Removing Personal content from Google Index
-
Hi everyone,
A user is complaining that her name is appearing in google search through our job ads site, so I removed such ads through Search Console, but the problem is not the ads anymore but our internal search results.
The ads are no longer live but our searches has been indexed by google back then, We have been manually taking over 500 pages that included such name but more and more keep coming through pagination, we haven't found a pattern yet so pretty much any search result might have contained such name.
We might get some legal issues here, did you guys got into anything similar before?
We have just set some rules so that this doesn't happen again, but still can't find a way to deal with this one.
Thanks in advance.
PD: Not sure if this is the right category to fit it.
-
Hello JoaoCJ,
My recommendation is to not allow internal search result pages to be indexed. You should block them from being accessed via the Robots.txt file and then request their removal from GSC. This is what Google recommends.
There are always exceptions to the rule. However, best practices is all I can provide without knowing more about the situation, such as whether those internal search pages are an important part of your taxonomy (rare) or are also receiving significant, high quality organic search traffic (also rare).
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 is still indexing the old domain a year after 301 redirects are put in place
Hi there, You might have experienced this before but for me this is the first. A client of mine moved from domain A (www.domainA.com) to domain B (www.domainB.com). 301 redirects are all in place for over a year. But the old domain is still showing in Google when you search for "site:domainA.com" The HTTP Header check shows this result for the URL https://www.domainA.com/company/cookie-policy.aspx HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently =>
Technical SEO | | iQi
Cache-Control => private
Content-Length => 174
Content-Type => text/html; charset=utf-8
Location => https://www.domain_B_.com/legal/cookie-policy
Server => Microsoft-IIS/10.0
X-AspNetMvc-Version => 5.2
X-AspNet-Version => 4.0.30319
X-Powered-By => ASP.NET
Date => Fri, 15 Mar 2019 12:01:33 GMT
Connection => close Does the redirect look wrong? The change of address request was made on Google Console when the website was moved over a year ago. Edit: Checked the domainA.com on bing and it seems that its not indexed, and replaced with domainB.com, which is the right. Just Google is indexing the old domain! Please let me know your thoughts on why this is happening. Best,0 -
Webpages & Images Index Graph Gone Down Badly in Google Search Console Why?
Hello All, What is going on with Sitemap Index Status in Google Search Console :- Webpages Submitted - 35000 index showing 21000 whereas previously approx 34500 were index. Images Submitted - 85000 index showing - 11000 whereas previously approx 80000 were index. Whereas when I search in google site:abcd.com is it showing approx 27000 index for webpages. No message from google for penalty or warning etc.Please help.
Technical SEO | | wright3350 -
Page missing from Google index
Hi all, One of our most important pages seems to be missing from the Google index. A number of our collections pages (e.g., http://perfectlinens.com/collections/size-king) are thin, so we've included a canonical reference in all of them to the main collection page (http://perfectlinens.com/collections/all). However, I don't see the main collection page in any Google search result. When I search using "info:http://perfectlinens.com/collections/all", the page displayed is our homepage. Why is this happening? The main collection page has a rel=canonical reference to itself (auto-generated by Shopify so I can't control that). Thanks! WUKeBVB
Technical SEO | | leo920 -
Does Index Status Goes Down If Website is Penalized by Google?
Hi Friends, Few of my friends told me that index status of a website goes down goes if it is penalized by Google. I can see my organic traffic has went down drastically after the Panda update on July 17th 2015 but index status still remains the same. So, I am bit confused. Any advice on this.
Technical SEO | | Prabhu.Sundar0 -
How does Google view duplicate photo content?
Now that we can search by image on Google and see every site that is using the same photo, I assume that Google is going to use this as a signal for ranking as well. Is that already happening? I ask because I have sold many photos over the years with first-use only rights, where I retain the copyright. So I have photos on my site that I own the copyright for that are on other sites (and were there first). I am not sure if I should make an effort to remove these photos from my site or if I can wait another couple years.
Technical SEO | | Lina5000 -
I broke Google! (random snippet appearing in non-personalized search)
Hello all, so either I broke Google or Google doesn't know how to index my page properly (onradpad.com/paymyrent). If you search "pay rent with credit card", whether you're logged in to Google or not, you'll see a snippet from our signup process (which is js) right under the ad slot in the serps (Awesome! You're signed up!) and it will repeat where my meta data should be. It's been like this for well over a month now and I cannot figure out how to get rid of it. Additionally, if you search for the branded title of the page "pay with radpad", it pulls language that's not on that page (perhaps from somewhere in the js signup form). Though if you search for "pay rent with radpad" you'll see what my meta description is supposed to look like in the serps. Any ideas as to what the heck is going on?
Technical SEO | | RadMatt0 -
Why is my blog disappearing from Google index?
My Google blogger blog is about 10 months old. In that time i have worked really hard with adding unique content, building relationships with other bloggers in the same niche, and done some inbound marketing. 2 weeks ago I updated the template to something cleaner, with a little more "wordpress" feel to it. This means i've messed about with the code a lot in these weeks, adding social buttons etc. The problem is that from some point late last week thurs/fri my pages started disappearing from Googles index. I have checked webmaster tools and have no manual actions. My link profile is pretty clean as its a new site, and i have manually checked every piece of content published for plagiarism etc. So what is going on? Did i break my blog? Or is something else amiss? Impressions are down 96% comparing Nov 1-5th to previous 5 days. site is here: http://bit.ly/174beVm Thanks for any help in advance.
Technical SEO | | Silkstream0 -
Duplicate Content
Many of the pages on my site are similar in structure/content but not exactly the same. What amount of content should be unique for Google to not consider it duplicate? If it is something like 50% unique would it be preferable to choose one page as the canonical instead of keeping them both as separate pages?
Technical SEO | | theLotter0