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.
How can I make a list of all URLs indexed by Google?
-
I started working for this eCommerce site 2 months ago, and my SEO site audit revealed a massive spider trap.
The site should have been 3500-ish pages, but Google has over 30K pages in its index. I'm trying to find a effective way of making a list of all URLs indexed by Google.
Anyone?
(I basically want to build a sitemap with all the indexed spider trap URLs, then set up 301 on those, then ping Google with the "defective" sitemap so they can see what the site really looks like and remove those URLs, shrinking the site back to around 3500 pages)
-
If you can get a developer to create a list of all the pages Google has crawled within a date range then you can use this python script to check if the page is indexed or not.
http://searchengineland.com/check-urls-indexed-google-using-python-259773
The script uses the info: search feature to check the urls.
You will have to install Python, Tor and Polipo for this to work. It is quite technical so if you aren't a technical person you may need help.
Depending on how many URL's you have and how long you decide to wait before checking each URL, it can take a few hours.
-
Thanks for your input guys! I've almost landed on the following approach:
- Use this http://www.chrisains.com/seo-tools/extract-urls-from-web-serps/ to collect a number (3-600) of URLs based on the various problem URL-footprints.
- Make XML "problem sitemaps" based on above URLs
- Implement 301s
- Ping the search engines with the XML "problem sitemaps", so that these may discover changes and see what the site really looks like (ideally reducing the # of indexed pages by about 85%)
- Track SE traffic as well as index for each URL footprint once a week for 6-8 weeks and follow progress
- If progress is not satisfactory, then go the URL Profiler route.
Any thoughts before I go ahead?
-
URL profiler will do this, as well as the other recommend scraper sites.
-
URL Profiler might be worth checking out:
It does require that you use a proxy, since Google does not like you scraping their search results.
-
Im sorry to confirm you that google does not want to everyine know that they have in their index. We as SEOs complain about that.
Its hard to belive that you couldnt get all your pages with a scraper. (because it just searches and gets the SERPS)
-
I tried thiss and a few others http://www.chrisains.com/seo-tools/extract-urls-from-web-serps/. This gave me about 500-1000 URLs at a time, but included a lot of cut and paste back and forth.
I imagine there must be a much easier way of doing this...
-
Well, There are some scrapers that might do that job.
To do it the right way you will need proxies and a scraper.
My recommendation is Gscraper or Scrapebox and a list of (at list) 10 proxies.Then, just make a scrape whit the "site:mydomain.com" and see what you get.
(before buying proxies or any scraper, check if you get something like you want with the free stuff) -
I used Screaming to discover the spider trap (and more), but as far as I know, I cannot use Screaming to import all URLs that Google actually has in its index (or can I?).
A list of URLs actually in Googles index is what I'm after
-
Hi Sverre,
Have you tried Screaming Frog SEO Spider? Here a link to it: https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
It's really helpfull to crawl all the pages you have as accesible for spiders. You might need the premium version to crawl over 500 pages.
Also, have you checked for the common duplicate pages issues? Here a Moz tutorial: https://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content
Hope it helps.
GR.
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
-
SEO on Jobs sites: how to deal with expired listings with "Google for Jobs" around
Dear community, When dealing with expired job offers on jobs sites from a SEO perspective, most practitioners recommend to implement 301 redirects to category pages in order to keep the positive ranking signals of incoming links. Is it necessary to rethink this recommendation with "Google for Jobs" is around? Google's recommendations on how to handle expired job postings does not include 301 redirects. "To remove a job posting that is no longer available: Remove the job posting from your sitemap. Do one of the following: Note: Do NOT just add a message to the page indicating that the job has expired without also doing one of the following actions to remove the job posting from your sitemap. Remove the JobPosting markup from the page. Remove the page entirely (so that requesting it returns a 404 status code). Add a noindex meta tag to the page." Will implementing 301 redirects the chances to appear in "Google for Jobs"? What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grnjbs07175 -
How can I stop spam Google Organic traffic?
Hey Moz, I'm a rather experienced SEO who just encountered a problem I have never faced. I am hoping to get some advice or be pointed in the right direction. I just started work for a new client. Really great client and website. Nicer than most design/content. They will need some rel canonical work but that is not the issue here. The traffic looked great at first glance 131k visits in April. Google Analytics Acquisition Overview showed 94% of the traffic as organic. When I dug deeper and looked at the organic source I saw that Google was 99.9% of it. Normal enough. Then I looked at the time on site and my jaw dropped. 118,454 Organic New Users for Google only stayed on the site for 3 seconds. There is no way that the traffic is real. It does not match what Google Webmaster tools, Moz, and Ahrefs are telling me. How do I stop a service that is sending fake organic Google traffic?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | placementLabs0 -
Will disallowing URL's in the robots.txt file stop those URL's being indexed by Google
I found a lot of duplicate title tags showing in Google Webmaster Tools. When I visited the URL's that these duplicates belonged to, I found that they were just images from a gallery that we didn't particularly want Google to index. There is no benefit to the end user in these image pages being indexed in Google. Our developer has told us that these urls are created by a module and are not "real" pages in the CMS. They would like to add the following to our robots.txt file Disallow: /catalog/product/gallery/ QUESTION: If the these pages are already indexed by Google, will this adjustment to the robots.txt file help to remove the pages from the index? We don't want these pages to be found.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath0 -
If Robots.txt have blocked an Image (Image URL) but the other page which can be indexed has this image, how is the image treated?
Hi MOZers, This probably is a dumb question but I have a case where the robots.tags has an image url blocked but this image is used on a page (lets call it Page A) which can be indexed. If the image on Page A has an Alt tags, then how is this information digested by crawlers? A) would Google totally ignore the image and the ALT tags information? OR B) Google would consider the ALT tags information? I am asking this because all the images on the website are blocked by robots.txt at the moment but I would really like website crawlers to crawl the alt tags information. Chances are that I will ask the webmaster to allow indexing of images too but I would like to understand what's happening currently. Looking forward to all your responses 🙂 Malika
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Malika11 -
My website (non-adult) is not appearing in Google search results when i have safe search settings on. How can i fix this?
Hi, I have this issue where my website does not appear in Google search results when i have the safe search settings on. If i turn the safe search settings off, my site appears no problem. I'm guessing Google is categorizing my website as adult, which it definitely is not. Has anyone had this issue before? Or does anyone know how to resolve this issue? Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CupidTeam0 -
Wordpress blog in a subdirectory not being indexed by Google
HI MozzersIn my websites sitemap.xml, pages are listed, such as /blog/ and /blog/textile-fact-or-fiction-egyptian-cotton-explained/These pages are visible when you visit them in a browser and when you use the Google Webmaster tool - Fetch as Google to view them (see attachment), however they aren't being indexed in Google, not even the root directory for the blog (/blog/) is being indexed, and when we query:site: www.hilden.co.uk/blog/ It returns 0 results in Google.Also note that:The Wordpress installation is located at /blog/ which is a subdirectory of the main root directory which is managed by Magento. I'm wondering if this causing the problem.Any help on this would be greatly appreciated!AnthonyToTOHuj.png?1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tone_Agency0 -
Should I prevent Google from indexing blog tag and category pages?
I am working on a website that has a regularly updated Wordpress blog and am unsure whether or not the category and tag pages should be indexable. The blog posts are often outranked by the tag and category pages and they are ultimately leaving me with a duplicate content issue. With this in mind, I assumed that the best thing to do would be to remove the tag and category pages from the index, but after speaking to someone else about the issue, I am no longer sure. I have tried researching online, but there isn't anything that provided any further information. Please can anyone with any experience of dealing with issues like this or with any knowledge of the topic help me to resolve this annoying issue. Any input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PaulRogers0 -
How to make SEF URL for PHP/MySQL web site
Hi mozzers! I'm fairly new to SEO topic, but I'm learning fast because all of you, so please take my warm thanks first! The problem: I have a web site based on PHP/MySQL that has no SEF addresses, it's made by unknown CMS, so I cannot use any extensions or modules, I have to write my own SEF extension. The question: Would you suggest me, please an article or idea, what I need to make my URLs search engine friendly? What's best to use: .htaccess or something else? This is the aforementioned web site: www.nortrak.bg Thanks a lot, Kolio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kolio_kolev0