Huge number of indexed pages with no content
-
Hi,
We have accidentally had Google indexed lots os our pages with no useful content at all on them.
The site in question is a directory site, where we have tags and we have cities. Some cities have suppliers for almost all the tags, but there are lots of cities, where we have suppliers for only a handful of tags.
The problem occured, when we created a page for each cities, where we list the tags as links.
Unfortunately, our programmer listed all the tags, so not only the ones, where we have businesses, offering their services, but all of them!
We have 3,142 cities and 542 tags. I guess, that you can imagine the problem this caused!
Now I know, that Google might simply ignore these empty pages and not crawl them again, but when I check a city (city site:domain) with only 40 providers, I still have 1,050 pages indexed. (Yes, we have some issues between the 550 and the 1050 as well, but first things first:))
These pages might not be crawled again, but will be clicked, and bounces and the whole user experience in itself will be terrible.
My idea is, that I might use meta noindex for all of these empty pages and perhaps also have a 301 redirect from all the empty category pages, directly to the main page of the given city.
Can this work the way I imagine? Any better solution to cut this really bad nightmare short?
Thank you in advance.
Andras
-
Thank you again, John. I will fix this, based on our discussion.
-
NoIndex I think is slightly superfluous as the 301 will take care of it and also point people to a proper result and give Google a redirected result.
However SEOMoz's Robots information page page suggests:
"In most cases, meta robots with parameters
"noindex, follow"
should be employed as a way to to restrict crawling or indexation."- So maybe consider that...
As for Robots, you can check out SEOMoz's Robots information page where it has information on wildcards, which you could use, which I THINK would work (i.e. http://domain.com/*/tags ?
Not quite sure on that last bit though...
-
Thank you for your reply, Josh.
I will then use the 301, but should I also use the noindex tag for these pages to be removed from the index?
Does it make an emphasis on my intention, or it adds no extra to the process? Perhaps, they should not be used together at all, as basically they are meant for different tasks.
(Unfortunatyly, robots.txt is not really a solution, as we have the following url structure:
Since all the cities have at least a couple of valid tags, I can't specify the path to be excluded from indexing. I would also try not to add 2,000+ cities individually.
As for GWT, url removal for this number of pages might also not be an option, as I have minimum 100,000+ no-value pages to be removed (the limit is 500 per month).)
-
I would agree, just setup a 301 redirect so that users don't bounce and actually get directed to something remotely useful, even just a listing of all the tags around the site or a home page or something (even if you do the below, to ensure users who stumble on these pages are still happy).
You could also use a robots.txt file to show which ones you don't want to be indexed, and finally you may also use Google's Webmaster Tools to manually remove particular pages!
A combo of all of those will work a treat!
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
-
Content Issues: Duplicate Content
Hi there
Technical SEO | | Kingagogomarketing
Moz flagged the following content issues, the page has duplicate content and missing canonical tags.
What is the best solution to do? Industrial Flooring » IRL Group Ltd
https://irlgroup.co.uk/industrial-flooring/ Industrial Flooring » IRL Group Ltd
https://irlgroup.co.uk/index.php/industrial-flooring Industrial Flooring » IRL Group Ltd
https://irlgroup.co.uk/index.php/industrial-flooring/0 -
'duplicate content' on several different pages
Hi, I've a website with 6 pages identified as 'duplicate content' because they are very similar. This pages looks similar because are the same but it show some pictures, a few, about the product category that's why every page look alike each to each other but they are not 'exactly' the same. So, it's any way to indicate to Google that the content is not duplicated? I guess it's been marked as duplicate because the code is 90% or more the same on 6 pages. I've been reviewing the 'canonical' method but I think is not appropriated here as the content is not the same. Any advice (that is not add more content)?
Technical SEO | | jcobo0 -
When is Duplicate Content Duplicate Content
Hi, I was wondering exactly when duplicate content is duplicate content? Is it always when it is word-for-word or if it is similar? For example, we currently have an information page and I would like to add a FAQ to the website. There is, however, a crossover with the content and some of it is repeated. However, it is not written word for word. Could you please advise me? Thanks a lot Tom
Technical SEO | | National-Homebuyers0 -
Duplicate content pages on different domains, best practice?
Hi, We are running directory sites on different domains of different countries (we have the country name in the domain name of each site) and we have the same static page on each one, well, we have more of them but I would like to exemplify one static page for the sake of simplicity. So we have http://firstcountry.com/faq.html, http://secondcountry.com/faq.html and so on for 6-7 sites, faq.html from one country and the other have 94% similarity when checked against duplicate content. We would like an alternative approach to canonical cause the content couldn´t belong to only one of this sites, it belongs to all. Second option would be unindex all but one country. It´s syndicated content but we cannot link back to the source cause there is none. Thanks for taking the time in reading this.
Technical SEO | | seosogood0 -
How to deal with duplicated content on product pages?
Hi, I have a webshop with products with different sizes and colours. For each item I have a different URL, with almost the same content (title tag, product descriptions, etc). In order to prevent duplicated content I'am wondering what is the best way to solve this problem, keeping in mind: -Impossible to create one page/URL for each product with filters on colour and size -Impossible to rewrite the product descriptions in order to be unique I'm considering the option to canonicolize the rest of de colours/size variations, but the disadvantage is that in case the product is not in stock it disappears from the website. Looking forward to your opinions and solutions. Jeroen
Technical SEO | | Digital-DMG0 -
Duplicate content on Product pages for different product variations.
I have multiple colors of the same product, but as a result I'm getting duplicate content warnings. I want to keep these all different products with their own pages, so that the color can be easily identified by browsing the category page. Any suggestions?
Technical SEO | | bobjohn10 -
Duplicate Page Content but where?
Hi All Moz is telling me I have duplicate page content and sure enough the PA MR mT are all 0 but it doesnt give me a link to this content! This is the page: http://www.orsgroup.com/index.php?page=Scanning-services But I cant find where the duplicate content is other than on our own youtube page which I will get removed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pnjh9jkAWuA Can anyone help please? Andy
Technical SEO | | ORS-Group0 -
Over 700+ duplicate content pages -- help!
I just signed up for SEO Moz pro for my site. The initial report came back with over 700+ duplicate content pages. My problem is that while I can see why some of the content is duplicated on some of the pages I have no idea why it's coming back as duplicated. Is there a tutorial for a novie on how to read the duplicate content report and what steps to take? It's an e-commerce website and there is some repetitive content on all the product pages like our "satisfaction guaranteed" text and the fabric material... and not much other text. There's not a unique product description because an image speaks for itself. Could this be causing the problem? I have lots of URLs with over 50+ duplicates. Thx for any help.
Technical SEO | | Santaur0