Robots.txt & meta noindex--site still shows up on Google Search
-
I have set up my robots.txt like this:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /and I have this meta tag in my on a Wordpress site, set up with SEO Yoast
name="robots" content="noindex,follow"/>
I did "Fetch as Google" on my Google Search Console
My website is still showing up in the search results and it says this:
"A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt"
This site has not shown up for years and now it is ranking above my site that I want to rank for this keyword. How do I get Google to ignore this site? This seems really weird and I'm confused how a site with little content, that has not been updated for years can rank higher than a site that is constantly updated and improved.
-
CleverPhd,
Really since to see a detailed yet to the point answer.
Thanks for contributing, and being in the Moz community.
Regards,
Vijay
-
Thanks for that clarification CleverPhD, forgot to mention that.
-
This one has my vote. You have to allow them access in order to see that you don't want the pages indexed. If you block them from seeing this rule...well they won't be able to see it.
-
Just to be clear on what Logan said. You have to allow Google to crawl your site by opening up your robots.txt to Google so it can see your noindex directive that is on each of the pages. Otherwise Google will never "see" the noindex directive on your pages.
Likewise, on sitemap.xml. If you are not allowing Google to crawl the sitemap (because you are blocking it with robots.txt) then Google will not read the sitemap, find all your pages that have the noindex directive on them and then remove those pages from the index.
A great article is here
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710?hl=en&ref_topic=4598466
From the mouth of Google "Important! For the noindex meta tag to be effective, the page must not be blocked by a robots.txt file. If the page is blocked by a robots.txt file, the crawler will never see the noindex tag, and the page can still appear in search results, for example if other pages link to it."
The other point that logan makes is that Google might list your site if there are enough sites linking to it. The steps above should take care of this, as you are deindexing the page, but here is what I am thinking he is referencing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBdEwpRQRD0
Google will include a site that is blocked in robots.txt if enough pages link to it, even if they have not crawled the url.
You can go into Search Console and find all the links that they say are pointing to your site. You can also use tools like CognitiveSEO or Ahrefs, Majestic or Moz etc and gather up all of those sites to find links to your site and include those in a disavow file that you put into Search Console and tell Google to ignore all of those links to your site.
Secret bonus method. Putting a noindex directive in your robots
https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/robots-txt-noindex-the-best-kept-secret-in-seo/
This allows you to manage your noindex directives in your robots.txt. Makes it easier as you can control all your noindex directives from a central location and block whole folders at a time. This would stop Google from crawling AND indexing pages all in one page and you can just leave the rest of the site alone and not worry about if a noindex tag should or should not be on a certain page.
Good luck!
-
As mentioned by Logan,noindex meta tag
is the most effective way to remove indexed pages. It sometimes takes time, you have to submit the right sitemap.xml which cover the pages/post you wish to get removed from google index.
-
I did read that about the robots.txt and that is why I added the noindex.
I use SEO Yoast for sitemap.xml, so shouldn't all my pages be there? I believe they are because I just looked at it a couple days ago.
So are you saying I should look through my backlink profile (WMT) and try to remove any backlinks?
Would 'Fetch as Google' not ping Google to tell them to recrawl?
Thanks for your help.
-
Hi,
First things first, it's a common misconception that the robots.txt disallow: / will prevent indexing. It's only indented to prevent crawling, which is why you don't get a meta description pulled into the result snippet. If you have links pointing to that page and a disallow: / on your robots, it's still eligible for indexation.
Second, it's pretty weird that the noindex tag isn't effective, as that's the only sure-fire way to get de-indexed intentionally. I would recommend creating an XML sitemap for all URLs on that domain that are noindex'd and resubmit that in Search Console. If Google hasn't crawled your site since adding the noindex, they don't know it's there. In my experience, forcing them to recrawl via XML submission has been effective at getting noindex noticed quicker.
I would also recommend taking a look at the link profile and removing any possible links pointing to your noindex pages, this will help future attempts at indexing.
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
-
Google No Longer Respecting Javascript Titles & Metas
We implemented title tags and meta descriptions for one of our clients using a GTM and some JS / jQuery. It's been working well for months. Rankings started dropping and nothing had been changed. We tore our hair out. I finally noticed that Google doesn't show our titles/descripts in the SERPs anymore. So I double checked in the developer console that everything was working ok, and you can even see our title in the browser tab. Anyone else see this or have any ideas? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | bbarber570 -
Changes to title and description not appearing in Google search...
www.heatwavemedia.com Search terms: san francisco video production, san francisco video production services In Google search site appears as "Heartwave Media: San Francisco Video Production Services" but I'm sure I've never used a colon in all my iterations of the title... Instead it reads "San Francisco Video Production Services | Heartwave Media" with the description "A San Francisco video production company specializing in creative corporate and commercial video services." But that's not coming up either... I'm on Wordpress and am using All in One SEO if that helps... Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | keeot0 -
HTTP Status showing up in opensiteexplorer top pages as blocked by robot.txt file
I am trying to find an answer to this question it has alot of url on this page with no data when i go into the data source and search for noindex or robot.txt but the site is visible in the search engines ?
Technical SEO | | ReSEOlve0 -
Robots.txt and joomla
Hello, I use joomla for my website and automatically all those files are blocked is that good or bad, so I remove anything and if so why ? User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | seoanalytics
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/ I also added to my robots.txt files my email address ( is that useful, I am afraid google passes PR to the email address )
and a javascript: void (0) because I have tabs on my webpage ( is that useful )
as well as a .pdf ( is it also useful ) any comments ? does anything need to be changed or is it ok ? Thank you,0 -
Robots.txt issue - site resubmission needed?
We recently had an issue when a load of new files were transferred from our dev server to the live site, which unfortunately included the dev site's robots.txt file which had a disallow:/ instruction. Bad! Luckily I spotted it quickly and the file has been replaced. The extent of the damage seems to be that some descriptions aren't displaying and we're getting a message about robots.txt in the SERPs for a few keywords. I've done a site: search and generally it seems to be OK for 99% of our pages. Our positions don't seem to be affected right now but obviously it's not great for the CTRs on those keywords affected. My question is whether there is anything I can do to bring the updated robots.txt file to Google's attention? Or should we just wait and sit it out? Thanks in advance for your answers!
Technical SEO | | GBC0 -
How to block google robots from a subdomain
I have a subdomain that lets me preview the changes I put on my site. The live site URL is www.site.com, working preview version is www.site.edit.com The contents on both are almost identical I want to block the preview version (www.site.edit.com) from Google Robots, so that they don't penalize me for duplicated content. Is it the right way to do it: User-Agent: * Disallow: .edit.com/*
Technical SEO | | Alexey_mindvalley0 -
When is the last time Google crawled my site
How do I tell the last time Google crawled my site. I found out it is not the "Cache" which I had thought it was.
Technical SEO | | digitalops0 -
Why do I see dramatic differences in impressions between Google Webmaster Tools and Google Insights for Search?
Has anyone else noticed discrepancies between these tools? Take keyword A and keyword B. I've literally seen situations where A has 3 or 4 times the traffic as B in Google Webmaster Tools, but half the traffic of B in Google Insights for Search. What might be the reason for this discrepancy?
Technical SEO | | ir-seo-account0