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.
Partial Match or RegEx in Search Console's URL Parameters Tool?
-
So I currently have approximately 1000 of these URLs indexed, when I only want roughly 100 of them.
Let's say the URL is www.example.com/page.php?par1=ABC123=&par2=DEF456=&par3=GHI789=
All the indexed URLs follow that same kinda format, but I only want to index the URLs that have a par1 of ABC (but that could be ABC123 or ABC456 or whatever). Using URL Parameters tool in Search Console, I can ask Googlebot to only crawl URLs with a specific value. But is there any way to get a partial match, using regex maybe?
Am I wasting my time with Search Console, and should I just disallow any page.php without par1=ABC in robots.txt?
-
No problem
Hope you get it sorted!
-Andy
-
Thank you!
-
Haha, I think the train passed the station on that one. I would have realised eventually... XD
Thanks for your help!
-
Don't forget that . & ? have a specific meaning within regex - if you want to use them for pattern matching you will have to escape them. Also be aware that not all bots are capable of interpreting regex in robots.txt - you might want to be more explicit on the user agent - only using regex for Google bot.
User-agent: Googlebot
#disallowing page.php and any parameters after it
disallow: /page.php
#but leaving anything that starts with par1=ABC
allow: page.php?par1=ABC
Dirk
-
Ah sorry I missed that bit!
-Andy
-
Disallowing them would be my first priority really, before removing from index.
The trouble with this is that if you disallow first, Google won't be able to crawl the page to act on the noindex. If you add a noindex flag, Google won't index them the next time it comes-a-crawling and then you will be good to disallow
I'm not actually sure of the best way for you to get the noindex in to the page header of those pages though.
-Andy
-
Yep, have done. (Briefly mentioned in my previous response.) Doesn't pass
-
I thought so too, but according to Google the trailing wildcard is completely unnecessary, and only needs to be used mid-URL.
-
Hi Andy,
Disallowing them would be my first priority really, before removing from index. Didn't want to remove them before I've blocked Google from crawling them in case they get added back again next time Google comes a-crawling, as has happened before when I've simply removed a URL here and there. Does that make sense or am I getting myself mixed up here?
My other hack of a solution would be to check the URL in the page.php, and if URL includes par1=ABC then insert noindex meta tag. (Not sure if that would work well or not...)
-
My guess would be that this line needs an * at the end.
Allow: /page.php?par1=ABC* -
Sorry Martijn, just to jump in here for a second - Ria, you can test this via the Robots.txt testing tool in search console before going live to make sure it work.
-Andy
-
Hi Martijn, thanks for your response!
I'm currently looking at something like this...
**user-agent: *** #disallowing page.php and any parameters after it
disallow: /page.php #but leaving anything that starts with par1=ABC
allow: /page.php?par1=ABCI would have thought that you could disallow things broadly like that and give an exception, as you can with files in disallowed folders. But it's not passing Google's robots.txt Tester.
One thing that's probably worth mentioning really is that there are only two variables that I want to allow of the par1 parameter. For example's sake, ABC123 and ABC456. So would need to be either a partial match or "this or that" kinda deal, disallowing everything else.
-
Hi Ria,
I have never tried regular expressions in this way, so I can't tell you if this would work or not.
However, If all 1000 of these URL's are already indexed, just disallowing access won't then remove them from Google. You would ideally be able to place a noindex tag on those pages and let Google act on them, then you will be good to disallow. I am pretty sure there is no option to noindex under the URL Parameter Tool.
I hope that makes sense?
-Andy
-
Hi Ria,
What you could do, but it also depends on the rest of your structure is Disallow these urls based on the parameters (what you could do in a worst case scenario is that you would disallow all URLs and then put an exception Allow in there as well to make sure you still have the right URLs being indexed).
Martijn.
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
-
Search console validation taking a long time?
Hello! I did something dumb back in the beginning of September. I updated Yoast and somehow noindexed a whole set of custom taxonomy on my site. I fixed this and then asked Google to validate the fixes on September 20. Since then they have gotten through only 5 of the 64 URLS.....is this normal? Just want to make sure I'm not missing something that I should be doing. Thank you! ^_^
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | angelamaemae0 -
What's the best way to noindex pages but still keep backlinks equity?
Hello everyone, Maybe it is a stupid question, but I ask to the experts... What's the best way to noindex pages but still keep backlinks equity from those noindexed pages? For example, let's say I have many pages that look similar to a "main" page which I solely want to appear on Google, so I want to noindex all pages with the exception of that "main" page... but, what if I also want to transfer any possible link equity present on the noindexed pages to the main page? The only solution I have thought is to add a canonical tag pointing to the main page on those noindexed pages... but will that work or cause wreak havoc in some way?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau3 -
Why is /home used in this company's home URL?
Just working with a company that has chosen a home URL with /home latched on - very strange indeed - has anybody else comes across this kind of homepage URL "decision" in the past? I can't see why on earth anybody would do this! Perhaps simply a logic-defying decision?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
How can I get a list of every url of a site in Google's index?
I work on a site that has almost 20,000 urls in its site map. Google WMT claims 28,000 indexed and a search on Google shows 33,000. I'd like to find what the difference is. Is there a way to get an excel sheet with every url Google has indexed for a site? Thanks... Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
May know what's the meaning of these parameters in .htaccess?
Begin HackRepair.com Blacklist RewriteEngine on Abuse Agent Blocking RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^BlackWidow [NC,OR]
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | esiow2013
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Bolt\ 0 [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Bot\ mailto:craftbot@yahoo.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} CazoodleBot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^ChinaClaw [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Custo [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Default\ Browser\ 0 [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^DIIbot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^DISCo [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} discobot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Download\ Demon [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^eCatch [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ecxi [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EirGrabber [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EmailCollector [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EmailSiphon [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EmailWolf [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Express\ WebPictures [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^ExtractorPro [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EyeNetIE [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^FlashGet [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^GetRight [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^GetWeb! [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Go!Zilla [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Go-Ahead-Got-It [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^GrabNet [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Grafula [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} GT::WWW [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} heritrix [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^HMView [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} HTTP::Lite [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} HTTrack [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ia_archiver [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} IDBot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} id-search [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} id-search.org [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Image\ Stripper [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Image\ Sucker [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Indy\ Library [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^InterGET [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Internet\ Ninja [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^InternetSeer.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} IRLbot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ISC\ Systems\ iRc\ Search\ 2.1 [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Java [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^JetCar [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^JOC\ Web\ Spider [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^larbin [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^LeechFTP [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} libwww [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} libwww-perl [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Link [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} LinksManager.com_bot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} linkwalker [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} lwp-trivial [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Mass\ Downloader [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Maxthon$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} MFC_Tear_Sample [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^microsoft.url [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Microsoft\ URL\ Control [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^MIDown\ tool [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Mister\ PiX [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Missigua\ Locator [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Mozilla.*Indy [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Mozilla.NEWT [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^MSFrontPage [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Navroad [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NearSite [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NetAnts [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NetSpider [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Net\ Vampire [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NetZIP [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Nutch [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Octopus [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Offline\ Explorer [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Offline\ Navigator [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^PageGrabber [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} panscient.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Papa\ Foto [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^pavuk [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} PECL::HTTP [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^PeoplePal [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^pcBrowser [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} PHPCrawl [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} PleaseCrawl [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^psbot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^RealDownload [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^ReGet [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Rippers\ 0 [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} SBIder [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SeaMonkey$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^sitecheck.internetseer.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SiteSnagger [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SmartDownload [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Snoopy [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Steeler [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SuperBot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SuperHTTP [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Surfbot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^tAkeOut [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Teleport\ Pro [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Toata\ dragostea\ mea\ pentru\ diavola [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} URI::Fetch [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} urllib [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} User-Agent [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^VoidEYE [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Web\ Image\ Collector [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Web\ Sucker [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Web\ Sucker [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} webalta [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebAuto [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^[Ww]eb[Bb]andit [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} WebCollage [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebCopier [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebFetch [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebGo\ IS [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebLeacher [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebReaper [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebSauger [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Website\ eXtractor [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Website\ Quester [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebStripper [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebWhacker [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebZIP [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Wells\ Search\ II [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} WEP\ Search [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Wget [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Widow [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WWW-Mechanize [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WWWOFFLE [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Xaldon\ WebSpider [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} zermelo [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Zeus [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^(.)Zeus.Webster [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ZyBorg [NC]
RewriteRule ^. - [F,L] Abuse bot blocking rule end End HackRepair.com Blacklist1 -
Url structure for multiple search filters applied to products
We have a product catalog with several hundred similar products. Our list of products allows you apply filters to hone your search, so that in fact there are over 150,000 different individual searches you could come up with on this page. Some of these searches are relevant to our SEO strategy, but most are not. Right now (for the most part) we save the state of each search with the fragment of the URL, or in other words in a way that isn't indexed by the search engines. The URL (without hashes) ranks very well in Google for our one main keyword. At the moment, Google doesn't recognize the variety of content possible on this page. An example is: http://www.example.com/main-keyword.html#style=vintage&color=blue&season=spring We're moving towards a more indexable URL structure and one that could potentially save the state of all 150,000 searches in a way that Google could read. An example would be: http://www.example.com/main-keyword/vintage/blue/spring/ I worry, though, that giving so many options in our URL will confuse Google and make a lot of duplicate content. After all, we only have a few hundred products and inevitably many of the searches will look pretty similar. Also, I worry about losing ground on the main http://www.example.com/main-keyword.html page, when it's ranking so well at the moment. So I guess the questions are: Is there such a think as having URLs be too specific? Should we noindex or set rel=canonical on the pages whose keywords are nested too deep? Will our main keyword's page suffer when it has to share all the inbound links with these other, more specific searches?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | boxcarpress0 -
Posing QU's on Google Variables "aclk", "gclid" "cd", "/aclk" "/search", "/url" etc
I've been doing a bit of stats research prompted by read the recent ranking blog http://www.seomoz.org/blog/gettings-rankings-into-ga-using-custom-variables There are a few things that have come up in my research that I'd like to clear up. The below analysis has been done on my "conversions". 1/. What does "/aclk" mean in the Referrer URL? I have noticed a strong correlation between this and "gclid" in the landing page variable. Does it mean "ad click" ?? Although they seem to "closely" correlate they don't exactly, so when I have /aclk in the referrer Url MOSTLY I have gclid in the landing page URL. BUT not always, and the same applies vice versa. It's pretty vital that I know what is the best way to monitor adwords PPC, so what is the best variable to go on? - Currently I am using "gclid", but I have about 25% extra referral URL's with /aclk in that dont have "gclid" in - so am I underestimating my number of PPC conversions? 2/. The use of the variable "cd" is great, but it is not always present. I have noticed that 99% of my google "Referrer URL's" either start with:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James77
/aclk - No cd value
/search - No cd value
/url - Always contains the cd variable. What do I make of this?? Thanks for the help in advance!0 -
Is 404'ing a page enough to remove it from Google's index?
We set some pages to 404 status about 7 months ago, but they are still showing in Google's index (as 404's). Is there anything else I need to do to remove these?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0
