How to Stop Google from Indexing Old Pages
-
We moved from a .php site to a java site on April 10th. It's almost 2 months later and Google continues to crawl old pages that no longer exist (225,430 Not Found Errors to be exact).
These pages no longer exist on the site and there are no internal or external links pointing to these pages.
Google has crawled the site since the go live, but continues to try and crawl these pages.
What are my next steps?
-
All my clients are impatient with Google's crawl. I think the speed of life on the web has spoiled them. Assuming your site isn't a huge e-commerce or subject-matter site...you will get crawled but not right away. Smaller, newer sites take time.
Take any concern and put it towards link building to the new site so Google's crawlers find it faster (via their seed list). Get it up on DMOZ, get that Twitter account going, post videos to Youtube, etc. Get some juicy high-PR inbound links and that could help speed up the indexing. Good luck!
-
Like Mike said above, there still isn't enough info provided for us to give you a very clear response, but I think he is right to point out that you shouldnt really care about the extinct pages in Google's index. They should, at some point, expire.
You can specify particular URLs to remove in GWT, or your robots.txt file, but that doesn't seem the best option for you. My recommendation is to just prepare the new site in the new location, upload a good clean sitemap.xml to GWT, and let them adjust. If you have much of the same content as well, Google will know due to the page creation date which is the newer and more appropriate site. Hate to say "trust the engines" but in this case, you should.
You may also consider a rel="author" tag in your new site to help Google prioritize the new site. But really the best thing is a new site on a new domain, a nice sitemap.xml, and patience.
-
To further clear things up...
I can 301 every page from the old .php site to our new homepage (However, I'm concerned about Google's impression of our overall user experience).
Or
I can 410 every page from the old .php site (Wouldn't this tell Google to stop trying to crawl these pages? Although these pages technically still exist, they just have a different URL and directory structure. Too many to set up individual 301's tho).
Or
I can do nothing and wait for these pages to drop off of Google's radar
What is the best option?
-
After reading the further responses here I'm wondering something...
You switched to a new site, can't 301 the old pages, and have no control over the old domain... So why are you worried about pages 404ing on an unused site you don't control anymore?
Maybe I'm missing something here or not reading it right. Who does control the old domain then? Is the old domain just completely gone? Because if so, why would it matter that Google is crawling non-existent pages on a dead site and returning 404s and 500s? Why would that necessarily affect the new site?
Or is it the same site but you switched to Java from PHP? If so, wouldn't your CMS have a way of redirecting the old pages that are technically still part of your site to the newer relevant pages on the site?
I feel like I'm missing pertinent info that might make this easier to digest and offer up help.
-
Sean,
Many thanks for your response. We have submitted a new, fresh site map to Google, but it seems like it's taking them forever to digest the changes.
We've been keeping track of rankings, and they've been going down, but there are so many changes going on at once with the new site, it's hard to tell what is the primary factor for the decline.
Is there a way to send Google all of the pages that don't exist and tell them to stop looking for them?
Thanks again for your help!
-
You would need access to the domain to set up the 301. If you no longer can edit files on the old domain, then your best bet is to update Webmaster Tools with the new site info and a sitemap.xml and wait for their caches to expire and update.
Somebody can correct me on this if I'm wrong, but getting so many 404s and 500's already has probably impacted your rankings so significantly, that you may be best served to approach the whole effort as a new site. Again, without more data, I'm left making educated guesses here. And if you aren't tracking your rankings (as you asked how much it is impacting...you should be able to see), then I would let go of the old site completely and build search traffic fresh on the new domain. You'd probably generate better results in the long term by jettisoning a defunct site with so many errors.
I confess, without being able to dig into the site analytics and traffic data, I can't give direct tactical advice. However, the above is what I would certainly do. Resubmitting a fresh sitemap.xml to GWT and deleting all the info to the old site in there is probably your best option. I defer to anyone with better advice. What a tough position you are in!
-
Thanks all for the feedback.
We no longer have access to the old domain. How do we institute a 301 if we can no longer access the page?
We have over 200,000 pages throwing 404's and over 70,000 pages throwing 500 errors.
This probably doesn't look good to Google. How much is this impacting our rankings?
-
Like others have said, a 301 redirect and updating Webmaster Tools should be most of what you need to do. You didn't say if you still have access to the old domain (where the pages are still being crawled) or if you get a 404, 503, or some other error when navigating to those pages. What are you seeing or can you provide a sample URL? That may help eliminate some possibilities.
-
You should implement 301 redirects from your old pages to their new locations. It's sounds like you have a fairly large site, which means Google has tons of your old pages in its index that it is going to continue to crawl for some time. It's probably not going to impact you negatively, but if you want to get rid of the errors sooner I would throw in some 301s. \
With the 301s you'll also get any link value that the old pages may be getting from external links (I know you said there are none, but with 200K+ pages it's likely that at least one of the pages is being linked to from somewhere).
-
Have you submitted a new sitemap to Webmaster Tools? Also, you could consider 301 redirecting the pages to relevant new pages to capitalize on any link equity or ranking power they may have had before. Otherwise Google should eventually stop crawling them because they are 404. I've had a touch of success getting them to stop crawling quicker (or at least it seems quicker) by changing some 404s to 410s.
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 google does not remove my page?
Hi everyone, last week i add "Noindex" tag into my page, but that site still appear in the organic search. what other things i can do for remove from google?
Technical SEO | | Jorge_HDI0 -
Top Landing Page has disappeared from Google Search Console but still shows at the top of Google
Hi, One of the top landing pages in my website has disappeared from GSC Search Analytics results. But I do get a good traffic from that page until now. What might be the reason for GSC to stop showing it on the results?
Technical SEO | | eduapps0 -
Blog page won't get indexed
Hi Guys, I'm currently asked to work on a website. I noticed that the blog posts won't get indexed in Google. www.domain.com/blog does get indexed but the blogposts itself won't. They have been online for over 2 months now. I found this in the robots.txt file: Allow: / Disallow: /kitchenhandle/ Disallow: /blog/comments/ Disallow: /blog/author/ Disallow: /blog/homepage/feed/ I'm guessing that the last line causes this issue. Does anyone have an idea if this is the case and why they would include this in the robots.txt? Cheers!
Technical SEO | | Happy-SEO2 -
My SEO friend says my website is not being indexed by Google considering the keywords he has placed in the page and URL what does that mean?
My SEO friend says my website is not being indexed by Google considering the keywords he has placed in the page and URL what does that mean? We have added some text in the pages with keywords thats related the page
Technical SEO | | AlexisWithers0 -
Page Title Displaying differently on Google
Hi i am wondering why page title is display differently on google search. The combination of words that are being displayed on google are not on the page and the page title is simply "Camera Filters", however the page is showing as "our range of Camera Filters" (with the same capitalisation). http://awesomescreenshot.com/0cf4r09y27 I have optimised the age as best i can so it removes the OUR RANGE OF preface, however no luck. Any info would be appreciated. Cheers
Technical SEO | | andrewlos0 -
Google dropping pages from SERPs even though indexed and cached. (Shift over to https suspected.)
Anybody know why pages that have previously been indexed - and that are still present in Google's cache - are now not appearing in Google SERPs? All the usual suspects - noindex, robots, duplication filter, 301s - have been ruled out. We shifted our site over from http to https last week and it appears to have started then, although we have also been playing around with our navigation structure a bit too. Here are a few examples... Example 1: Live URL: https://www.normanrecords.com/records/149002-memory-drawings-there-is-no-perfect-place Cached copy: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.normanrecords.com/records/149002-memory-drawings-there-is-no-perfect-place SERP (1): https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=memory+drawings+there+is+no+perfect+place SERP (2): https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=memory+drawings+there+is+no+perfect+place+site%3Awww.normanrecords.com Example 2: SERP: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=deaf+center+recount+site%3Awww.normanrecords.com Live URL: https://www.normanrecords.com/records/149001-deaf-center-recount- Cached copy: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.normanrecords.com/records/149001-deaf-center-recount- These are pages that have been linked to from our homepage (Moz PA of 68) prominently for days, are present and correct in our sitemap (https://www.normanrecords.com/catalogue_sitemap.xml), have unique content, have decent on-page optimisation, etc. etc. We moved over to https on 11 Aug. There were some initial wobbles (e.g. 301s from normanrecords.com to www.normanrecords.com got caught up in a nasty loop due to the conflicting 301 from http to https) but these were quickly sorted (i.e. spotted and resolved within minutes). There have been some other changes made to the structure of the site (e.g. a reduction in the navigation options) but nothing I know of that would cause pages to drop like this. For the first example (Memory Drawings) we were ranking on the first page right up until this morning and have been receiving Google traffic for it ever since it was added to the site on 4 Aug. Any help very much appreciated! At the very end of my tether / understanding here... Cheers, Nathon
Technical SEO | | nathonraine0 -
Pages not being indexed
Hi Moz community! We have a client for whom some of their pages are not ranking at all, although they do seem to be indexed by Google. They are in the real estate sector and this is an example of one: http://www.myhome.ie/residential/brochure/102-iveagh-gardens-crumlin-dublin-12/2289087 In the example above if you search for "102 iveagh gardens crumlin" on Google then they do not rank for that exact URL above - it's a similar one. And this page has been live for quite some time. Anyone got any thoughts on what might be at play here? Kind regards. Gavin
Technical SEO | | IrishTimes0 -
Page authority old and new website
Dear all, I tried to find this question using the search option but cannot find the exact same problem. This is the thing: I launched a new website in January, replacing our old website that did pretty good in the SERPs. The old website is still running on a subdomain old.website.com and the new website is on www.website.com (www.denhollandsche.nl) Both sites are indexed by google right now, but I'm not sure if that's a good thing. For our main keyword, the page on the new website has an authority of "23" and the exact same page (some minor differences) on the old website still has an authority of "30". Both currently are on the second page of google while some time ago, they where still on position 2/3/4. My question is: if I would take down the old website and make a 301 redirect for the old page with P/A 30, to point to the new page with a P/A 23, will the p/a of this new page take over the P/A of the old page? What effects can I expect? The reason the old website is still running is that google images still shows images from old.domain.com in stead of images from the new website... Thanks for your help guys!
Technical SEO | | stepsstones0