Why is google not deindexing pages with the meta noindex tag?
-
On our website www.keystonepetplace.com we added the meta noindex tag to category pages that were created by the sorting function.
Google no longer seems to be adding more of these pages to the index, but the pages that were already added are still in the index when I check via site:keystonepetplace.com
Here is an example page: http://www.keystonepetplace.com/dog/dog-food?limit=50
How long should it take for these pages to disappear from the index?
-
Google might have already crawled the pages but not indexed them yet. Be patient , if you have enough links coming in and the pages are less than 3 levels deep they will all be crawled and indexed in no time.
-
I guess it depends on the urgency of your situation. If you were just trying to clean things up then it's okay to wait for Google to re-crawl and solve the problem. But if you have been affected by panda and your site is not ranking then I personally would consider that an urgent enough need to use the tool.
-
This link almost makes it seem like I shouldn't use the webmaster tools removal.
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1269119
-
The crawlers have so many billions of webpages to get to. We have more than 50,000 on our site; there's about 8,000 that they check more regularly than the others - some are just really deep on the site and hard to get to.
-
You can remove entire category directories from the index in one command using the tool. But the urls won't be removed from the cache, just the index. To remove them from the cache you'll need to enter each url individually. I think that if you are trying to clear things up for Panda reasons, just removing from the index is enough. However, I'm currently trying to decide if it will speed things up to remove from the cache as well.
-
Ok. That makes sense. I wonder why it takes so long? I'll start the long process of the manual removal.
-
Streamline Metrics has got it right.
I've seen pages take MONTHS to drop out of the index after being noindexed. It's best to use the URL removal tool in WMT (not to be confused with the disavow tool) to tell Google to not only deindex the pages but to remove them from the cache as well. I have found that when you do this the pages are gone within 12 hours.
-
In your experience how long does this normally take?
-
Yes it was around December 2nd or 3rd that we added the noindex tags. It just seemed like google wasn't removing any pages yet from the index. It did stop google from adding more of these pages though.
-
It all depends on how long it takes Google to re-crawl those pages with the no index tag on them.
I would do this along with the steps you have already taken in order to help speed the process up if you are in a hurry
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1663419
-
Do you know when you added the noindex tags? Google will need to recrawl the pages to see the noindex tags before removing them. I just looked at one your category pages and it looks like it was cached by Google on December 1st, and there was no noindex tag on that page. Depending on how big your site is and how often your site is crawled will determine when they will be removed from the index. Here's Google's official explanation -
"When we see the noindex meta tag on a page, Google will completely drop the page from our search results, even if other pages link to it. Other search engines, however, may interpret this directive differently. As a result, a link to the page can still appear in their search results.
Note that because we have to crawl your page in order to see the noindex meta tag, there's a small chance that Googlebot won't see and respect the noindex meta tag. If your page is still appearing in results, it's probably because we haven't crawled your site since you added the tag. (Also, if you've used your robots.txt file to block this page, we won't be able to see the tag either.)
If the content is currently in our index, we will remove it after the next time we crawl it. To expedite removal, use the URL removal request tool in Google Webmaster Tools."
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93710
-
Or canonical or by robots.txt
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
-
Will Google still ignore the second instance of anchor text on a page if it has an H2 tag on it?
We have a page set up that has anchor text with header tags. There is an instance where the same anchor text is on the page twice linking to the same page, and I know that Google will ignore the second instance. But in the second instance it also had an H2 tag (which I removed and put it on the first instance of anchor text even though it's smaller). Is this good practice?
Technical SEO | | AliMac260 -
Robots.txt vs. meta noindex, follow
Hi guys, I wander what your opinion is concerning exclution via the robots.txt file.
Technical SEO | | AdenaSEO
Do you advise to keep using this? For example: User-agent: *
Disallow: /sale/*
Disallow: /cart/*
Disallow: /search/
Disallow: /account/
Disallow: /wishlist/* Or do you prefer using the meta tag 'noindex, follow' instead?
I keep hearing different suggestions.
I'm just curious what your opinion / suggestion is. Regards,
Tom Vledder0 -
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 do I influence what page on my site google shows for specific search phrases?
Hi People, My client has a site www.activeadventures.com. They provide adventure tours of New Zealand, South America and the Himalayas. These destinations are split into 3 folders in the site (eg: activeadventures.com/new-zealand, activeadventures.com/south-america etc....). The actual root folder of the site is generic information for all of the destinations whilst the destination specific folders are specific in their information for the destination in question. The Problem: If you search for say "Active New Zealand" or "Adventure Tours South America" our result that comes up is the activeadventures.com homepage rather than the destination folder homepage (eg: We would want activeadventures.com/new-zealand to be the landing page for people searching for "active new zealand"). Are there any ways in influence google as to what page on our site it chooses to serve up? Many thanks in advance. Conrad
Technical SEO | | activenz0 -
How do I find which pages are being deindexed on a large site?
Is there an easy way or any way to get a list of all deindexed pages? Thanks for reading!
Technical SEO | | DA20130 -
Google Alerts almost never alerts me to my own pages being added.
Hello All, So i have a fairly decent blog http://www.symbolphoto.com/bl*g/ * replace with o. However, i'm posting to it once/twice a week and i never ever see in my google alerts my pages being included. I do include my search terms in my pages "Bston Wedding Photgrapher" yet, my page is never included. What on earth am i doing wrong? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! -Brendan
Technical SEO | | symbolphoto0 -
Why isn't Google pushing my Schema data to the search results page
I believe we have it set up right. I'm noticing all my competitors schema data is showing up which is really giving them a leg up on us. We have a high ranking website so I'm just not sure why it's now showing up. Here is an example URL http://www.airgundepot.com/3576w.html I've used the Google webmaster tools tester and it all looks fine. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | AirgunDepot0 -
Why does our page show a description in english in google spain?
Hi! We have a multilingual page and I have set in Google Webmaster Tools the language preference for the root domain to be none, Spanish for the .com/es, English for the .com/en, and German for the .com/de. The title and description show in the right language in Google Germany and google UK, but in google.es (Spain) the title and description appear in English instead of Spanish. Does anybody know why could this be happening and how to fix it? kJtF3.png
Technical SEO | | inmonova0