SERPs showing hundreds of nonexistent pages
-
My site has this page (URL) that actually exists on my site https://mysite.com/ranking/rankings-of-nike-running-shoes
but somehow I can see the following versions in SERPs (these URLs are not physically available on my site):
https://mysite.com/ranking/rankings-of-rankings-of-rankings-of-nike-running-shoes
https://mysite.com/ranking/rankings-of-rankings-of-nike-running-shoesI even started getting traffic from these URLs that are in Google's index.
So, only the first one actually existins on my site:
- https://mysite.com/ranking/rankings-of-nike-running-shoes
- https://mysite.com/ranking**/rankings-of-rankings-of-**rankings-of-nike-running-shoes
- https://mysite.com/ranking/**rankings-of-**rankings-of-nike-running-shoes
Questions are:
a. I'm not sure how the latter two - 2) and 3) - got in Google's index.
b. what do I do with them. My idea is to 301 redirect them to the actual page that exists https://mysite.com/ranking/rankings-of-nike-running-shoesDo I need to also somehow remove the faulty URLs - 2) and 3) - from Google's index or 301 redirecting is enough?
-
301 redirects should do the trick but you need to figure out how this happened to begin with and make sure to squash the bug to fix the issue.
-
Hi there
1. I would check the internal links on your website to see if you accidentally typed the URL wrong. Then, I would check your backlinks (using Open Site Explorer, Majestic, or Ahrefs) to see if any websites are linking to your website with the incorrect URL (then ask them to update the link!)
2. Simply redirect them to the URL you want to be the ranking URL, update your sitemap, and submit that sitemap to Google Search Console.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
Patrick
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
-
Website SEO Product Pages - Condense Product Pages
We are managing a website that has seen consistently dropping rankings over the last 2 years (http://www.independence-bunting.com/). Our long term strategy has been purely content-based and is of high quality, but isn’t seeing the desired results. It is an ecommerce site that has a lot of pages, most of which are category or product pages. Many of the product pages have duplicate or thin content, which we currently see as one of the primary reasons for the ranking drops.The website has many individual products which have the same fabric and size options, but have different designs. So it is difficult to write valuable content that differs between several products that have similar designs. Right now each of the different designs has its own product page. We have a dilemma, because our options are:A.Combine similar designs of the product into one product page where the customer must choose a design, a fabric, and a size before checking out. This way we can have valuable content and don’t have to duplicate that content on other pages or try to find more to say about something that there really isn’t anything else to say about. However, this process will remove between 50% and 70% of the pages on the website. We know number of indexed pages is important to search engines and if they suddenly see that half of our pages are gone, we may cause more negative effects despite the fact that we are in fact aiming to provide more value to the user, rather than less.B.Leave the product pages alone and try to write more valuable content for each product page, which will be difficult because there really isn’t that much more to say, or more valuable ways to say it. This is the “safe” option as it means that our negative potential impact is reduced but we won’t necessarily see much positive trending either. C.Test solution A on a small percentage of the product categories to see any impact over the next several months before making sitewide updates to the product pages if we see positive impact, or revert to the old way if we see negative impact.Any sound advice would be of incredible value at this point, as the work we are doing isn’t having the desired effects and we are seeing consistent dropping rankings at this point.Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thank you,
Technical SEO | | Ed-iOVA0 -
Why are these internal pages not showing any internal links?
If you look at Author profile pages like this one, http://experts.allbusiness.com/author/denise-oberry (THE top contributor on the site with over 82 posts under her belt), or any Author profile page, they show zero internal links or Page Authority. The same goes for most posts for each author on the site. Author pages should show internal links from every post the author has on the site. And specific posts should also have internal links from categories, etc. Yet they show zero. The only posts that show internal links and PA are ones that were either syndicated to the root domain's homepage, or syndicated to Fox Small Business. ZERO internal links. Does anyone know why this is? The root domain does not act this way with Author pages and posts. And I see nothing blocking links or indexing via the robots.txt file or page level nofollow tags. A real head scratcher for this SEO nerd, that I'm sure someone here will have a really simple answer to.
Technical SEO | | MiguelSalcido0 -
"One Page With Two Links To Same Page; We Counted The First Link" Is this true?
I read this to day http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718 I thought to myself, yep, thats what I been reading in Moz for years ( pitty Matt could not confirm that still the case for 2014) But reading though the comments Michael Martinez of http://www.seo-theory.com/ pointed out that Mat says "...the last time I checked, was 2009, and back then -- uh, we might, for example, only have selected one of the links from a given page."
Technical SEO | | PaddyDisplays
Which would imply that is does not not mean it always the first link. Michael goes on to say "Back in 2008 when Rand WRONGLY claimed that Google was only counting the first link (I shared results of a test where it passed anchor text from TWO links on the same page)" then goes on to say " In practice the search engine sometimes skipped over links and took anchor text from a second or third link down the page." For me this is significant. I know people that have had "SEO experts" recommend that they should have a blog attached to there e-commence site and post blog posts (with no real interest for readers) with anchor text links to you landing pages. I thought that posting blog post just for anchor text link was a waste of time if you are already linking to the landing page with in a main navigation as google would see that link first. But if Michael is correct then these type of blog posts anchor text link blog posts would have value But who is' right Rand or Michael?0 -
Duplicate page issue
Hi, i have a serious duplicate page issue and not sure how it happened and i am not sure if anyone will be able to help as my site was built in joomla, it has been done through k2, i have never come across this issue before i am seem to have lots of duplicate pages under author names, example http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/diane-walker this page is showing the full articles which is not great for seo and it is also showing that there are hundreds more articles at the bottom on the semoz tool i am using, it is showing these as duplicates although there are hundreds of them and it is causing google to see lots of duplicate pages. Diane Walker
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/diane-walker/Page-2 5 1 0
Diane Walker
http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/diane-walker/Page-210 1 1 0
Diane Walker
http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/diane-walker/Page-297 1 1 0
Diane Walker
http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/diane-walker/Page-3 5 1 0
Diane Walker can anyone please help me to sort this important issue out.0 -
Homepage dropping back to page 30 and being replaced by a random page?
Hi All Please accept my apologies if i have posted this in the wrong place, i am new to this. I have asked for help over and over again on Google Webmaster Forum but everytime i am faced with sarcastic, unhelpful answers and then moaned at for asking the same question again when i get no answers. Well, my website is http://www.hillfieldscampingandleisure.co.uk. The site is nearly 2 years old and is an ecommerce online camping equipment store. It is hosted on the EKMPOWERSHOP Platform. After a about a year of adding products and designing my site i decided to hire an SEO Company based in the UK, they were a good company with some big clients. Anyways to cut a really long story short....they completely ripped me off by £700 a month for 7 months for my site to keep going backwards, they wouldnt target the keywords i wanted and all they did was provide really spammy, non relevant, no page rank links...my site ended up on number 31 of Google. I managed to drop the company and try to do things myself. I optimized my sites content so it wasn't keyword stuffed I re-wrote all my alt tags to look more natural I optimized my meta and h1 tags I carried on with trying to build relevant, high page rank links Anyways i managed to get my homepage to page 3/4 of Google. It stayed there for a few weeks but over the past few weeks my Homepage is dropping back to page 28-30 and being replaced with a random page of my site on page 4-6. It corrects itself after a while and my homepage returns but then it happens all over again....today i have a random page on page 4 and my homepage is on page 29. Any ideas on what is causing this and how can i get my site up there? I have had some ideas come back that it is the EKM platform i am using but since the seo company took the p out of me, its the only one i can afford at the moment until i start selling. I am a small business with stock waiting to be sold but no matter how much i read and rules to follow my site just doesn't seem to move. Any help would be really really apreciated and be nice!
Technical SEO | | hillfields0 -
Product category paging
Hi, My product categories have 2-3 pages each. I have paging implemented with rel=next and rel=prev. from some reason Google GWT now reports the pages as having duplicate titles and description. Should I be worried? Should I set a different title like "blue category - page x" ? Thanx, Asaf
Technical SEO | | AsafY0 -
301ed Pages Still Showing as Duplicate Content in GWMT
I thank anyone reading this for their consideration and time. We are a large site with millions of URLs for our product pages. We are also a textbook company, so by nature, our products have two separate ISBNs: a 10 digit and a 13 digit form. Thus, every one of our books has at least two pages (10 digit and 13 digit ISBN page). My issue is that we have established a 301 for all the 10 digit URLs so they automatically redirect to the 13 digit page. This fix has been in place for months. However, Google still reports that they are detecting thousands of pages with duplicate title and meta tags. Google is referring to these page URLs that I already have 301ed to the canonical version many months ago! Is there anything that I can do to fix this issue? I don't understand what I am doing wrong. Example:
Technical SEO | | dfinn
http://www.bookbyte.com/product.aspx?isbn=9780321676672
http://www.bookbyte.com/product.aspx?isbn=032167667X As you can see the 10 digit ISBN page 301s to 13 digit canonical version. Google reports that they have detected duplicate title and meta tags between the two pages and there are thousands of these duplicate pages listed. To add some further context: The ISBN is just a parameter that allows us to provide content when someone searches for a product with the 10 or 13 digit ISBN. The 13 digit version of the page is the only physical page that exists, the 10 digit is only a part of the virtual URL structure of the website. This is why I cannot simply change the title and meta tags of the 10 digit pages because they only exist in the sense that the URL redirects to the 13 digit version. Also, we submit a sitemap every day of all the 13 digit pages so Google knows exactly what our physical URL structure is. I have submitted this question to GWMT forums and received no replies.0 -
UK Serps
Hi there, I have a website that is aimed primarily at the US market. However, I have the option to make some content for people in my niche for people in the UK. Is there anything I can do to help the site rank on google.co.uk for the UK content, baring in mind that most of my content is aimed at the US. Thanks, Peter
Technical SEO | | PeterM220