Stuck trying to deindex pages from google
-
Hi There,
We had developers put a lot of spammy markups in one of our websites. We tried many ways to deindex them by fixing it and requesting recrawls... However, some of the URLs that had these spammy markups were incorrect URLs - redirected to the right version, (ex. same URL with or without / at the end)
so now all the regular URLs are updated and clean, however, the redirected URLs can't be found in crawls so they weren't updated, and couldn't get the spam removed. They still show up in the serp.
I tried deindexing those spammed pages by making then no-index in the robot.txt file. This seemed to be working for about a week, and now they showed up again in the serp
Can you help us get rid of these spammy urls?
-
Ruchy,
Yeap it might had helped for a few weeks. But internal links from your site are not the only way to crawl all your pages. Remember that there may be other sites linking other pages.
B- Absolutely, adding noindex will help. There is no way to know for sure how long will it take, give it a few weeks. Also, it could help removing manually all those pages with the Google Search Console, as Logan said.
Hope it helps!.
GR -
Hi Gaston,
Thanks so much for taking your time to answer my question
here are two points - A- My mistake, in the robot.txt we disallowed it, and it was done right. Our devs did it for us and I double checked in in search console tester. Also, this idea did work for us the first few weeks.
B - There is no place the crawlers can find these pages to recrawl, as they are no longer linked from anywhere in my site. will adding the no index help? If yes, how long can it take?
-
I second what Gaston said. This usage of robots.txt is one of the most common misconceptions in SEO, so don't feel bad. Google actually explicitly says to not use robots.txt for index-prevention in their webmaster guide.
To add to Gaston's point, make sure you remove the robots.txt disallow when you add the meta noindex tag he provided. If you don't let them crawl the page, they won't see the tag.
You can also use remove these URLs temporarily in Search Console by going to the Google Index menu and selecting "Remove URLs". It'll remove from search results, then when they come back to crawl that page again (as long as you're letting them), they'll see your noindex tag and keep it out.
-
Hello Ruchy,
If by "making no-index" in the robots you are meaning _disallowing _them, you are making ir wrong.
Robots.txt are just signs to the robots and only tell them to NOT CRAWL them, it doesnt prevent from indexing those pages. (it can happen the case that there is a link pointing to that page and the crawler just passes by it).The most used way to remove certaing indexed pages is by adding the robots noindex meta tag, it should look like this:
Also, some useful links:
Robots meta directives - Moz
Robots meta tag - Google developers
Robots tag generatorHope 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
-
Trying to find all internal links to a specific page (without index)
Hi guys -- Still waiting on Moz to index a page of mine. We launched a new site over two months ago. In the meantime, I really just need a list of internal links to a specific page because I want to change its URL. Does anybody know how to find that list (of internal links to 1 of my pages) without the Moz index? I appreciate the help!
Technical SEO | | marchexmarketingmcc1 -
Page disappeared from Google index. Google cache shows page is being redirected.
My URL is: http://shop.nordstrom.com/c/converse Hi. The week before last, my top Converse page went missing from the Google index. When I "fetch as Googlebot" I am able to get the page and "submit" it to the index. I have done this several times and still cannot get the page to show up. When I look at the Google cache of the page, it comes up with a different page. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://shop.nordstrom.com/c/converse shows: http://shop.nordstrom.com/c/pop-in-olivia-kim Back story: As far as I know we have never redirected the Converse page to the Pop-In page. However the reverse may be true. We ran a Converse based Pop-In campaign but that used the Converse page and not the regular Pop-In page. Though the page comes back with a 200 status, it looks like Google thinks the page is being redirected. We were ranking #4 for "converse" - monthly searches = 550,000. My SEO traffic for the page has tanked since it has gone missing. Any help would be much appreciated. Stephan
Technical SEO | | shop.nordstrom0 -
Is There Google 6th page penalty?
My site have keyword domain but my page doesnt up or down at 6th page on search results. And my main page doesnt show 6th page too my alt pages. So what can i do for this penaly? Thanks for your help
Technical SEO | | iddaasonuclari0 -
Can you 301 redirect a page to an already existing/old page ?
If you delete a page (say a sub department/category page on an ecommerce store) should you 301 redirect its url to the nearest equivalent page still on the site or just delete and forget about it ? Generally should you try and 301 redirect any old pages your deleting if you can find suitable page with similar content to redirect to. Wont G consider it weird if you say a page has moved permenantly to such and such an address if that page/address existed before ? I presume its fine since say in the scenario of consolidating departments on your store you want to redirect the department page your going to delete to the existing pages/department you are consolidating old departments products into ?
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Determining When to Break a Page Into Multiple Pages?
Suppose you have a page on your site that is a couple thousand words long. How would you determine when to split the page into two and are there any SEO advantages to doing this like being more focused on a specific topic. I noticed the Beginner's Guide to SEO is split into several pages, although it would concentrate the link juice if it was all on one page. Suppose you have a lot of comments. Is it better to move comments to a second page at a certain point? Sometimes the comments are not super focused on the topic of the page compared to the main text.
Technical SEO | | ProjectLabs1 -
Is creating backlinks to Google places pages worth the time and money involved?
I have worked on a website and organically it is starting to do fine. The website itself is on the right track. Now, the places page, could use a little improvement. I did make sure it has the right categories, has all unique pictures and videos, it does have a good amount of reviews and even citations from other local directories, and even the website links to it. It does show up for some local searches but I would like it to dominate more. I've heard that if I've built links to that Google Places local page from other sources, it would rank higher and perform better. Is that true? Any other tips and tricks to make it perform better? Thank you
Technical SEO | | Boogily0 -
Can I use canonical tags to merge property map pages and availability pages to their counterpart overview pages?
I have a property website, for each property are 4-5 tabs each with their own URL, these pages include the overview page which is content rich, and auxilliary pages such as maps, availability, can I use a canonical tag to merge the tabs with very little content to their corresponding overview page which is content rich? I.e. www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/overview This page has tabs for map, town info, availability which all have their own url i.e. www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/map
Technical SEO | | assertive-media
www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/availability
www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/towninfo Because these auxilary pages do not contain much content can I place a canonical tag in them pointing back to the content rich overview page at www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/overview?0 -
Google News not indexing .index.html pages
Hi all, we've been asked by a blog to help them better indexing and ranking on Google News (with the site being already included in Google News with poor results) The blog had a chronicle URL duplication problem with each post existing with 3 different URLs: #1) www.domain.com/post.html (currently in noindex for editorial choices as showing all the comments) #2) www.domain.com/post/index.html (currently indexed showing only top comments) #3) www.domain.com/post/ (very same as #2) We've chosen URL #2 (/index.html) as canonical URL, and included a rel=canonical tag on URL #3 (/) linking to URL #2.
Technical SEO | | H-FARM
Also we've submitted yesterday a Google News sitemap including consistently the list of URLs #2 from the last 48h . The sitemap has been properly "digested" by Google and shows that all URLs have been sent and indexed. However if we use the site:domain.com command on Google News we see something completely different: Google News has indexed actually only some news and more specifically only the URLs #3 type (ending with the trailing slash instead of /index.html). Why ? What's wrong ? a) Does Google News bot have problems indexing URLs ending with .index.html ? While figuring out what's wrong we've found out that http://news.google.it/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=inurl%3Aindex.html gives no results...it seems that Google News index overall does not include any URLs ending with /index.html b) Does Google News bot recognise rel=canonical tag ? c) Is it just a matter of time and then Google News will pick up the right URLs (/index.html) and/or shall we communicate Google News team any changes ? d) Any suggestions ? OR Shall we do the other way around. meaning make URL #3 the canonical one ? While Google News is showing these problems, Google Web search has actually well received the changes, so we don't know what to do. Thanks for your help, Matteo0