Include or exclude noindex urls in sitemap?
-
We just added tags to our pages with thin content.
Should we include or exclude those urls from our sitemap.xml file? I've read conflicting recommendations.
-
Hi vcj and the rest of you guys
I would be very interested in learning what strategy you actually went ahead with, and the results. I have a similar issue as a result of pruning, and removing noindex pages from the sitemap makes perfect sense to me. We set a noindexed follow on several thousand pages without product descriptions/thin content and we have set things up so when we add new descriptions and updated onpage elements, the noindex is automatically reversed; which sounds perfect, however hardly any of the pages to date (3000-4000) are indexed, so looking for a feasible solution for exactly the same reasons as you.
We have better and comparable metrics and optimization than a lot of the competition, yet rankings are mediocre, so looking to improve on this.
It would be good to hear your views
Cheers
-
I'm aware of the fact Google will get to them sooner or later.
The recommendation from Gary Illyes (from Google), as mentioned in this post, was the reason for my asking the question. Not trying to outsmart Google, just trying to work within their guidelines in the most efficient way possible.
-
Just to put things into perspective,
if these URLs are all already indexed and you have used "noindex" on those pages, sooner or later google will re-crawl these pages and they will be removed. You may want to remove them from the index ASAP for some reason, but it wont really change anything. Because Google will not deindex your noindex pages just because they are in your sitemap.xml.
Google deindexes a sie only when it is time to re-crawl the page.Google never recommends using noindex in sitemaps, and google wont suggest that in their blocking search indexing results guidelines. Also Google indicates the following:
"Google will completely drop the page from search results, even if other pages link to it. If the content is currently in our index, we will remove it after the next time we crawl it. (To expedite removal, use the Remove URLs tool in Google Webmaster Tools.)"But hey! every SEO has its own take.. Some tend to try outsmart Google some not..
Good luck
-
That opens up other potential restrictions to getting this done quickly and easily. I wouldn't consider it best practices to create what is essentially a spam page full of internal links and Googlebot will likely not crawl all 4000 links if you have them all there. So now you'd be talking about maybe making 20 or so thin, spammy looking pages of 200+ internal links to hopefully fix the issue.
The quick, easy sounding options are not often the best option. Considering you're doing all of this in an attempt to fix issues that arose due to an algorithmic penalty, I'd suggest trying to follow best practices for making these changes. It might not be easy but it'll lessen your chances of having done a quick fix that might be the cause, or part of, a future penalty.
So if Fetch As won't work for you (considering lack of manpower to manually fetch 4000 pages), the sitemap.xml option might be the better choice for you.
-
Thanks, Mike.
What are your thoughts on creating a page with links to all of the pages we've Noindexed, doing a Fetch As and submitting that URL and its linked pages? Do you think Google would dislike that?
-
You could technically add them to the sitemap.xml in the hopes that this will get them noticed faster but the sitemap is commonly used for the things you want Google to crawl and index. Plus, placing them in the sitemap does not guarantee Google is going to get around to crawling your change or those specific pages. Technically speaking, doing nothing and jut waiting is equally as valid. Google will recrawl your site at some point. Sitemap.xml only helps if Google is crawling you to see it. Fetch As makes Google see your page as it is now which is like forcing part of a crawl. So technically Fetch As will be the more reliable, quicker choice though it will be more labor-intensive. If you don't have the man-hours to do a project like that at the moment, then waiting or using the Sitemap could work for you. Google even suggests using Fetch As for urls you want them to see that you have blocked with meta tags: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710?hl=en&ref_topic=4598466
-
There are too many pages to do that (unless we created a page with links to all of the Noindexed pages, then asked Google to crawl that and all linked pages, though that seems like it might be a bad approach). It's an ecommerce website and we Noindexed nearly 4,000 pages that had thin or duplicate content (manufacturer descriptions, no description on brand page, etc) and had no organic traffic in the past 90 days.
This site was hit by Panda in September 2014 and isn't ranking for things it should be – pages with better backlink profiles, higher DA/PA, better content, etc. than our competitors. Our thought is we're not ranking because of a penalty against thin/duplicate content. So we decided to Noindex these pages, improve the content on products that are selling and getting traffic, then work on improving pages that we've Noindex before switching them back to Index.
Basically following recommendations from this article: https://moz.com/blog/pruning-your-ecommerce-site
-
If the pages are in the index and you've recently added a NoIndex tag with the express purpose of getting them removed from the index, you may be better served doing crawl requests in Search Console of the pages in question.
-
Thanks for your response!
I did some more digging. This seems to contradict your suggestion:
https://twitter.com/methode/status/653980524264878080
If the goal is to have these pages removed from the index, and having them in the sitemap means they'll be picked up sooner by Google's crawler, then it seems to make sense that they should be included until they're removed from the index.
Am I misinterpreting this?
-
Hi
The reason you submit a sitemap to a searchengine is to ease and aid in crawling process for the pages that you want to get indexed. It speeds up the crawling process and lets search engine to discover all those pages that has no inner linkings to it etc..
A "noindex" tag does the opposite.
So no, you should not include noindex pages inside your sitemap files.
In general you should avoid pages that are not returning 200 also.Good luck
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
-
WP URL issue - Concatenated URLs (LOTS of them)
WP is doing this somehow, and creating URLs for hundreds of pages that don't exist. HOW is this happening, and how do I stop It? I have many, many URLS like this: https://www.atouchofrust.com/terms-of-use/atouchofrust.com/vendor-news. Of note, atouchofrust.com/terms-of-use, and atouchofrust.com/vendor-news are both legit pages on the site. Why they are being concatenated is beyond my limited understanding of WP. Please, somebody, help. Cori
Technical SEO | | FlyingC0 -
Recovering from Sitemap Issues with Bing
Hi all, I recently took over SEO efforts for a large e-commerce site (I would prefer not to disclose). About a month ago, I began to notice a significant drop in traffic from Bing and uncovered in Bing Webmaster Tools that three different versions of the sitemap were submitted and Bing was crawling all three. I removed the two out of date sitemaps and re-submitted the up to date version. Since then, I have yet to see Bing traffic rebound and the amount of pages indexed by Bing is still dropping daily. During this time there has been no issue with traffic from Google. Currently I have 1.3 million pages indexed by Google while Bing has dropped to 715K (it was at 755K last week and was on par with Google several months ago). I know that no major changes have been made to the site in the past year so I can't point to anything other than the sitemap issue to explain this. If this is indeed the only issue, how long should I expect to wait for Bing to re-index the pages? In the interim I have been manually submitting important pages that aren't currently in the index. Any insights or suggestions would be very much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | tdawson090 -
Friendly URLs for MultiLingual Site
Hi, We have a multilingual website with both latin and non-latin characters, We are working on creating a friendly URL structure for the site. For the Latin languages can we use translated version of the URLs within the language folders? For example - www.site/cars www.site/fr/voitures www.site/es/autos
Technical SEO | | theLotter0 -
# in url affecting rank
Hi I am building links to a page www.companyname.com/category.index.php There is also another similar url www.companyname.com/category.index.php#. This page is linked to from the non # page. This is a new client and I'm not entirely sure why that link is there. Am I correct in thinking that these two urls are different in the eyes of the search engines? If so, would some of the link juice to www.companyname.com/category.index.php be transferred to www.companyname.com/category.index.php# and affect the ranking of the non # page? I hope this makes sense! Thanks
Technical SEO | | sicseo0 -
Changing all urls
A client of mine has a wordpress website that is installed in a directory, called "site". So when you go to www.domain.com you are redirected to www.domain.com/site. We all know how bad it is to have a redirect fron your subdomain to another page. In this case I measured a loss of 5 points of page authority. The question is: what is the best practice to remove the "site" from the address and changing all the urls? Should I use the webmaster tool to tell to Google that the site is moving? It's not 100% true, cause the site is just moving one level up. Should I install a copy of the website under www.domain.com and just redirect 301 every old page to its new url? This way I think the site would be deindexet for 2/3 months. Any suggestions or tips welcome! Thanks DoMiSol
Technical SEO | | DoMiSoL0 -
Removing URL Parentheses in HTACCESS
Im reworking a website for a client, and their current URLs have parentheses. I'd like to get rid of these, but individual 301 redirects in htaccess is not practical, since the parentheses are located in many URLs. Does anyone know an HTACCESS rule that will simply remove URL parantheses as a 301 redirect?
Technical SEO | | JaredMumford0 -
URL structure
Hi, I am in the process of having a site created which will focus on the Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and PS3 Vita. I would appreciate some advice when it comes to the URL structure. Each category mentioned above will have the following subsections News
Technical SEO | | WalesDragon
Reviews
Screenshots
Trailers Would the best url structure be? www.domain.com/xbox-360/news/news-story-headline
www.domain.com/ps3/reviews/ps3-game-name Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions.0 -
XML Sitemap without PHP
Is it possible to generate an XML sitemap for a site without PHP? If so, how?
Technical SEO | | jeffreytrull11