How to remove wrong crawled domain from Google index
-
Hello,
I'm running a Wordpress multisite. When I create a new site for a client, we do the preparation using the multisite domain address (ex: cameleor.cobea.be). To keep the site protected we use the "multisite privacy" plugin which allows us to restrict the site to admin only. When site is ready we a domain mapping plugin to redirect the client domain to the multisite (ex: cameleor.com).
Unfortunately, recently we switched our domain mappin plugin by another one and 2 sites got crawled by Google on their multsite address as well. So now when you type "cameleor" in Google you get the 2 domains in SERPS (see here http://screencast.com/t/0wzdrYSR).
It's been 2 weeks or so that we fixed the plugin issue and now cameleor.cobea.be is redirected to the correct address cameleor.com.
My question: how can I get rid of those wrong urls ? I can't remove it in Google Webmaster Tools as they belong to another domain (cf. cameleor.cobea.be for which I can't get authenticated) and I wonder if will ever get removed from index as they still redirect to something (no error to the eyes of Google)..?
Does anybody has an idea or a solution for me please ?
Thank you very much for your help
Regards
Jean-Louis
-
OK. Thank you very much Martijn and Dan for your support.
I'll wait a bit more then and see if it goes away.
Best regards
Jean-Louis
-
Hi Jean-Louis
In theory, 301 redirects should remove the original site/pages from the index. It can just take some time. I see that it is fact properly 301 redirecting now. I would actually not block the original (wrong) domain with robots.txt - allow Google to keep crawling it to see the 301 redirects on a regular basis and they should remove them.
In cases where I've seen Google not de-index 301 redirects, a canonical tag pointing to the new one has worked - but I don't think you need to go that far yet. I'd give it a little more time.
-Dan
-
Hi Jean-Louis,
Why don't you just create a robots.txt file for the multisite domain addresses you used to prepare your client sites for. By doing this you will exclude Google from crawling your sub domain and make sure that they ignore the rest of the URLs. This should definitely increase your chances of removing the duplicate urls out of their index.
Hope this helps!
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
-
Google indexing only 1 page out of 2 similar pages made for different cities
We have created two category pages, in which we are showing products which could be delivered in separate cities. Both pages are related to cake delivery in that city. But out of these two category pages only 1 got indexed in google and other has not. Its been around 1 month but still only Bangalore category page got indexed. We have submitted sitemap and google is not giving any crawl error. We have also submitted for indexing from "Fetch as google" option in webmasters. www.winni.in/c/4/cakes (Indexed - Bangalore page - http://www.winni.in/sitemap/sitemap_blr_cakes.xml) 2. http://www.winni.in/hyderabad/cakes/c/4 (Not indexed - Hyderabad page - http://www.winni.in/sitemap/sitemap_hyd_cakes.xml) I tried searching for "hyderabad site:www.winni.in" in google but there also http://www.winni.in/hyderabad/cakes/c/4 this link is not coming, instead of this only www.winni.in/c/4/cakes is coming. Can anyone please let me know what could be the possible issue with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abhihan0 -
Does Google make continued attempts to crawl an old page one it has followed a 301 to the new page?
I am curious about this for a couple of reasons. We have all dealt with a site who switched platforms and didn't plan properly and now have 1,000's of crawl errors. Many of the developers I have talked to have stated very clearly that the HTacccess file should not be used for 1,000's of singe redirects. I figured If I only needed them in their temporarily it wouldn't be an issue. I am curious if once Google follows a 301 from an old page to a new page, will they stop crawling the old page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RossFruin0 -
Why won't my sub-domain blog rank for my brand name in Google?
For six months or so, my team and I have been trying to get our blog to rank on page one in Google for the term "Instabill." The URL, http://blog.instabill.com, is a sub-domain of our company website and they both use the same IP address. Three pages on our www.Instabill.com site rank in the top three spots when searching our brand name in Google. However, our blog ranks 100+. For our blog, we are currently using b2evolution and nginx. We have tried adding static content on the home page, static content in the sidebar, static content on an About Instabill page, and optimizing blog posts for the keyword Instabill, but nothing seems to work. We appreciate any advice you can provide to us. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Instabill
Meghan0 -
Sub Domain or New Domain?
Hi All, We have a client that has a business with three different services. 2 of these services compliment each other in a really obvious way, but the 3rd, while related is not such a obvious complimentary service. For this reason, service 3 kind of weakens the content of the website SEO wise for the two main services. Also, internally at the business it is run by an entirely different team so it feels culturally somewhat different. So, the client wants to pull all the content about service 3 and put it on a different website. Which would you chose as a domain for this new site: service3.existingdomain.co.uk or www.service3+brandname.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoisyLittleMonkey0 -
Google & Bing not indexing a Joomla Site properly....
Can someone explain the following to me please. The background: I launched a new website - new domain with no history. I added the domain to my Bing webmaster tools account, verified the domain and submitted the XML sitemap at the same time. I added the domain to my Google analytics account and link webmaster tools and verified the domain - I was NOT asked to submit the sitemap or anything. The site has only 10 pages. The situation: The site shows up in bing when I search using site:www.domain.com - Pages indexed:- 1 (the home page) The site shows up in google when I search using site:www.domain.com - Pages indexed:- 30 Please note Google found 30 pages - the sitemap and site only has 10 pages - I have found out due to the way the site has been built that there are "hidden" pages i.e. A page displaying half of a page as it is made up using element in Joomla. My questions:- 1. Why does Bing find 1 page and Google find 30 - surely Bing should at least find the 10 pages of the site as it has the sitemap? (I suspect I know the answer but I want other peoples input). 2. Why does Google find these hidden elements - Whats the best way to sort this - controllnig the htaccess or robots.txt OR have the programmer look into how Joomla works more to stop this happening. 3. Any Joomla experts out there had the same experience with "hidden" pages showing when you type site:www.domain.com into Google. I will look forward to your input! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
Google+ Pages on Google SERP
Do you think that a Google+ Page (not profile) could appear on the Google SERP as a Rich Snippet Author? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | overalia0 -
Redirect gateway domain to main domain?
We have following scenario: Our main website - www.esedirect.co.uk which gets a 1800 visits a day with around half of those from organic search. It's been around since 2004. Our original website - www.ese.co.uk which gets around 30 visits a day and really is nothing more than a doorway page with links to the above site and couple of other sites that belong to the same company. This is an old domain that's had content since 1997 and has good domain authority with some good links. We are considering doing a 301 redirect from www.ese.co.co.uk to www.esedirect.co.uk to redirect the link juice. I welcome opinions to any possible negative effects this could give and how beneficial doing this will be. Thanks, Lee
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ese0 -
Tool to calculate the number of pages in Google's index?
When working with a very large site, are there any tools that will help you calculate the number of links in the Google index? I know you can use site:www.domain.com to see all the links indexed for a particular url. But what if you want to see the number of pages indexed for 100 different subdirectories (i.e. www.domain.com/a, www.domain.com/b)? is there a tool to help automate the process of finding the number of pages from each subdirectory in Google's index?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0
