How do I eliminate indexed products?
-
Please help! We got clobbered by Penguin and are at risk of having to close down after 10 years. We have been trying to figure out why and believe now it might be because of duplicate content. We added 2" inserts in March (over 500):
http://www.trophycentral.com/inserts1.html
Even though each is a different products, SEOMOZ is saying they are considered duplicate content. Given the timing, we think this might be the cause, even though it is totally legitimate.
Question - since these are now indexed and since we can't easily add content quickly, what is the best way to handle this situation? A no-index tag?
Is there a way to let Google know that their algorithm is detroying legitimate businesses??
-
Got it - thanks. I will be making the changes over the next few days. Unfortunately, I published the site last night and it will take about 18 hours so I can't access it for a while.
-
Remeber 6that should be a no-index,follow not a no-index,no-follow
-
Thanks, Alan. I had put a no-index, no-follow on the main category (inserts1.html) so that google could not get to the individual products to index them. That was the quickest thing I could do given how many products I need to update. Based on your note though, I will go through the individual products with a no-index, but it will take some time. Thanks again!
-
I can see them now - THANK YOU!!!
-
If they are noindex, then it should not be problem, but i would not no-follow as all links pointing the the no follow pages will waster their link juice, if you have no-index follow then the link jucie will flow back out of the no-indexed pages.
but having a look at the page, i can not see any no-index tag in the page
-
site:trophycentral.com -www shows all content indexed not within the www subdomain.
-
Sorry to bother you again - last question - I promise! Where did you see the mobile.trophycentral.com pages indexed? I when on to google and didn't see them in the main index. Thanks!
-
Alan, thank you! I just sent a note to the programmer who created the mobile site. For now, I am going to have them get it out of the index and I have stopped the redirection so that there is no mobile site. This may not be the best thing for the long-run, but for now I can at least be sure I fix the mobile issue. I have also fixed the strictlygifts linking. Working on removing more duplicate content now.
Thanks again!
-
This is a sad reality that many business owners face. SEO is a very complex process and unfortunately it's a case of two-fold barriers to success.
On the one hand, not all SEO's really know, or even if they do, don't consider long-term ramifications of what they might be recommending. Many of us in the industry think and act otherwise, however it is a problem nonetheless.
On the other hand, Google constantly changes their rules to a certain extent - as more people look for ways to game the system, what may have been acceptable previously can become unacceptable as Google tries to clean up the mess. It's a vicious circle.
So...
You can get "rid" of indexed pages by blocking them through a robots.txt file - if there are patterns to their URLs. if it's an entire site, you can block the whole site in one line in the robots.txt file. If it's multiple sections of a site, you can block entire sections while leaving other sections open for search indexing. A professional should be tapped to help you with that.
Its important to consider whether pages should be blocked, or instead, redirected to other pages that you want indexed or are indexed that are similar in nature.
Bad link evaluation is a professional process and should not be undertaken lightly. In many cases, site owners will ignore your requests, so it's important to at least get the request process right and to document the process. Again, a professional is needed for that.
And yes, you can submit a request after that's done.
Unfortunately, anyone you task to do the work that would be able to help you will both charge you for their time and cannot guarantee that what is done will be enough. It's another reality of the world we operate in because Google cannot reveal trade secrets to help you know what exactly needs to be done.
-
Alan, thank you so much for this. I am the founder of the business and not a webmaster, so parden these questions:
1. I originally thought it was the mobile site that caused this given the timing, but was told that somehow google was on the lookout for mobile.xxx and that it was not an issue.** I am sure you are right! How can I get rid of the indexed pages? ** I turned the mobile redirect off a couple of weeks ago so it is not even active.
2. My search provider told me they made changes to get rid of most of the pages, but since I are still seeing them, I am concerned. Is thiere something I can do to get rid of the pages?
3. I can easily change strictlygifts - this is the only thing that was intentional (but done about 8 years ago!).
4. How can I tell which are bad links - low page rank?
I have made thousands of changes based on the advice of others - improved the site speed, removed crawl errors, got rid of hundreds of pages, added duplicate content, etc. We were not given any sort of manual penalty - can I still submit a request after the above is done?
Thank you again. I have built this business over the last 10 years and to see it destroyed overnight is heartbreaking. I can't tell you how much your help is appreciated.
-
I checked a few things -you have bigger fish to fry.
Search.trophycentral.com and mobile.trophycentral.com - are either of those causing duplicate content problems on a mass scale? Google has 8k www pages indexed, and three times as many non www pages indexed.
Then looking at your inbound link profile, you've got a huge volume of inbound links from very low quality "SEO only" sites relative to your total inbound link profile. Very serious problem there.
Then you've got another site you apparently own site (StrictlyGifts.com) where you have a footer link with keywords, from every page of that site pointing to the TrophyCentral site.
The list goes on.
The cumulative impact is clearly a case of your site showing all the signs of SEO stuffing and unnatural link building. Even if some of it was unintentional (like the duplicate content conflicts across sub-domains), the pattern is clear.
1. Do all you can to get as many of the bad links removed as possible. Keep a spreadsheet of that effort.
2. Block search.trophycentral.com from search engines.
3. Either redirect mobile.trophycentral.com to the main www site and have the main www site redesigned to be flexible and responsive to different viewing platforms, or get together with a mobile SEO expert to otherwise address that duplicate content issue.
4. Add high quality unique descriptive text based content to all of your primary category and sub-category pages, and even some on every product page.
5. Consider submitting a reconsideration request to Google after you've made real headway on all of that work. Be willing to submit the spreadsheet to show links you've had removed and which you tried to but couldn't. Explain all the other steps you've taken.
You may get a bounce after that or it could just take the next Penguin update if you've done most of that before the next update.
Either way, that's just recommendations that come from only a few minutes looking at your site. There could be many other issues to address.
-
Alan, thanks. Not to sound stupid, but
1. What about the product looks like it is spam to you?
2. If I have a no index, no follow in inserts1, will that prevent goolge from all of the sub pages?
3. If the pages are already indexed, how can I get rid of them?
Sorry for the ignorant questions, but I own the business and I am not a webmaster.
Thnaks!
-
I had a quick look at this page http://www.trophycentral.com/50401.html
I found below, it is much longer thenthe sample i gave here, i would get rid of it, it looks like you are trying to spam the results
var = new Array('Have used them many times. Seamless transactions - all done through the web. Top quality product. Fast delivery. Custom engraving, including logos. Highly recommended. DR Angola, IN','This was my first order with Trophy Central, and my experience was great. I did everything on-line, the....
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
-
Redirect indexed lightbox URLs?
Hello all, So I'm doing some technical SEO work on a client website and wanted to crowdsource some thoughts and suggestions. Without giving away the website name, here is the situation: The website has a dedicated /resources/ page. The bulk of the Resources are industry definitions, all encapsulated in colored boxes. When you click on the box, the definition opens in a lightbox with its own unique URL (Ex: /resources/?resource=augmented-reality). The information for these colored lightbox definitions is pulled from a normal resources page (Ex: /resources/augmented-reality/). Both of these URLs are indexed, leading to a lot of duplicate indexed content. How would you approach this? **Things to Consider: ** -Website is built on Wordpress with a custom theme.
Technical SEO | | Alces
-I have no idea how to even find settings for the lightbox (will be asking the client today).
-Right now my thought is to simply disallow the lightbox URL in robots.txt and hope Google will stop crawling and eventually drop from the index.
-I've considered adding the main resource page canonical to the lightbox URL, but it appears to be dynamically created and thus there is no place to access (outside of the FTP, I imagine?). I'm most rusty with stuff like this, so figured I'd appeal to the masses for some assistance. Thanks! -Brad0 -
Can Google index the text content in a PDF?
I really really thought the answer was always no. There's plenty of other things you can do to improve search visibility for a PDF, but I thought the nature of the file type made the content itself not-parsable by search engine crawlers... But now, my client's competitor is ranking for my client's brand name with a PDF that contains comparison content. Thing is, my client's brand isn't in the title, the alt-text, the url... it's only in the actual text of the PDF. Did I miss a major update? Did I always have this wrong?
Technical SEO | | LindsayDayton0 -
Drop in Indexed Page + Organic Traffic
Hey Moz Community, I've been seeing a steady decrease in search console of pages being indexed by Google for our eCommerce site. This is corresponding to lower impressions and traffic in general this year. We started with around a million pages being indexed in Nov of 2015 down to 18,000 pages this Nov. I realized that since we don't have around 3,000 or so products year round this is mostly likely a good thing. I've checked to make sure our main landing pages are being indexed which they are and our sitemap was updated several times this year, although we're in the process of updating it again to resubmit. I also checked our robots.txt and there's nothing out of the ordinary. In the last month we've recently gotten rid of some duplicate content issues caused by pagination by using canonical tags but that's all we've done to reduce the number of pages crawled. We have seen some soft 404's and some server errors coming up in our crawl error report that we've either fixed or are trying to fix. Not really sure where to start looking to find a solution to the problem or if it's even a huge issue, but the drop in traffic is also not great. The drop in traffic corresponded to lose in rankings as well so there could be correlation or none. Any ideas here?
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
Site not getting indexed by googlebot.
The following question is in regards to http://footeschool.org/. This site is not getting indexed with google(googlebot) This only happens when the user agent is set googlebot. This is a recent issue. We are using DNN as CMS. Are there any suggestion to help resolve this issue?
Technical SEO | | bcmull0 -
Index page 404 error
Crawl Results show there is 404 error page which is index.htmk **it is under my root, ** http://mydomain.com/index.htmk I have checked my index page on the server and my index page is index.HTML instead of index.HTMK. Please help me to fix it
Technical SEO | | semer0 -
Duplicate content issue index.html vs non index.html
Hi I have an issue. In my client's profile, I found that the "index.html" are mostly authoritative than non "index.html", and I found that www. version is more authoritative than non www. The problem is that I find the opposite situation where non "index.html" are more authoritative than "index.html" or non www more authoritative than www. My logic would tell me to still redirect the non"index.html" to "index.html". Am I right? and in the case I find the opposite happening, does it matter if I still redirect the non"index.html" to "index.html"? The same question for www vs non www versions? Thank you
Technical SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Pages not Indexed after a successful Google Fetch
I am trying to understand why google isn't indexing key content on my site. www.BeyondTransition.com is indexed and new pages show up in a couple of hours. My key content is 6 pages of information for each of 3000 events (driven by mySQL on a wordpress platform). These pages are reached via a search page, but no direct navigation from the home page. When I link to an event page from an indexed page it doesn't show up in search results. When I use fetch on webmaster tools the fetch is successful but is then not indexed - or if it does appear in results it's directed to the internal search page e.g. http://www.beyondtransition.com/site/races/course/race110003/ has been fetched and submitted with links but when I search for BeyondTransition Ironman Cozumel I get these results.... So what have I done wrong and how do I go about fixing it? All thoughts and advice appreciated Thanks Denis
Technical SEO | | beyondtransition0 -
What is the most effective way of indexing a localised website?
Hi all, I have a website, www.acrylicimage.com which provides products in three different currencies, $, £ and Euro. Currently a user can click on a flag to indicate which region they are in, or if the user has not manually selected the website looks at the users Locale setting and sets the region for them. The website also has a very simple content management system which provides ever so slightly different content depending on which region the user is in. The difference in content might literally be a few words per page, like contact details, measurements i.e. imperial to metric. I dont believe that GoogleBot, or any other bot for that matter, sets a Locale, and therefore it will only ever be indexing the content on our default region - the UK. So, my question really is if I need to be able to index different versions of content on the same page, is the best route to provide alternate urls i.e.: /en/about-us
Technical SEO | | dotcentric
/us/about-us
/eu/about-us The only potential downside I see to this is there are currently a couple of pages that do have exactly the same content regardless of whether you have selected the UK or USA regions - could this be considered content duplication? Thanks for your help. Al0