Temporarily suspend Googlebot without blocking users
-
We'll soon be launching a redesign, on a new platform, migrating millions of pages to new URLs.
How can I tell Google (and other crawlers) to temporarily (a day or two) ignore my site? We're hoping to buy ourselves a small bit of time to verify redirects and live functionality before allowing Google to crawl and index the new architecture.
GWT's recommendation is to 503 all pages - including robots.txt, but that also makes the site invisible to real site visitors, resulting in significant business loss. Bad answer.
I've heard some recommendations to disallow all user agents in robots.txt. Any answer that puts the millions of pages we already have indexed at risk is also a bad answer.
Thanks
-
So it seems like we've gone full circle.
The initial question was, "How can I tell Google (and other crawlers) to temporarily (a day or two) ignore my site? We're hoping to buy ourselves a small bit of time to verify redirects and live functionality before allowing Google to crawl and index the new architecture."
Sounds like the answer is, 'that's not possible'.
-
Putting a noindex/nofollow on an index url will remove it from SERPs, although some ulrs will still show for direct search (using the url itself as a KW) but even then they will appear as clear links without any TItle/Description details.
Using a 301 redirect will remove the old page from index, regardless of noindex/nofollow.
If you are using a noindex/nofollow for the new url - both will not show.
-
Thank you, Ruth!
Can I ask a clarifying question?
If I put a noindex/nofollow on the new urls, wouldn't the result be the same as if I put noindex/nofollow on the indexed urls? There is only one instance of each page - and all of the millions of indexed URLs will be redirecting to new urls.
Here is my assumption: if I put noindex/nofollow on the new urls - a search bot will crawl the old url, follow the redirect to the new url, detect the noindex/nofollow, and then drop the old, indexed url from their index. Is that the wrong assumption?
-
I would use robots.txt to noindex the whole website as well - but just the new pages, not the old ones. Then when you're ready to be crawled, remove the robots.txt entry and Fetch as Googlebot to get re-crawled. You may fall out of the index for a day or two but should quickly be re-indexed.
Another solution would be to use the meta robots tag to individually noindex each page (if there's a way to do that in your CMS, obviously adding them by hand wouldn't be scalable), and then remove. That may increase your chances of getting re-crawled and re-indexed sooner.
-
Thanks for the response, Mark.
It sounds as if you tried this on a few new pages.
I'm talking about millions of existing pages.
Would you robots.txt noindex your entire website? Seems like you'd run a huge risk of being dumped from the index entirely.
-
I recommend robots text noindex, nofollow.
That way people can still see the pages they just aren't indexed in Google yet.
As we developed some new pages on one of our sites we did this and we could still view pages and send folks there that we wanted to see the content for feedback - but no one else knew they were there.
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
-
Googlebot crawl error Javascript method is not defined
Hi All, I have this problem, that has been a pain in the ****. I get tons of crawl errors from "Googlebot" saying a specific Javascript method does not exist in my logs. I then go to the affected page and test in a web browser and the page works without any Javascript errors. Can some help with resolving this issue? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | FreddyKgapza0 -
Bing Webmaster Shows Domain without WWW
One of our sites shows thousands of 301 redirects due to domain without www in Bing Webmaster under crawl Information page. It’s been like this for a long time. None of the internal pages have domain without www, it was tested through Screaming Frog. We do have www preference set in google webmaster, but unfortunately bing doesn’t have this option. We also specify URL with www preference through structural data, but that still doesn’t help. Did anyone have similar problems with Bing, and how did you resolve it?
Technical SEO | | rkdc1 -
How can I block incoming links from a bad web site ?
Hello all, We got a new client recently who had a warning from Google Webmasters tools for manual soft penalty. I did a lot of search and I found out one particular site that sounds roughly 100k links to one page and has been potentialy a high risk site. I wish to block those links from coming in to my site but their webmaster is nowhere to be seen and I do not want to use the disavow tool. Is there a way I can use code to our htaccess file or any other method? Would appreciate anyone's immediate response. Kind Regards
Technical SEO | | artdivision0 -
Fix or Block Webmaster Tools URL Errors Not Found Linked from a certain domain?
RE: Webmaster Tool "Not Found" URL Errors are strange links from webstatsdomain.com Should I continue to fix 404 errors for strange links from a website called webstatsdomain.com or is there a way to ask Google Webmaster Tools to ignore them? Most of Webmaster Tools "URL Not Found errors" I find for our website are from this domain. They refer to pages that never existed. For example, one was to www.mydomain.com/virtual. Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | zharriet0 -
SEOMoz Crawler vs Googlebot Question
I read somewhere that SEOMoz’s crawler marks a page in its Crawl Diagnostics as duplicate content if it doesn’t have more than 5% unique content.(I can’t find that statistic anywhere on SEOMoz to confirm though). We are an eCommerce site, so many of our pages share the same sidebar, header, and footer links. The pages flagged by SEOMoz as duplicates have these same links, but they have unique URLs and category names. Because they’re not actual duplicates of each other, canonical tags aren’t the answer. Also because inventory might automatically come back in stock, we can’t use 301 redirects on these “duplicate” pages. It seems like it’s the sidebar, header, and footer links that are what’s causing these pages to be flagged as duplicates. Does the SEOMoz crawler mimic the way Googlebot works? Also, is Googlebot smart enough not to count the sidebar and header/footer links when looking for duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | ElDude0 -
Are there negative SEO implications to pages without any images?
Hi Mozzers, Do you think there are any negative effects of having no images on a page but several hundreds words of text? (There is a logo image and call to action buttons). Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Charlessipe0 -
Different levels of PA without "www"?
Hello Guy´s! The last days I have been surprised to see that the levels of PA, mR, and mT vary when it is or not the "www" in the URL: 1. http://patagonline.com/viajes-argentina 2. http://www.patagonline.com/viajes-argentina Both URL's correspond to the keyword "viajes Argentina" our incoming links... In this case, it´s convenient to do a 301redirect from URL 1 to 2? Thanks a lot for your help!!
Technical SEO | | maty0 -
Best blocking solution for Google
Posting this for Dave SottimanoI Here's the scenario: You've got a set of URLs indexed by Google, and you want them out quickly Once you've managed to remove them, you want to block Googlebot from crawling them again - for whatever reason. Below is a sample of the URLs you want blocked, but you only want to block /beerbottles/ and anything past it: www.example.com/beers/brandofbeer/beerbottles/1 www.example.com/beers/brandofbeer/beerbottles/2 www.example.com/beers/brandofbeer/beerbottles/3 etc.. To remove the pages from the index should you?: Add the Meta=noindex,follow tag to each URL you want de-indexed Use GWT to help remove the pages Wait for Google to crawl again If that's successful, to block Googlebot from crawling again - should you?: Add this line to Robots.txt: DISALLOW */beerbottles/ Or add this line: DISALLOW: /beerbottles/ "To add the * or not to add the *, that is the question" Thanks! Dave
Technical SEO | | goodnewscowboy0