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Cool! Thanks Gaston! I'm glad I asked about this! ^_^

Whoooooooaaaaahhhhhh! that fixed it! what's the deal!? lol. why is this method instantaneous and the other method I was pointed to by google is taking months?....do I have to do this with each individual URL?

....or maybe that's what it found the last time it was crawled? I clicked the "request indexing" button.....we'll see what happens.

hmmm. it says:

Indexing allowed? No: 'noindex' detected in 'robots' meta tag....but I have the settings in yoast set up to allow indexing.....do you think maybe changes in yoast settings aren't applying retroactively?....

They're in google search console, but I have tried searching for a couple of them and they don't appear to be indexed :-(. I tried the method you suggested and that didn't bring up anything either.

Hello! I did something dumb back in the beginning of September. I updated Yoast and somehow noindexed a whole set of custom taxonomy on my site. I fixed this and then asked Google to validate the fixes on September 20. Since then they have gotten through only 5 of the 64 URLS.....is this normal? Just want to make sure I'm not missing something that I should be doing.

Thank you! ^_^

Kind of exiting though. Everytime google picks up on a couple of URLs my rankings shoot up. Its exciting to see ^_^

That was part of my apprehension about deindexing my blog categories. They are ranking right now.....but I also pulled a dumb move and set all of my listing categories as noindex in Yoast a couple of months ago. Fixed this a month ago but still waiting on google to pick up on it. That's part of why I'm not sure about all of this. Not sure if things will change when google starts noticing my listing categories.

"insead of having "/anxiety" and also "/anxiety-counseling" on the same level, why not have "/conditions/anxiety" and also "/practitioners/anxiety" as well? That way the URLs are different but there's also a hierarchical structure which helps Google to work out which is which"

I've currently got it set up so that blog posts are
/category/anxiety
and listings are under
/listing-category/anxiety

Would you say this is sufficient to indicate to google that these two are different?

Awesome! thank you for your response ^_^. I'm not so concerned about getting one to rank over the other as much as I'm concerned that having one will cause the other not to rank at all or be significantly dampened.

2 problems lol

1. I really couldn't come up with a good category structure, so I have 30-40 categories all on the same level. Its a therapist directory so all of the categories in question are pretty much diagnoses/therapeutic issues. I don't think I could create any better hierarchy....is that really bad?

2. I did something weird :-p. my blog categories are pretty much duplicates of my custom taxonomy but with "therapy" or "counseling" tagged on the end....I think it would be better to have my custom taxonomy set up this way because its about therapists and counselors, whereas my blog is about the subject in question....but my theme is set up in a way that would have made that look bad, resulting in long lists like this:
   anxiety counseling
   depression counseling
   couples counseling
   etc.

Do you think this is a problem? Should I go through all of the coding work to change it or would something like this make little difference to google? Ie if someone searches for anxiety therapy would the blog archive "anxiety therapy" be more likely to come up than the archive of actual therapists who work with anxiety called "anxiety" because the names suggest the blogs are more relevant to the search query?

Hello! I have created a directory website with a pretty active blog. I probably messed this up, but I pretty much have categories (for my blog) and custom taxonomy (for different categories of services) that are very similar. For example I have the blog category "anxiety therapists" and the custom taxonomy "anxiety".

1- is this a problem for google? Can it tell the difference between archive pages in these different categories even though the names are similar?

2- should I noindex my blog categories since the main purpose of my site is to help people find therapists ie my custom taxonomy?

Hello! I posted about this a week ago but haven't solidly figured it out yet.

I'm building a website that is a directory of local therapists. I have categories for my blog and custom taxonomy to classify therapists. My problem is that my categories and my custom taxonomy overlap by necessity. For example I have the category "anxiety therapy" and the custom taxonomy "anxiety".

1. Will this confuse google?...Do you think google will be able to figure out the differences between my blog archives and my therapist listing archives?...even though their names are similar and in a couple of cases the same?

2. should I noindex my categories because the point of my site is to get customers to the directory....not the blog?.....even though the blog has lots of useful content? I should note here that I have my custom taxonomy pages set up so that they will display the 6 most recent blog posts in the corresponding category at the bottom of the page....so maybe that makes noindexing the categories more ok?

Thank you for your help!

....actually, I didn't know about the "page%%" at the end of several of my google snippets.....looks like I messed that up in Yoast too . Thanks for catching that one ^_^

Lolol. Roman, I really appreciate all of the work you're putting into this. You are sending me a lot of really useful information. But none of it is answering any of my questions lolol. You're meta answering my question :-p. You're telling me about all of the issues that are caused by my problem, which we are aware of....we just need help with the problem.

I'm aware of the category meta issues and the titles being off. They are like that because I am currently trying to find an answer to the question I am posting this thread for:

The way my site is set up requires me to have categories and custom taxonomy to function. I am using the categories for blog posts and the custom taxonomy for listings. Both need to address the same issues, ie category: ADHD and cust. tax: ADHD.

1. Is this a problem for google? Can it tell the difference between a blog archive and a listing archive based on the content rather than the category or cust. tax title?
   2)Would it be best for me to just noindex my blog categories even though they contain useful content?

You had suggested noindexing the blog archives, which is what I am thinking too, I just really want to be sure before I do it. I think I just have to come to terms with the fact that my blog has useful content, but the reason I want people to find my site is for listings....does that seem like sound reasoning?

I feel like I should put all of this in context again. My site has only been live for 4 months. It is ranking in the first two pages of google for over 200 of the 900 keywords we're tracking. Our category pages are messed up right now because I am trying to figure out this issue and because I made a big mistake a couple of months ago and noindexed all of the listing archives x_x. Given all of this, I think we're doing pretty well so far.

....I guess one of my other hesitations about noindexing the blog categories is the fact that google has not finished processing my request to fix my noindex mistake. Right now it has only processed 18 of the 80 URLS I submitted for validation a little over a month ago....I'm worried that if I noindex my blog categories right now then I will lose a lot of ranking.....What do you think? if I go this route of noindexing the categories should I wait till google finishes validating the corresponding custom taxonomies?

Thank you for your help!

I'm wondering if I'm right to assume that google will be able to tell the difference between these two on its own and despite their category titles, will see that one is about a topic and the other is about therapists who work with that topic.

Hi Roman, Thanks again for the in depth answer! ^_^...I think I probably should have mentioned in the beginning of my post that I have pretty much been a 20+hour/week SEO for the last 4 years. I'm familiar with crawling and crawl budget. I've just never made a directory before or anything that included custom taxonomy. We have spent a lot of work on our site structure and feel like its pretty good for what we need. The issue is just the conflict between categories and custom taxonomy. I know we really should have a better hierarchy with broader categories and then tags, but we could only really think of 2 possible parent categories: basically diagnoses and not diagnoses....but 98% of our blogging content revolves around diagnoses/therapeutic issues.

1. my understanding is that google will choose the page it thinks is most relevant and index that one, not ignore competing pages and list none of them.

2) "As I see you have a blog and also have a listing pages you can use the custom taxonomies for listing and categories for the blog"
-yes. This is what we have done. and this is the problem we are trying to sort out, because our categories and custom taxonomy overlap and/or are similar. We'd be open to canonical tags or redirecting the blog categories to the custom taxonomy pages, but that really feels like we would be losing something. The blog archives and the listing archives offer distinctly different content to users....aside from the fact that listing archives also contain the most recent 6 blog posts in their relevant category.

3. We've done everything you've mentioned in #3....just not in a super great way because we couldn't really think of parent categories :-p.

so given all of the previous information. Do we need to change things? can google handle the categories and custom taxonomies if one for example is ADHD and the other is ADHD counseling? Do we need to noindex the blog archives?....I can't really think of another solution if this is truly an issue.

.......I mean how do other people do this? lets say you have a shoe store and it contains custom taxonomy for types of shoes for sale, but you also have a blog that needs to talk about different types of shoes.....if you have a blog archive about sneakers and a custom taxonomy for sneakers that you're selling.....how do you distinguish these for google?

Awesome! thanks for doing such an in depth look Roman ^^. Our categories and custom taxonomies aren't ranking right now because I made a mistake and noindexed them on a Yoast update a couple of months ago. lolololol.....it sucks but we've been catching up over the last month ^^. Our 900 keywords tracked in SerpFox went up almost 6,000 rankings in the last 2 weeks.

We did a lot of research before we started and picked our keywords carefully....we just didn't realize the potential conflict presented by dupilicate/similar categories and taxonomies. Our site opened to indexing only a little over 4 months ago, so its going to take some time to rank.

So what do you think? Is my concern an actual problem? In short:

1. can I have one set of categories and another set that are pretty much the same but with the word "therapy" or "counseling" tacked on and have google recognize both of them?

2. would it be better just to noindex my blog categories and keep the custom taxonomy indexed since they hold the 6 most recent posts in a given category?

3. Is this even a problem at all? When we first started the site we were of the thought that google woud be able to tell the difference between blog/adhd and therapists/adhd and rank the two as separate archives related to ADHD. This is the core conflict. Is this an issue or do you think we're ok?

But that's part of the problem they're both valuable content and different from each other. If I choose one over the other then I'm losing out on some SEO juice and preventing some valuable content from being indexed. It would basically amount to indexing the pages that have therapists on them and the 6 most recent blog posts in that category OR the blog archive pages.

Does anybody have any ideas for this one?

Yes, we're very familiar with the differences between categories and tags. What do you think about my question?

Hello Everyone! I'm new here!

My husband and I are working on creating a website: https://sacwellness.com .The site is an online therapist directory for the the Sacramento California area.

Our problem is this: In wordpress our category system is being used for blog posts. Our theme is using a custom taxonomy system to categorize different therapist specialties, therapeutic approaches, etc. We've found ourselves in a position where our custom taxonomy and categories are near duplicates.

for example we have the blog categories: ADHD counseling, Anxiety therapy, and Career counseling

our corresponding custom taxonomy/therapist categories are: ADHD, Anxiety, and....(oops) career counseling.

My understanding is that google doesn't see a difference between identically named categories and custom taxonomies and will so choose one to rank and disregard the other, effectively leaving you competing against yourself.

1. is this true in a case like this? Can google maybe understand the difference because of the custom taxonomy and/or URL paths?

2. if this is a problem is it ok to have near duplicates....like ADHD vs. ADHD counseling. This has been our solution so far....but now we're questioning it....derp x_x.

3. I thought about tagging the categories with no index, but I think the archive pages would be useful for people. Essentially we have 2 sets of archives for each keyword. One is for blog posts, and one is for therapists who work with that particular issue along with the 6 most recent blog posts in that category.....because we are putting the 6 most recent blog posts at the bottom of the therapist pages I feel like it wouldn't be as terrible of a loss if we had to noindex the category pages.

....what do you think?

Thank you!