Robots.txt, Disallow & Indexed-Pages..
-
Hi guys,
hope you're well.
I have a problem with my new website. I have 3 pages with the same content:
- http://example.examples.com/brand/brand1 (good page)
- http://example.examples.com/brand/brand1?show=false
- http://example.examples.com/brand/brand1?show=true
The good page has rel=canonical & it is the only page should be appear in Search results but Google has indexed 3 pages...
I don't know how should do now, but, i am thinking 2 posibilites:
- Remove filters (true, false) and leave only the good page and show 404 page for others pages.
- Update robots.txt with disallow for these parameters & remove those URL's manually
Thank you so much!
-
Finally, i decided to do the next:
-
Delete all pages from my site with filters (i have the option and it wasn't a problem)
-
Delete URL using GWT individually
It works!
-
-
Hi thekiller99! Did this get worked out? We'd love an update.
-
Hi,
Did you actually implement canonical tags on duplicate pages, and do the point to the original piece?
-
Hi!
Not sure if i understood how you implemented the canonical element on your pages, but it sounds like you have only put the canonical code to what you call "good page"
The scenario should be like this:
1. You have 3 pages with similar/exact content.
2. Obviously you want to index only one of them and in your case it is the one without the parameters ("good page")
3. You need to go ahead and implement the canonical elements in the following way:- page-1: http://example.examples.com/brand/brand1 (you do not have to, but if it makes it ieasier for you you can use self canonical.)
- page-2: http://example.examples.com/brand/brand1?show=false (canonical to page-1)
- page-3: http://example.examples.com/brand/brand1?show=true (canonical page-1)
PS. Google best practice suggests that you should never use robots.txt to de-index a page from the search results. In case you decide to remove certain pages completely from the search results, the best practice is to 404 them and use Google Search console to signal google that these pages are no longer available. But if you implement the canonical element as described above, you will have no problems.
Best
Yossi
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
-
Robots.txt advice
Hey Guys, Have you ever seen coding like this in a robots.txt, I have never seen a noindex rule in a robots.txt file before - have you? user-agent: AhrefsBot User-agent: trovitBot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eLab_London
User-agent: Nutch
User-agent: Baiduspider
Disallow: / User-agent: *
Disallow: /WebServices/
Disallow: /*?notfound=
Disallow: /?list=
Noindex: /?*list=
Noindex: /local/
Disallow: /local/
Noindex: /handle/
Disallow: /handle/
Noindex: /Handle/
Disallow: /Handle/
Noindex: /localsites/
Disallow: /localsites/
Noindex: /search/
Disallow: /search/
Noindex: /Search/
Disallow: /Search/
Disallow: ? I have never seen a noindex rule in a robots.txt file before - have you?
Any pointers?0 -
Home page suddenly dropped from index!!
A client's home page, which has always done very well, has just dropped out of Google's index overnight!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caro-O
Webmaster tools does not show any problem. The page doesn't even show up if we Google the company name. The Robot.txt contains: Default Flywheel robots file User-agent: * Disallow: /calendar/action:posterboard/
Disallow: /events/action~posterboard/ The only unusual thing I'm aware of is some A/B testing of the page done with 'Optimizely' - it redirects visitors to a test page, but it's not a 'real' redirect in that redirect checker tools still see the page as a 200. Also, other pages that are being tested this way are not having the same problem. Other recent activity over the last few weeks/months includes linking to the page from some of our blog posts using the page topic as anchor text. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Caro0 -
Why extreme drop in number of pages indexed via GWMT sitemaps?
Any tips on why our GWMT Sitemaps indexed pages dropped to 27% of total submitted entries (2290 pages submitted, 622 indexed)? Already checked the obvious Test Sitemap, valid URLs etc. We had typically been at 95% of submitted getting indexed.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jkinnisch0 -
Files blocked in robot.txt and seo
I use joomla and I have blocked the following in my robots.txt is there anything that is bad for seo ? User-agent: * Disallow: /administrator/ Disallow: /cache/ Disallow: /components/ Disallow: /images/ Disallow: /includes/ Disallow: /installation/ Disallow: /language/ Disallow: /libraries/ Disallow: /media/ Disallow: /modules/ Disallow: /plugins/ Disallow: /templates/ Disallow: /tmp/ Disallow: /xmlrpc/ Disallow: /mailto:myemail@myemail.com/ Disallow: /javascript:void(0) Disallow: /.pdf
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Volusion store product pages will not index
Hello, I have moved over to Volusion and was wondering if you guys know of any SEO practices that are Volusion specific. i have been working on this site now for 2 months and my impressions and rankings have dropped substantially My 301 redirects where in place before I flipped over and my keywords / titles/ tags etc.. are in place. However i am still not making any progress in the engines. I have noticed that my products are not being indexed per Webmaster tools. I have heard that volusion has something set up to where you must purchase their SEO package in order to rank. I am really at my wits end and currently I thinking about taking a loss and reverting back to my old Shoppe Pro site. Any help would be very appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kerry0217
.0 -
Why are so many pages indexed?
We recently launched a new website and it doesn't consist of that many pages. When you do a "site:" search on Google, it shows 1,950 results. Obviously we don't want this to be happening. I have a feeling it's effecting our rankings. Is this just a straight up robots.txt problem? We addressed that a while ago and the number of results aren't going down. It's very possible that we still have it implemented incorrectly. What are we doing wrong and how do we start getting pages "un-indexed"?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
Can I Use Cross Domain Canonical For Duplicate Categories & Product Pages?
I want to fix issue regarding duplicate categories & product pages on my multiple eCommerce websites. http://www.vistastores.com/patio-umbrellas-fiberbuilt-umbrellas-llc-7gcrw-teal.html - Want to rank with this... http://www.vistapatioumbrellas.com/patio-umbrellas-fiberbuilt-umbrellas-llc-7gcrw-teal.html - Duplicate one! http://www.vistastores.com/patio-umbrellas - Want to rank with this... http://www.vistapatioumbrellas.com/patio-umbrellas - Duplicate one!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Scrolling Text Old School SEO and hidden index page
We have taken over a site and now find our self looking at the homepage of the site which has hidden scrolling text. A old school way of adding text without leaving loads of paragraphs. I have also removed all links to the index.htm page but somewhere visitors are still coming to this page in there droves. I am considering using a canonical url code but I would rather nip it in the bud. Would love some feedback from some other experts here is the site - http://www.radiatorcentre.com You never stop learning in seo and maybe we can all learn from this example. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onlinemediadirect0