How can I block unwanted urls being indexed on google?
-
Hi,
I have to block unwanted urls (not that page) from being indexed on google. I have to block urls like example.com/entertainment not the exact page example.com/entertainment.aspx . Is there any other ways other than robot.txt? If i add this to robot.txt will that block my other url too? Or should I make a 301 redirection from example.com/entertainment to example.com/entertainment.aspx. Because some of the unwanted urls are linked from other sites.
thanks in advance.
-
Hi Nick,
Thanks so much!
Is there any advantage for shorter URLs over long ones? My site is on IIS6, How can I remove the .aspx extension in IIS6?
-
Since some of the unwanted URLs are linked from other sites, use 301 redirects.
Usually, people want to remove the file extensions like .aspx for cleaner looking, shorter URLs.
You can remove the .aspx extension from all pages with a rewrite like this in .htaccess:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.aspx -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.aspxIf you want to keep the URLs with .aspx, rather than without, I think you will have to use individual 301 redirects.
-
Vipin
My understanding is that if you block anything from Robots.txt that you prevent link juice from flowing for the pages. If the pages in question have links to them then I agree with Highland to 301 redirect them to the correct pages.
shivun
-
301 is definitely the way to go, especially if you have inbound links to the unwanted pages. That will preserve most of your rank and transfer it to the actual page.
As far as blocking goes, you can use a robots.txt or a robots meta tag on your page with a NOFOLLOW,NOINDEX
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
-
Why a certain URL ( a category URL ) disappears?
the page hasn't been spammed. - links are natural - onpage grader is perfect - there are useful high ranking articles linking to the page...pretty much everything is okay.....also all of my websites pages are okay and none of them has disappeared only this one ( the most important category of my site. )
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mohamadalieskandariii0 -
Is Link equity / Link Juice lost to a blocked URL in the same way that it is lost to nofollow link
Hi If there is a link on a page that goes to a URL that is blocked in robots txt - is the link juice lost in the same way as when you add nofollow to a link on a page. Any help would be most appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andrew-SEO0 -
Google does not want to index my page
I have a site that is hundreds of page indexed on Google. But there is a page that I put in the footer section that Google seems does not like and are not indexing that page. I've tried submitting it to their index through google webmaster and it will appear on Google index but then after a few days it's gone again. Before that page had canonical meta to another page, but it is removed now.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | odihost0 -
Does Google index language flags/links in header, even if only 1 is visible at a time?
Hi, I want to pass link juice from my English website to my other languages. Does Google index language flags/links in header? Only 1 flag is visible at a time, and from what i´ve read, Google does not index content that is not visible to the user without clicks, like content behind tabs. I´m guessing language drop downs could fall under the same category as well...? Any knowledge on this... thank you for your time!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guidetoiceland0 -
How to take out international URL from google US index/hreflang help
Hi Moz Community, Weird/confusing question so I'll try my best. The company I work for also has an Australian retail website. When you do a site:ourbrand.com search the second result that pops up is au.brand.com, which redirects to the actual brand.com.au website. The Australian site owner removed this redirect per my bosses request and now it leads to a an unavailable webpage. I'm confused as to best approach, is there a way to noindex the au.brand.com URL from US based searches? My only problem is that the au.brand.com URL is ranking higher than all of the actual US based sub-cat pages when using a site search. Is this an appropriate place for an hreflang tag? Let me know how I can help clarify the issue. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IceIcebaby
-Reed0 -
Google Maps Integration Dynamic url
We are integrating Google Maps into a search feature on a website. Would you use the standard dynamic generated long url that appears after a search or find a way of reducing this to a shorter url. Taking into account hundreds of results. Question asked for seo purposes.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jazavide0 -
Does Google Index an Alert Div w/Delayed Hide
We have a div at the top of a client's the page that displays an alert to the user. After 30 seconds it is rendered hidden. Does Google index this? Does Google take this into account when it ranks the page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WEOMedia0 -
Google News URL Structure
Hi there folks I am looking for some guidance on Google News URLs. We are restructuring the site. A main traffic driver will be the traffic we get from Google News. Most large publishers use: www.site.com/news/12345/this-is-the-title/ Others use www.example.com/news/celebrity/12345/this-is-the-title/ etc. www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/12345/this-is-the-title/ www.example.com/celebrity-news/12345/this-is-the-title/ (Celebrity is a channel on Google News so should we try and follow that format?) www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/this-is-the-title/12345/ www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/this-is-the-title-12345/ (unique ID no at the end and part of the title URL) www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/celebrity-name/this-is-the-title-12345/ Others include the date. So as you can see there are so many combinations and there doesnt seem to be any unity across news sites for this format. Have you any advice on how to structure these URLs? Particularly if we want to been seen as an authority on the following topics: fashion, hair, beauty, and celebrity news - in particular "celebrity name" So should the celebrity news section be www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/celebrity-name/this-is-the-title-12345/ or what? This is for a completely new site build. Thanks Barry
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Deepti_C0