Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How to stop my webmail pages not to be indexed on Google ??
-
when i did a search in google for Site:mywebsite.com , for a list of pages indexed.
Surprisingly the following come up
" Webmail - Login "
Although this is associated with the domain , this is a completely different server , this the rackspace email server browser interface I am sure that there is nothing on the website that links or points to this.
So why is Google indexing it ? & how do I get it out of there. I tried in webmaster tool but I could not , as it seems like a sub-domain. Any ideas ?Thanks
Naresh Sadasivan
-
Hi,
So you did add a meta noindex tag? Great. Remember that Google needs to crawl the page to see the meta noindex, so blocking it in robots.txt will mean it's still indexed, but has about 0% chance to show up in search unless you search for that URL.
Also, I wouldn't spend any time worrying about obscure pages that are indexed. It's not going to hurt your rankings.
-
"However i have double checked that where is no external link to the webmail pages from any other source"
the link might be so obscure that seomoz has not picked it up and google bot has. Note in WMT there is "latest back links" but there is a few weeks delay on them, so the link might be recent.
I'm 99% sure there has to be a link from somewhere, or there is no way google can find that page.
I have added the No-index as well in my robot.txt file on my site but yet no change.
It will not take effect until the next time google crawls your site, I think it took a week or so before my test site was removed (i did no robot.txt file too)
-
Thanks for the prompt response . However i have double checked that where is no external link to the webmail pages from any other source.
I have added the No-index as well in my robot.txt file on my site but yet no change.
The Webmail - Login access has been provided by the hosting provider and i do not have the access to their files other that checking my Email using their system.
Thanks
Naresh Sadasivan
-
there must be a link from somewhere for google to pick it up, I had a test site on a sub domain that got picked up to my surprise. The reason, the site had pinterest button on the product pages, and the developer had tested it to see if it worked, and later removed it, but someone (or something) repinned it and then a backlink to my test site was born
Point is there are millions of ways to get a back-link accidentally .
Best way not to list is either added it to you robots.txt file or add No-index to the webmail page
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 is indexing bad URLS
Hi All, The site I am working on is built on Wordpress. The plugin Revolution Slider was downloaded. While no longer utilized, it still remained on the site for some time. This plugin began creating hundreds of URLs containing nothing but code on the page. I noticed these URLs were being indexed by Google. The URLs follow the structure: www.mysite.com/wp-content/uploads/revslider/templates/this-part-changes/ I have done the following to prevent these URLs from being created & indexed: 1. Added a directive in my Htaccess to 404 all of these URLs 2. Blocked /wp-content/uploads/revslider/ in my robots.txt 3. Manually de-inedex each URL using the GSC tool 4. Deleted the plugin However, new URLs still appear in Google's index, despite being blocked by robots.txt and resolving to a 404. Can anyone suggest any next steps? I Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Tom3_150 -
Do URLs with canonical tags get indexed by Google?
Hi, we re-branded and launched a new website in February 2016. In June we saw a steep drop in the number of URLs indexed, and there have continued to be smaller dips since. We started an account with Moz and found several thousand high priority crawl errors for duplicate pages and have since fixed those with canonical tags. However, we are still seeing the number of URLs indexed drop. Do URLs with canonical tags get indexed by Google? I can't seem to find a definitive answer on this. A good portion of our URLs have canonical tags because they are just events with different dates, but otherwise the content of the page is the same.
Technical SEO | | zasite0 -
How long does Google takes to re-index title tags?
Hi, We have carried out changes in our website title tags. However, when I search for these pages on Google, I still see the old title tags in the search results. Is there any way to speed this process up? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Kilgray0 -
How to check if an individual page is indexed by Google?
So my understanding is that you can use site: [page url without http] to check if a page is indexed by Google, is this 100% reliable though? Just recently Ive worked on a few pages that have not shown up when Ive checked them using site: but they do show up when using info: and also show their cached versions, also the rest of the site and pages above it (the url I was checking was quite deep) are indexed just fine. What does this mean? thank you p.s I do not have WMT or GA access for these sites
Technical SEO | | linklander0 -
Why is my blog disappearing from Google index?
My Google blogger blog is about 10 months old. In that time i have worked really hard with adding unique content, building relationships with other bloggers in the same niche, and done some inbound marketing. 2 weeks ago I updated the template to something cleaner, with a little more "wordpress" feel to it. This means i've messed about with the code a lot in these weeks, adding social buttons etc. The problem is that from some point late last week thurs/fri my pages started disappearing from Googles index. I have checked webmaster tools and have no manual actions. My link profile is pretty clean as its a new site, and i have manually checked every piece of content published for plagiarism etc. So what is going on? Did i break my blog? Or is something else amiss? Impressions are down 96% comparing Nov 1-5th to previous 5 days. site is here: http://bit.ly/174beVm Thanks for any help in advance.
Technical SEO | | Silkstream0 -
Should I put meta descriptions on pages that are not indexed?
I have multiple pages that I do not want to be indexed (and they are currently not indexed, so that's great). They don't have meta descriptions on them and I'm wondering if it's worth my time to go in and insert them, since they should hypothetically never be shown. Does anyone have any experience with this? Thanks! The reason this is a question is because one member of our team was linking to this page through Facebook to send people to it and noticed random text on the page being pulled in as the description.
Technical SEO | | Viewpoints0 -
Is Google caching date same as crawling/indexing date?
If a site is cached on say 9 oct 2012 doesn't that also mean that Google crawled it on same date ? And indexed it on same date?
Technical SEO | | Personnel_Concept0 -
How to block "print" pages from indexing
I have a fairly large FAQ section and every article has a "print" button. Unfortunately, this is creating a page for every article which is muddying up the index - especially on my own site using Google Custom Search. Can you recommend a way to block this from happening? Example Article: http://www.knottyboy.com/lore/idx.php/11/183/Maintenance-of-Mature-Locks-6-months-/article/How-do-I-get-sand-out-of-my-dreads.html Example "Print" page: http://www.knottyboy.com/lore/article.php?id=052&action=print
Technical SEO | | dreadmichael0