Timely use of robots.txt and meta noindex
-
Hi,
I have been checking every possible resources for content removal, but I am still unsure on how to remove already indexed contents.
When I use robots.txt alone, the urls will remain in the index, however no crawling budget is wasted on them, But still, e.g having 100,000+ completely identical login pages within the omitted results, might not mean anything good.
When I use meta noindex alone, I keep my index clean, but also keep Googlebot busy with indexing these no-value pages.
When I use robots.txt and meta noindex together for existing content, then I suggest Google, that please ignore my content, but at the same time, I restrict him from crawling the noindex tag.
Robots.txt and url removal together still not a good solution, as I have failed to remove directories this way. It seems, that only exact urls could be removed like this.
I need a clear solution, which solves both issues (index and crawling).
What I try to do now, is the following:
I remove these directories (one at a time to test the theory) from the robots.txt file, and at the same time, I add the meta noindex tag to all these pages within the directory. The indexed pages should start decreasing (while useless page crawling increasing), and once the number of these indexed pages are low or none, then I would put the directory back to robots.txt and keep the noindex on all of the pages within this directory.
Can this work the way I imagine, or do you have a better way of doing so?
Thank you in advance for all your help.
-
Hi Deb,
Thank you for your reply.
I have never thought, that Google would crawl the robots.txt this rarely. I actually read it somewhere, which makes complete sense, that before they start crawling, they validate the process against robots.txt. This is one page only, but basically one of the most important ones.
This is now a shocking experience for me, thank you for drawing my attention to it. Anyway, I have submitted the page through 'Fetch as Google' now.
Regarding your url suggestion, I do not want them to be 404-d, at least not all of them, as for examply the login pages I still want to use, and why we have individual urls, is that because we would like our visitors to return back the page they left, before we asked them to log in. So status 200 is ok, because these pages we have for customers, but the very same pages are totally useless for Google to crawl or to index.
I hope this clarifies.
-
It seems like the latest Robots.txt file has not been cached by Google so far .. this is what it has –
So, you need to use Fetch As Google Bot and Submit this Robots.txt file to index to fix this issue at the earliest.
What concerns me that defunct URLs like this - http://www.kozelben.hu/login?r=%2Fceg%2Fdrink-island-bufe-whisky-bar-alkotas-utca-17-1123-budapest-126126%23addComment or http://www.kozelben.hu/supplier/nearby/supplierid/127493/type/geo are returning 200 Ok server side response code whereas they should be returning 404 server side response. The problem would have stopped here for once and all.
However assuming the fact that the CMS of your website does not offer you any such option [in that case, this is a bad CMS], you need to apply Meta noindex tag against them and wait patiently for search engine to catch them.
_Can’t you fix the 404 thing? Let us know. _
-
Really good article, indeed!
I have been thinking about the whole concept during the weekend, and now I have a further concept, definetely worth considering.
Thank you again, Ryan.
-
Lindsay wrote a great article on the topic which I am sure you will enjoy: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/serious-robotstxt-misuse-high-impact-solutions
-
Thank you for the further info, Ryan.
Although I see your point and can accept lots of truth in it, checking all the competitors and even the largest sites all around the web, they still keep using robots.txt (even Google does so).
I however accept noindex to be a superior solution to robots.txt and will use it for all the contents I do not want to be indexed.
I will then see, if I need and how I might need to use robots.txt. I hope, it does not hurt having a noindexed page included in robots.txt (at a later time, when it is already out of the index).
-
I understand your concern Andras. The two questions I would focus on with respect to crawl budget:
1. Is all your content being indexed properly?
2. Is your content being indexed in a timely manner?
If the answer to the above two questions is yes, I would not spend any more time thinking about crawl budget. Either way, using the "noindex" meta tag is going to be the best way to handle the issue you originally presented.
On a related note, does the content on your "useful" pages change frequently? If so, ensure you are optimizing your links (both internal and external) to these pages. When you demonstrate these are important pages to your site, Google will crawl the pages more frequently.
-
Hi Ryan,
Thank you for your reply.
The only worry I have regarding the crawl budget, that I currently have three times more indexed pages than useful pages, due to the issues I have mentioned earlier.
It is true, that I do not have daily content updates on all of my useful pages, however I have thought that Google allocates individual crawling budget to all sites, based on the value he assigns to them.
I just want this budget to be spent wisely, and not causing my useful pages to be crawled less frequently, due to crawling no-value (but noindexed) content instead.
-
Hi Andras,
The first thing to know is a general rule....the best robots.txt file is a blank one. There is almost always a better method of managing a situation without using robots.txt. There are numerous reasons, one of which is search engines do not always see the robots.txt file.
Regarding the noindex meta tag, that is the proper solution. I understand your concern over crawl budget, but I suggest in this instance, your concerns are not warranted. It is a waste of crawl budget to have search engines spend extra time due to slow servers, bad code, thin content, etc. If you have pages which should not be indexed, adding the noindex tag is likely the best solution.
Without being familiar with your site, it is not possible to offer a definitive answer, but generally speaking this response should be accurate. Keep in mind many sites have millions of pages, and Google has the ability to crawl the entire site each month.
-
Can you show us examples of URLs that are causing you trouble? That would be easier for us to provide a solution.
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
-
Website URL, Robots.txt and Google Search Console (www. vs non www.)
Hi MOZ Community,
Technical SEO | | Badiuzz
I would like to request your kind assistance on domain URLs - www. VS non www. Recently, my team have moved to a new website where a 301 Redirection has been done. Original URL : https://www.example.com.my/ (with www.) New URL : https://example.com.my/ (without www.) Our current robots.txt sitemap : https://www.example.com.my/sitemap.xml (with www.)
Our Google Search Console property : https://www.example.com.my/ (with www.) Question:
1. How/Should I standardize these so that Google crawler can effectively crawl my website?
2. Do I have to change back my website URLs to (with www.) or I just need to update my robots.txt?
3. How can I update my Google Search Console property to reflect accordingly (without www.), because I cannot see the options in the dashboard.
4. Is there any to dos such as Canonicalization needed, or should I wait for Google to automatically detect and change it, especially in GSC property? Really appreciate your kind assistance. Thank you,
Badiuzz0 -
No index tag robots.txt
Hi Mozzers, A client's website has a lot of internal directories defined as /node/*. I already added the rule 'Disallow: /node/*' to the robots.txt file to prevents bots from crawling these pages. However, the pages are already indexed and appear in the search results. In an article of Deepcrawl, they say you can simply add the rule 'Noindex: /node/*' to the robots.txt file, but other sources claim the only way is to add a noindex directive in the meta robots tag of every page. Can someone tell me which is the best way to prevent these pages from getting indexed? Small note: there are more than 100 pages. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | WeAreDigital_BE
Jens0 -
Canonical homepage link uses trailing slash while default homepage uses no trailing slash, will this be an issue?
Hello, 1st off, let me explain my client in this case uses BigCommerce, and I don't have access to the backend like most other situations. So I have to rely on BG to handle certain issues. I'm curious if there is much of a difference using domain.com/ as the canonical url while BG currently is redirecting our domain to domain.com. I've been using domain.com/ consistently for the last 6 months, and since we switches stores on Friday, this issue has popped up and has me a bit worried that we'll loose somehow via link juice or overall indexing since this could confuse crawlers. Now some say that the domain url is fine using / or not, as per - https://moz.com/community/q/trailing-slash-and-rel-canonical But I also wanted to see what you all felt about this. What says you?
Technical SEO | | Deacyde0 -
Using hreflang tags properly.
On my site "example.com" I have set up the following in the header: The problem is that the tags are universal across the site, so every page has these tags, leading obviously to no return tag errors. I.e. the page www.example.ca/testing.html still has the tags: Not tags with "testing.html" in them. How bad is this? Does it matter?
Technical SEO | | absoauto0 -
Use 302 redirect when site crashes
My company has switched to a new ecommerce platform that we are not totally familiar with yet. As we've worked with it, we've had a couple situations where both the front and back ends of our site crashed simultaneously (always after installing a third party module). The platform's built-in backup solution hasn't been an option in those situations so we've been coming up with alternatives. We now have a duplicate of the site on our server for such emergencies. The plan is to have pages on the broken site point to the backup site using 302 redirects until the broken site is fixed. Is this correct usage of the 302 redirect? I often see people recommend to never use 302 redirects, but I thought this might be the kind of situation where they'd be appropriate. If so, are there other SEO considerations we should keep in mind? For example, I'm wondering if we should put canonical tags on the temporary site that point to the broken site so the broken site stays in the SE indexes.
Technical SEO | | Kyle_M1 -
Miss meta description on 404 page
Hi, My 404 page did not have meta description. Is it an error? Because I run report and seomoz said that a problem. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | JohnHuynh0 -
What hosting companies do you use & do you use dedicated servers
I am hoping the community of semoz will help me in deciding what hosting company i should use as there are hundreds of them. I have asked previously about dedicated servers but was shocked to have only received one responce. Recently i have been having nothing but problems with my hosting company so now i am trying to find a UK hosting company that can offer a dedicated server. I would be grateful if people could let me know what companies they use for their sites and if they use managed hosting companies.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
What should be noindexed on a Wordpress blog?
I know this can be a "it depends" answer so I'll try to explain. Qualifications on your answers would be great. I use the Wordpress architecture for myself and clients on sites and blogs. Almost every business site we create has a blog and I'm always working to improve results on them. My strategy has been the following: Categories: General, main content types, general keywords. Index, follow Tags: Very specific, post specific, may only be used once for one post. My categories have descriptions that are displayed on the category pages with excerpts. Tags rarely have a description but are displayed with excerpts on the page. My idea has been to index the categories to crawl the content and they have unique content by showing the category description. Tags shouldn't be archived because they may be all over the place and may have only 1 post with no tag description. I'm trying to reduce duplicate content but I don't want to limit results for my clients and myself. Should I set tags to noindex, follow or should I have them indexed? The only thing I'm thinking with having the tags indexed is that I may be able to get additional traffic through the more specific tags (i.e. tag = meta tags, category = SEO).
Technical SEO | | JaredDetroit0