URLs are not indexed
-
My website has 0.5 million pages with urls like this- **http://www.mycity4kids.com/Delhi-NCR/collage-painting-classes-%3cnear%3e-shalimar-bagh ****, **none of these urls are indexed.
Question 1- What can be the possible reason for this issue? Users see this url as : http://www.mycity4kids.com/Delhi-NCR/collage-painting-classes-<near>-shalimar-bagh</near>
The symbol "<" and ">" get converted into "%3c" and "%3e" respectively, is this the reason for these urls not getting indexed? -
Hi Prashant,
If these URLs are only created when a user searches for a term, but are not linked to anywhere in HTML either on your site or elsewhere on the Internet, this is a very good reason why they are not indexed.
Google does not usually perform queries on a site (e.g. fill in forms) to "discover" what content might be displayed when those forms are filled in. It's tried and tested method of crawling is just that - crawling links and text in HTML. It has become more adventurous with different technology and sometimes finds things that it wouldn't have previously, but linking is still the primary way to ensure something gets crawled.
In many cases, you wouldn't want Google finding content that it has to perform queries / fill in forms or searches to get to: this is how some sites create massive amounts of duplicate content by accident. So in a way, Google is doing everyone a favour by not indexing URLs like this.
We have submitted these urls on google webmaster using a "sitemap" for indexing still none of them are indexed.
I tend to think of sitemaps like road maps: they're a guide. The site itself is the road. If a map tells me that I can drive across a river but when I get there, this is no bridge, I'm not going to drive across the river. Maybe I will if I have a huge four-wheel-drive car with a snorkel, but possibly not. Maybe Google will index URLs it can't find on the web itself, but possibly not.
If you want the URLs to be found, link to them
Cheers,
Jane
-
Just Google the URL it can't be simpler, if there is a result it's indexed.
-
Thanks Martijn
Could you please tell how many ways are there to check whether a page is indexed or not?
Someone on a different forum told me that we can check "indexed status" of a url by directly googling that url, there is no need to use "site:" operator.
-
Hi Prashant,
Then that's definitely your issue, I wouldn't index any pages to be honest that I couldn't find in any navigation besides self finding the pages. I would link from any related pages to the pages that you want to have indexed.
-
Thanks Martijn,
Yes, if a user enter a search term then these URL get formed. for example if you visit : www.mycity4kids.com and enter Collage Painting Classes in 1st search box and Shalimar Bagh in 2nd search box then you will see this:** http://www.mycity4kids.com/Delhi-NCR/collage-painting-classes-<near>-shalimar-bagh</near>** url in address bar.
We have submitted these urls on google webmaster using a "sitemap" for indexing still none of them are indexed.
-
Hi Prashant,
Can these pages be found via the navigation or do you have to enter a search term to get to them? I can't find any links to the first page you've listed in your question. If that's the case than it's quite normal that Google didn't index the page as they just aren't able to find the page in the first place.
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
Hi We have roughly 8500 pages in our website. Google had indexed almost 6000 of them, but now suddenly I see that the pages indexed has gone to 45. Any possible explanations why this might be happening and what can be done for it. Thanks, Priyam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kh-priyam0 -
E-commerce duplicate URLS
Hi I just realized that my e-commerce products do not have any difference except the SKUS, PRICE and THE PRODUCT name. Apart from each page has the same sidebar and a piece of content ( same ) under each product pages. And this is the reason why i am getting too many duplicate urls warning through Moz analytics. I do not have any other contents to add for each product because of the nature of the product. Only the price, product name and the SKUs will be different and rest will all be same for each products. How can i fix this ? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MindlessWizard0 -
VisitSweden indexing error
Hi all Just got a new site up about weekend travel for VisitSweden, the official tourism office of Sweden. Everything went just fine except som issues with indexing. The site can be found here at weekend.visitsweden.com/no/ For some weird reason the "frontpage" of the site does not get indexed. What I have done myself to find the issue: Added sitemaps.xml Configured and added site to webmaster tools Checked 301s so they are not faulty By doing a simple site:weekend.visitsweden.com/no/ you can see that the frontpage is simple not in the index. Also by doing a cache:weekend.visitsweden.com/no/ I see that Google tries to index the page without the trailing /no/ for some reason. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://weekend.visitsweden.com/no/ Any smart ideas to get this fixed or where to start looking? All help greatly appreciated Kind regards Fredrik
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Resultify0 -
Index, Nofollow Issue
We are having on our site a couple of pages that we want the page to be indexed, however, we don't want the links on the page to be followed. For example url: http://www.printez.com/animal-personal-checks.html. We have added in our code: . Bing Webmaster Tools, is telling us the following: The pages uses a meta robots tag. Review the value of the tag to see if you are not unintentionally blocking the page from being indexed (NOINDEX). Question is, is the page using the right code as of now or do we need to do any changes in the code, if so, what should we use for them to index the page, but not to follow the links on the page? Please advise, Morris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PrintEZ0 -
Is this link being indexed?
link text Deadline: Monday, Sep 30, 2013 link text I appreciate the help guys!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jameswalkerson0 -
Google suddenly indexing and displaying URLs that haven't existed for years?
We recently noticed google is showing approx 23,000 indexed .jsp urls for our site. These are ancient pages that haven't existed in years and have long been 301 redirected to valid urls. I'm talking 6 years. Checking the serps the other day (and our current SEOMoz pro campaign), I see that a few of these urls are now replacing our correct ones in the serps for important, competitive phrases. What the heck is going on here? Is Google suddenly ignoring rewrite rules and redirects? Here's an example of the rewrite rules that we've used for 6+ years: RewriteRule ^(.*)/xref_interlux_antifoulingoutboards&keels.jsp$ $1/userportal/search_subCategory.do?categoryName=Bottom%20Paint&categoryId=35&refine=1&page=GRID [R=301] Now, this 'bottom paint' url has been incredibly stable in the serps for over a half decade. All of a sudden, a google search for 'bottom paint' (no quotes) brings up the jsp page at position 2-3. This is just one example of something very bizarre happening. Has anyone else had something similar happen lately? Thank You <colgroup><col width="64"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jamestown
| RewriteRule ^(.*)/xref_interlux_antifoulingoutboards&keels.jsp$ $1/userportal/search_subCategory.do?categoryName=Bottom%20Paint&categoryId=35&refine=1&page=GRID [R=301] |0 -
Does Google index url with hashtags?
We are setting up some Jquery tabs in a page that will produce the same url with hashtags. For example: index.php#aboutus, index.php#ourguarantee, etc. We don't want that content to be crawled as we'd like to prevent duplicate content. Does Google normally crawl such urls or does it just ignore them? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoppc20120 -
Can a XML sitemap index point to other sitemaps indexes?
We have a massive site that is having some issue being fully crawled due to some of our site architecture and linking. Is it possible to have a XML sitemap index point to other sitemap indexes rather than standalone XML sitemaps? Has anyone done this successfully? Based upon the description here: http://sitemaps.org/protocol.php#index it seems like it should be possible. Thanks in advance for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CareerBliss0