Why do my https pages index while noindexed?
-
I have some tag pages on one of my sites that I meta noindexed. This worked for the http version, which they are canonical'd to but now the https:// version is indexing.
The https version is both noindexed and has a canonical to the http version, but they still show up! I even have wordpress set up to redirect all https: to http! For some reason these pages are STILL showing in the SERPS though. Any experience or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Example page: https://www.michaelpadway.com/tag/insurance-coverage/
Thanks all!
-
That is true, but I also have them 301'd to the http version and canonicaled! That is pretty much every possible signal to tell them those pages aren't pages and don't index them.
I suppose we can submit the URLs, unfortunately there are a LOT of tag pages.
Thanks for the advice Dana!
-
Hi Spencer,
I am an in-house SEO to a fairly large e-commerce site (4,000 SKUs) that has the same exact problem. As I am sure you are aware, the META robots noindex tag is only a suggestion to goooglebot. This is something the bot can easily choose to ignore, and it frequently does ignore it.
I would suggest submitting individual URLs that you would prefer to be removed from Google in Google Webmaster Tools to the "Remove URLS" tool - It's not instantaneous, but it does work.
I hope that helps. I know it's frustrating. We have tons of content that's indexed that we'd rather wasn't. It takes time, patience and intelligent work to get the job done.
Dana
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
-
How to get a large number of urls out of Google's Index when there are no pages to noindex tag?
Hi, I'm working with a site that has created a large group of urls (150,000) that have crept into Google's index. If these urls actually existed as pages, which they don't, I'd just noindex tag them and over time the number would drift down. The thing is, they created them through a complicated internal linking arrangement that adds affiliate code to the links and forwards them to the affiliate. GoogleBot would crawl a link that looks like it's to the client's same domain and wind up on Amazon or somewhere else with some affiiiate code. GoogleBot would then grab the original link on the clients domain and index it... even though the page served is on Amazon or somewhere else. Ergo, I don't have a page to noindex tag. I have to get this 150K block of cruft out of Google's index, but without actual pages to noindex tag, it's a bit of a puzzler. Any ideas? Thanks! Best... Michael P.S., All 150K urls seem to share the same url pattern... exmpledomain.com/item/... so /item/ is common to all of them, if that helps.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Is it a problem that Google's index shows paginated page urls, even with canonical tags in place?
Since Google shows more pages indexed than makes sense, I used Google's API and some other means to get everything Google has in its index for a site I'm working on. The results bring up a couple of oddities. It shows a lot of urls to the same page, but with different tracking code.The url with tracking code always follows a question mark and could look like: http://www.MozExampleURL.com?tracking-example http://www.MozExampleURL.com?another-tracking-examle http://www.MozExampleURL.com?tracking-example-3 etc So, the only thing that distinguishes one url from the next is a tracking url. On these pages, canonical tags are in place as: <link rel="canonical<a class="attribute-value">l</a>" href="http://www.MozExampleURL.com" /> So, why does the index have urls that are only different in terms of tracking urls? I would think it would ignore everything, starting with the question mark. The index also shows paginated pages. I would think it should show the one canonical url and leave it at that. Is this a problem about which something should be done? Best... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Dev Subdomain Pages Indexed - How to Remove
I own a website (domain.com) and used the subdomain "dev.domain.com" while adding a new section to the site (as a development link). I forgot to block the dev.domain.com in my robots file, and google indexed all of the dev pages (around 100 of them). I blocked the site (dev.domain.com) in robots, and then proceeded to just delete the entire subdomain altogether. It's been about a week now and I still see the subdomain pages indexed on Google. How do I get these pages removed from Google? Are they causing duplicate content/title issues, or does Google know that it's a development subdomain and it's just taking time for them to recognize that I deleted it already?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
How long takes to a page show up in Google results after removing noindex from a page?
Hi folks, A client of mine created a new page and used meta robots noindex to not show the page while they are not ready to launch it. The problem is that somehow Google "crawled" the page and now, after removing the meta robots noindex, the page does not show up in the results. We've tried to crawl it using Fetch as Googlebot, and then submit it using the button that appears. We've included the page in sitemap.xml and also used the old Google submit new page URL https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url Does anyone know how long will it take for Google to show the page AFTER removing meta robots noindex from the page? Any reliable references of the statement? I did not find any Google video/post about this. I know that in some days it will appear but I'd like to have a good reference for the future. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fabioricotta-840380 -
Wordpress Tag Pages - NoIndex?
Hi there. I am using Yoast Wordpress Plugin. I just wonder if any test have been done around the effects of Index vs Noindex for Tag Pages? ( like when tagging a word relevant to an article ) Thanks 🙂 Martin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | s_EOgi_Bear0 -
Can too many "noindex" pages compared to "index" pages be a problem?
Hello, I have a question for you: our website virtualsheetmusic.com includes thousands of product pages, and due to Panda penalties in the past, we have no-indexed most of the product pages hoping in a sort of recovery (not yet seen though!). So, currently we have about 4,000 "index" page compared to about 80,000 "noindex" pages. Now, we plan to add additional 100,000 new product pages from a new publisher to offer our customers more music choice, and these new pages will still be marked as "noindex, follow". At the end of the integration process, we will end up having something like 180,000 "noindex, follow" pages compared to about 4,000 "index, follow" pages. Here is my question: can this huge discrepancy between 180,000 "noindex" pages and 4,000 "index" pages be a problem? Can this kind of scenario have or cause any negative effect on our current natural SEs profile? or is this something that doesn't actually matter? Any thoughts on this issue are very welcome. Thank you! Fabrizio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
How to make Google include our recipe pages in its main index?
We have developed a recipe search engine www.edamam.com and serve the content of over 500+ food bloggers and major recipe websites. Our legal obligations do not allow us to show the actual recipe preparation info (e.g. the most valuable from the content), we can only show a few images, the ingredients and nutrition information. Most of the unique content goes to the source/blog. By submitting XML sitemaps on GWT we now have around 500K pages indexed, however only a few hundred appear in Google's main index and we are looking for a solution to include all of them in the index. Also good to know is that it appears that all our top competitors are in the exactly same situation, so it is a challenging question. Any ideas will be highly appreciated! Thanks, Lily
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edamam0 -
Member request pages, indexed or no indexed?
We run a service website and basically users of the site post their request to get certain items fixed/serviced. Through Google Analytics we have found that we got lots of traffic to these request pages from people searching for those particular items. E.g. A member's request page: "Cost to fix large Victorian oven" has got many visits from searchers searching for "large Victorian oven". The traffic to these pages is about 40% of our Google organic traffic but didn't covert to more users/requests well and has roughly 67% bounce rate. So my question is: should we keep these pages indexed and if yes what can we do to improve the conversion rate/reduce bounce rate? Many thanks guys. David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sssrpm0