyers, so we are moving on. New domain, new site with much of the same content as previous site. All that I have access to is the old wordpress site. I plan to build the new site, then remove all pages/posts from the old site. Is there anything I can do to salvage the current page 1 ranking? Obviously, the new domain will take some time to get back there. Just hoping to avoid any pitfalls or penalties if I can. If I had complete access, I would follow all the standard guidelines. But I don't. Any thoughts? Thanks! Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | c_estep_tcbguy0 -
Fetch as Google -- Does not result in pages getting indexed
I run a exotic pet website which currently has several types of species of reptiles. It has done well in SERP for the first couple of types of reptiles, but I am continuing to add new species and for each of these comes the task of getting ranked and I need to figure out the best process. We just released our 4th species, "reticulated pythons", about 2 weeks ago, and I made these pages public and in Webmaster tools did a "Fetch as Google" and index page and child pages for this page: http://www.morphmarket.com/c/reptiles/pythons/reticulated-pythons/index While Google immediately indexed the index page, it did not really index the couple of dozen pages linked from this page despite me checking the option to crawl child pages. I know this by two ways: first, in Google Webmaster Tools, if I look at Search Analytics and Pages filtered by "retic", there are only 2 listed. This at least tells me it's not showing these pages to users. More directly though, if I look at Google search for "site:morphmarket.com/c/reptiles/pythons/reticulated-pythons" there are only 7 pages indexed. More details -- I've tested at least one of these URLs with the robot checker and they are not blocked. The canonical values look right. I have not monkeyed really with Crawl URL Parameters. I do NOT have these pages listed in my sitemap, but in my experience Google didn't care a lot about that -- I previously had about 100 pages there and google didn't index some of them for more than 1 year. Google has indexed "105k" pages from my site so it is very happy to do so, apparently just not the ones I want (this large value is due to permutations of search parameters, something I think I've since improved with canonical, robots, etc). I may have some nofollow links to the same URLs but NOT on this page, so assuming nofollow has only local effects, this shouldn't matter. Any advice on what could be going wrong here. I really want Google to index the top couple of links on this page (home, index, stores, calculator) as well as the couple dozen gene/tag links below.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jplehmann0 -
Robots.txt advice
Hey Guys, Have you ever seen coding like this in a robots.txt, I have never seen a noindex rule in a robots.txt file before - have you? user-agent: AhrefsBot User-agent: trovitBot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eLab_London
User-agent: Nutch
User-agent: Baiduspider
Disallow: / User-agent: *
Disallow: /WebServices/
Disallow: /*?notfound=
Disallow: /?list=
Noindex: /?*list=
Noindex: /local/
Disallow: /local/
Noindex: /handle/
Disallow: /handle/
Noindex: /Handle/
Disallow: /Handle/
Noindex: /localsites/
Disallow: /localsites/
Noindex: /search/
Disallow: /search/
Noindex: /Search/
Disallow: /Search/
Disallow: ? I have never seen a noindex rule in a robots.txt file before - have you?
Any pointers?0 -
Robots txt is case senstive? Pls suggest
Hi i have seen few urls in the html improvements duplicate titles Can i disable one of the below url in the robots.txt? /store/Solar-Home-UPS-1KV-System/75652
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rahim119
/store/solar-home-ups-1kv-system/75652 if i disable this Disallow: /store/Solar-Home-UPS-1KV-System/75652 will the Search engines scan this /store/solar-home-ups-1kv-system/75652 im little confused with case senstive.. Pls suggest go ahead or not in the robots.txt0 -
Thinking about not indexing PDFs on a product page
Our product pages generate a PDF version of the page in a different layout. This is done for 2 reasons, it's been the standard across similar industries and to help customers print them when working with the product. So there is a use when it comes to the customer but search? I've thought about this a lot and my thinking is why index the PDF at all? Only allow the HTML page to be indexed. The PDF files are in a subdomain, so I can easily no index them. The way I see it, I'm reducing duplicate content On the flip side, it is hosted in a subdomain, so the PDF appearing when a HTML page doesn't, is another way of gaining real estate. If it appears with the HTML page, more estate coverage. Anyone else done this? My knowledge tells me this could be a good thing, might even iron out any backlinks from being generated to the PDF and lead to more HTML backlinks Can PDFs solely exist as a form of data accessible once on the page and not relevant to search engines. I find them a bane when they are on a subdomain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Meta canonical or simply robots.txt other domain names with same content?
Hi, I'm working with a new client who has a main product website. This client has representatives who also sells the same products but all those reps have a copy of the same website on another domain name. The best thing would probably be to shut down the other (same) websites and redirect 301 them to the main, but that's impossible in the minding of the client. First choice : Implement a conical meta for all the URL on all the other domain names. Second choice : Robots.txt with disallow for all the other websites. Third choice : I'm really open to other suggestions 😉 Thank you very much! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Louis-Philippe_Dea0 -
De Index Section of Page?
Hey all! We're having a couple of issues with a certain section of our page that we don't want to index. Basically, our cross sells change really quickly, and big G is ranking them and linking to them even when they've long gone. Is it possible to put some kind of no index tag for a specific section of the page? See below 🙂 http://www.freestylextreme.com/uk/Home/Brands/DC-Shoe-Co-/Mens-DC-Shoe-Co-Hoodies-and-Sweaters/DC-Black-Rob-Dyrdek-Official-Sweater.aspx Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | elbeno0 -
301 redirect or Robots.txt on an interstatial page
Hey guys, I have an affiliate tracking system that works like this : an affiliate puts up a certain code on his site, for example : www.domain.com/track/aff_id This url leads to a page where the hit is counted, analysed and then 302 redirects to my sales page with the affiliates ID in the url : www.mysalespage.com/?=aff_id. However, we've noticed recently that one affiliate seems to be ranking for our own name and the url google indexed was his tracking url (domain.com/track/aff_id). Which is strange because there is absolutely nothing on that page, its just an interstatial page so that our stats tracking software can properly filter hits. To remove the affiliate's url from showing up in the serps, I've come up with 2 solutions : 1 - Change the redirect to a 301 redirect on his track page. 2 - Change our robots.txt page to block all domain.com/track/ pages from being indexed. My question is : if I 301 redirect instead of 302, will I keep the affiliates from outranking me for my own name AND pass on link juice or should I simply block google from crawling the interstatial tracking pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CrakJason0
