Removing duplicate &var=1 etc var name urls from google
-
Hi I had a huge drop in traffic around the 11th of july over 50% down with no recovery as yet... ~5000 organic visits per day down to barley over 2500.
I fixed up a problem that one script was introducing that had caused high bounce rates.
Now i have identified that google has indexed the entire news section 4 times, same content but with var=0 var=1 2 3 etc around 40,000 urls in total.
Now this would have to be causing problems.
I have fixed the problem and those url's 404 now, no need for 301's as they are not linked to from anywhere.
How can I get them out of the index? I cant do it one by one with the url removal request.. I cant remove a directory from url removal tool as the reuglar content is still there..
If I ban it in robots.txt those urls, wont it never try to index them again and thus not ever discover they are 404ing?
These urls are no longer linked to from anywhere, so how can google ever reach them by crawling to find them 404ing?
-
yes
-
Hi thanks, so if it cant find a page and finds no more links to a page. does that mean that it should drop out of the index within a month?
-
The definition of a 404 page is a page which cannot be found. So in that sense, no Google can't find the page.
Google's crawlers follow links. If there is not a link to the page, then there is no issue. If Google locates a link, they will attempt to follow that link.
-
Hi Thanks, so if a page is 404'ing but not linked to from anywhere google will still find it?
-
Hi Adam.
The preferred method to handle this issue would have been to only offer one version of the URL. Once you realized the other versions were active, you have a couple options to deal with the problem:
Use a 301 to redirect all the versions of the page to the main URL. This method would have allowed your existing Google links to work. Users would still find the correct page. Google would have noticed the 301 and adjusted their links.
Another option to consider IF the pages were helpful would be to keep them and use the canonical tag to indicate the URL of the primary page. This method would offer the same advantages mentioned above.
By removing the pages and allowing them to 404, everyone loses for the next month. Users who click on a search result will be taken to a 404 page rather then finding the content they seek. Google wont be offering the search results users are seeking. You will experience a high bounce rate as many users do not like 404 pages, and it will take a month for an average site to be fully crawled and the issue corrected.
If you block the pages in robots.txt, then Google wont attempt to crawl the links. In general, your robots.txt should not be used in this manner.
My recommendation is to fix this issue either with the proper 301s. If that is not an option, be sure your 404 page is helpful and as user friendly as possible. Include a site search option along with your main navigation. Google will crawl a small percent of your site each day. You will notice the number of 404 links diminish over time.
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
-
Which URL do I request Google News inclusion for: the http or the non-http?
In Google WMT/Search Console, I've marked the non-www. version of my site as the preferred. But I haven't run into a choice between http:// and non-http:// before. Should I choose the one listed at the top, which is the non-http (AND the non-www) version? Thanks! Unknown.png
Technical SEO | | christyrobinson1 -
Google how deal with licensed content when this placed on vendor & client's website too. Will Google penalize the client's site for this ?
One of my client bought licensed content from top vendor of Health Industry. This same content is on the vendor's website & my client's site also but on my site there is a link back to vendor is placed which clearly tells to anyone that this is a licensed content & we bought from this vendor. My client bought paid top quality content for best source of industry but at this same this is placed on vendor's website also. Will Google penalize my client's website for this ? Niche is HEALTH
Technical SEO | | sourabhrana1 -
Should I remove these pages from the Google index?
Hi there, Please have a look at the following URL http://www.elefant-tours.com/index.php?callback=imagerotator&gid=65&483. It's a "sitemap" generated by a Wordpress plug-in called NextGen gallery and it maps all the images that have been added to the site through this plugin, which is quite a lot in this case. I can see that these "sitemap" pages have been indexed by Google and I'm wondering whether I should remove these or not? In my opinion these are pages that a search engine would never would want to serve as a search result and pages that a visitor never would want to see. Attracting any traffic through Google images is irrelevant in this case. What is your advice? Block it or leave it indexed or something else?
Technical SEO | | Robbern0 -
How to remove all sandbox test site link indexed by google?
When develop site, I have a test domain is sandbox.abc.com, this site contents are same as abc.com. But, now I search site:sandbox.abc.com and aware of content duplicate with main site abc.com My question is how to remove all this link from goolge. p/s: I have just add robots.txt to sandbox and disallow all pages. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | JohnHuynh0 -
Can view pages of site, but Google & SEOmoz return 404
I can visit and view every page of a site (can also see source code), but Google, SEOmoz and others say anything other than home page is a 404 and Google won't index the sub-pages. I have check robots.txt and HTAccess and can't find anything wrong. Is this a DNS or server setting problem? Any ideas? Thanks, Fitz
Technical SEO | | FitzSWC0 -
Google Not Indexed WWW name
Here is my domain - http://www.plugnbuy.com . When i see through "site" google not showing with WWW index but the same when i do without WWW.. it is showing in search. So yesturday i changed the setting from GWM to preferred domain as a WWW appear but today still not showing anything... Please help..
Technical SEO | | mamuti0 -
Is 100% duplicate content always duplicate?
Bit of a strange question here that would be keen on getting the opinions of others on. Let's say we have a web page which is 1000 lines line, pulling content from 5 websites (the content itself is duplicate, say rss headlines, for example). Obviously any content on it's own will be viewed by Google as being duplicate and so will suffer for it. However, given one of the ways duplicate content is considered is a page being x% the same as another page, be it your own site or someone elses. In the case of our duplicate page, while 100% of the content is duplicate, the page is no more than 20% identical to another page so would it technically be picked up as duplicate. Hope that makes sense? My reason for asking is I want to pull latest tweets, news and rss from leading sites onto a site I am developing. Obviously the site will have it's own content too but also want to pull in external.
Technical SEO | | Grumpy_Carl0 -
Why has Google removed meta descriptions from SERPS?
One of my clients' sites has just been redesigned with lots of new URLs added. So the 301 redirections have been put in place and most of the new URLs have now been indexed. BUT Google is still showing all the old URLs in the SERPS and even worse it only displays the title tag. The meta description is not shown, no rich snippet, no text, nothing below the title. This is proving disastrous as visitors are not clicking on a result with no description. I have to assume its got something to do with the redirection, but why is it not showing the descriptions? I've checked the old URLs and he meta description is definitely still in the code, but Google is choosing not to show it. I've never seen this before so I'm struggling for an answer. I'd like to know why or how this is happening, and if it can be resolved. I realise that this may be resolved when Google stops showing all the old URLs but there's no telling how long that will take (can it be speeded up?)
Technical SEO | | Websensejim0