Sitemap Contains Blocked Resources
-
Hey Mozzers,
I have several pages on my website that are for user search purposes only. They sort some products by range and answer some direct search queries users type into the site. They are basically just product collections that are else ware grouped in different ways.
As such I didn't wants SERPS getting their hands on them so blocked them in robots so I could add then worry free. However, they automatically get pulled into the sitemap by Magento.
This has made Webmaster tools give me a warning that 21 urls in the sitemaps are blocked by robots.
Is this terrible SEO wise?
Should I have opted to NOINDEX these URLS instead? I was concerned about thin content so really didnt want google crawling them.
-
Thanks for the latest responses guys
I have researched it into the grave and it the way Magento generates the sitemap makes it impossible for me to exclude these URLS.
I will just unblock them from robots, and make them all noindex. This seems to solve all problems, i will then block them when im 100% sure they are unindexed.
Thanks Again chaps.
Big help as always.
-
OK so first because some are indexed, if you block access, they will never be removed.
What you will need to do is add a noindex tag to the pages but don't block access to them so that Google can honour the noindex. Remove the pages via Search Console and once you have confirmed these are all removed from the index, you will be good to then block access via robots.txt.
As CleverPhD said, ideally you don't want pages in the index that can't be crawled, but it isn't likely to cause a penalty of any sort (I have a client with about 70-80 blocked - long story - no issues in 12 months) if you are stuck because of Megento - Perhaps research to see how others have got around this?
-Andy
-
I would recommend that you try and get those pages out of your sitemap. If you look through the Google sitemap best practices, it states that the sitemap should be for pages that Googlebot can access.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/10/best-practices-for-xml-sitemaps-rssatom.html
URLs
URLs in XML sitemaps and RSS/Atom feeds should adhere to the following guidelines:
- Only include URLs that can be fetched by Googlebot. **A common mistake is **including URLs disallowed by robots.txt — which cannot be fetched by Googlebot, or including URLs of pages that don't exist.
-
Hi Andy,
I just checked and yes they were previously index'd and some of them still are.
-
Hi,
Is this terrible SEO wise?
Not really - it just means that Google can see that there is a page they can't access so are informing you of this. There is no negative penalty that is going to come from this. If there were old pages that are now 404's then it would be a different story.
I just want to be sure of something - were the pages previously open to Google? Are they currently indexed?
-Andy
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
-
Sitemap: Linking horizontal pages on a sitemap that has a vertical hierarchy structure
I'm currently in the process of revamping a website and creating a sitemap for it so that all pages get indexed by search engines. The site is divided into two websites that share the same root domain. The marketing site is on example.com and the application is on go.example.com. To get to go.example.com from example.com, you need to go through one of three “action pages”. The action pages are accessed from every page on example.com where we have a CTA button on the site (that’s pretty much every page). These action pages do not link back to any other page on the site though, nor are they a necessary step to navigate to other webpages. These action pages are only viewed when a user is ready to be taken to the application site. My question is, how should these pages be set up in a vertical sitemap since these three pages have a horizontal structure? Any insight would be much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | RallyUp0 -
Sudden Drop in Indexed Pages and Images under Sitemap
Hello! Just a couple days back, realised that under the Google Webmaster Tool > Sitemap, my website www.bibliotek.co has a sudden drop in indexed pages and images. Previously, it was almost fully indexed. However, I checked and the Google Index > Index Status, it is still fully indexed Any reason why and how do I resolve? Any help is very much appreciated! Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | Bibliotek1230 -
Which Sitemap to keep - Http or https (or both)
Hi, Just finished upgrading my site to the ssl version (like so many other webmasters now that it may be a ranking factor). FIxed all links, CDN links are now secure, etc and 301 Redirected all pages from http to https. Changed property in Google Analytics from http to https and added https version in Webmaster Tools. So far, so good. Now the question is should I add the https version of the sitemap in the new HTTPS site in webmasters or retain the existing http one? Ideally switching over completely to https version by adding a new sitemap would make more sense as the http version of the sitemap would anyways now be re-directed to HTTPS. But the last thing i can is to get penalized for duplicate content. Could you please suggest as I am still a rookie in this department. If I should add the https sitemap version in the new site, should i delete the old http one or no harm retaining it.
Technical SEO | | ashishb010 -
Site blocked by robots.txt and 301 redirected still in SERPs
I have a vanity URL domain that 301 redirects to my main site. That domain does have a robots.txt to disallow the entire site as well. However, for a branded enough search that vanity domain still shows up in SERPs and has the new Google message of: A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt I get why the message is there - that's not my , my question is shouldn't a 301 redirect trump this domain showing in SERPs, ever? Client isn't happy about it showing at all. How can I get the vanity domain out of the SERPs? THANKS in advance!
Technical SEO | | VMLYRDiscoverability0 -
Quality Issues: My blog is blocked on Google Search Engine
Hi Webmasters, I got an email from google team. The email is included below. **Google Webmaster Tools: Quality Issues on http://abcdblogger.com/**August 8, 2012 Dear site owner or webmaster of http://abcdblogger.com/, We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines. If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see ourWebmaster Help Forum for support. Sincerely, Google Search Quality Team My blog is completely blocked on Google Search engine. I removed all existing posts and reinstalled a fresh version of wordpress and wrote a good article. I redirected all broken links my homepage with a 301. After making those changes I submitted a reconsideration request to Google, But they declined it. I doubt that the reason for blocking could be due to the backlinks pointing to my domain. I think Google's Disavow Tool help me to remove low quality backlinks, But how can I sort low quality backlinks using Opensite Explorer? If possible can you create a text file with all possible low quality links, So that I could submit it using Google Disavow Tool. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | hafiskani0 -
How do I check if my IP is blocked?
We changed servers and where our sites once ranked very highly (page 1 for all sites), they now are nowhere to be seen. Someone suggested that our IP might be blocked. Someone else suggested SEOMoz was the place to go to get it checked. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. With thanks. Bryan
Technical SEO | | FortressLearning0 -
URL restructure and phasing out HTML sitemap
Hi SEOMozzies, Love the Q&A resource and already found lots of useful stuff too! I just started as an in-house SEO at a retailer and my first main challenge is to tidy up the complex URL structures and remove the ugly sub sitemap approach currently used. I already found a number of suggestions but it looks like I am dealing with a number of challenges that I need to resolve in a single release. So here is the current setup: The website is an ecommerce site (department store) with around 30k products. We are using multi select navigation (non Ajax). The main website uses a third party search engine to power the multi select navigation, that search engine has a very ugly URL structure. For example www.domain.tld/browse?location=1001/brand=100/color=575&size=1&various other params, or for multi select URL’s www.domain.tld/browse?location=1001/brand=100,104,506/color=575&size=1 &various other non used URL params. URL’s are easily up to 200 characters long and non-descriptive at all to our users. Many of these type of URL’s are indexed by search engines (we currently have 1.2 million of those URL’s indexed including session id’s and all other nasty URL params) Next to this the site is using a “sub site” that is sort of optimized for SEO, not 100% sure this is cloaking but it smells like it. It has a simplified navigation structure and better URL structure for products. Layout is similair to our main site but all complex HTMLelements like multi select, large top navigations menu's etc are all removed. Many of these links are indexed by search engines and rank higher than links from our main website. The URL structure is www.domain.tld/1/optimized-url .Currently 64.000 of these URL’s are indexed. We have links to this sub site in the footer of every page but a normal customer would never reach this site unless they come from organic search. Once a user lands on one of these pages we try to push him back to the main site as quickly as possible. My planned approach to improve this: 1.) Tidy up the URL structure in the main website (e.g. www.domain.tld/women/dresses and www.domain.tld/diesel-red-skirt-4563749. I plan to use Solution 2 as described in http://www.seomoz.org/blog/building-faceted-navigation-that-doesnt-suck to block multi select URL’s from being indexed and would like to use the URL param “location” as an indicator for search engines to ignore the link. A risk here is that all my currently indexed URL (1.2 million URL’s) will be blocked immediately after I put this live. I cannot redirect those URL’s to the optimized URL’s as the old URL’s should still be accessible. 2.) Remove the links to the sub site (www.domain.tld/1/optimized-url) from the footer and redirect (301) all those URL’s to the newly created SEO friendly product URL’s. URL’s that cannot be matched since there is no similar catalog location in the main website will be redirected (301) to our homepage. I wonder if this is a correct approach and if it would be better to do this in a phased way rather than the currently planned big bang? Any feedback would be highly appreciated, also let me know if things are not clear. Thanks! Chris
Technical SEO | | eCommerceSEO0 -
Best blocking solution for Google
Posting this for Dave SottimanoI Here's the scenario: You've got a set of URLs indexed by Google, and you want them out quickly Once you've managed to remove them, you want to block Googlebot from crawling them again - for whatever reason. Below is a sample of the URLs you want blocked, but you only want to block /beerbottles/ and anything past it: www.example.com/beers/brandofbeer/beerbottles/1 www.example.com/beers/brandofbeer/beerbottles/2 www.example.com/beers/brandofbeer/beerbottles/3 etc.. To remove the pages from the index should you?: Add the Meta=noindex,follow tag to each URL you want de-indexed Use GWT to help remove the pages Wait for Google to crawl again If that's successful, to block Googlebot from crawling again - should you?: Add this line to Robots.txt: DISALLOW */beerbottles/ Or add this line: DISALLOW: /beerbottles/ "To add the * or not to add the *, that is the question" Thanks! Dave
Technical SEO | | goodnewscowboy0