Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI
      Moz Local

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. On-Page Optimization
    4. Is there a way to prevent Google Alerts from picking up old press releases?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Is there a way to prevent Google Alerts from picking up old press releases?

    On-Page Optimization
    4
    8
    2378
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • IdeaGarden
      IdeaGarden last edited by

      I have a client that wants a lot of old press releases (pdfs) added to their news page, but they don't want these to show up in Google Alerts. Is there a way for me to prevent this?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • CleverPhD
        CleverPhD @KeriMorgret last edited by

        Thanks for the post Keri.

        Yep, the OCR option would still make the image option for hiding "moo"

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLwYpSCrlHU

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • KeriMorgret
          KeriMorgret @CleverPhD last edited by

          Harder, but certainly not impossible. I had Google Alerts come up on scanned PDF copies of newsletters from the 1980s and 1990s that were images.

          The files recently moved and aren't showing up for the query, but I did see something else interesting. When I went to view one of the newsletters (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2S0WP3ixBdTVWg3RmFadF91ek0/edit?pli=1), it said "extracting text" for a few moments, then had a search box where I could search the document. On the fly, Google was doing OCR work and seemed decently accurate in the couple of tests I had done. There's a whole bunch of these newsletters at http://www.modelwarshipcombat.com/howto.shtml#hullbusters if you want to mess around with it at all.

          CleverPhD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • CleverPhD
            CleverPhD @nbeske last edited by

            Well that is how to exclude them from an alert that they setup, but I think they are talking about anyone who would setup an alert that might find the PDFs.

            One other idea I had, that I think may help.  If you setup the PDFs as images vs text then it would be harder for Google to "read" the PDFs and therefore not catalog them properly for the alert, but then this would have the same net effect of not having the PDFs in the index at all.

            Danielle, my other question would be - why do they give a crap about Google Alerts specifically.  There has been all kinds of issues with the service and if someone is really interested in finding out info on the company, there are other ways to monitor a website than Google Alerts.  I used to use services that simply monitor a page (say the news release page) and lets me know when it is updated, this was often faster than Google Alerts and I would find stuff on a page before others who did only use Google Alerts.  I think they are being kind of myopic about the whole approach and that blocking for Google Alerts may not help them as much as they think.  Way more people simply search on Google vs using Alerts.

            KeriMorgret 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • nbeske
              nbeske @IdeaGarden last edited by

              The easiest thing to do in this situation would be to add negative keywords or advanced operators to your google alert that prevent the new pages from triggering the alert. You can do this be adding advanced operators that exclude an exact match phrase, a file type, the clients domain or just a specific directory. If all the new pdf files will be in the same directory or share a common url structure you can exclude using the "inurl:-" operator.

              CleverPhD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • KeriMorgret
                KeriMorgret @IdeaGarden last edited by

                That also presumes Google Alerts is anything near accurate. I've had it come up with things that have been on the web for years and for whatever reason, Google thinks they are new.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • IdeaGarden
                  IdeaGarden @CleverPhD last edited by

                  That was what I was thinking would have to be done... It's a little complicated on why they don't want them showing up in Alerts. They do want them showing up on the web, just not as an Alert. I'll let them know they can't have it both ways!

                  KeriMorgret nbeske 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • CleverPhD
                    CleverPhD last edited by

                    Robots.txt and exclude those files.  Note that this takes them out of the web index in general so they will not show up in searches.

                    You need to ask your client why they are putting things on the web if they do not want them to be found.  If they do not want them found, dont put them up on the web.

                    IdeaGarden 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • 1 / 1
                    • First post
                      Last post

                    Got a burning SEO question?

                    Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                    Start my free trial


                    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.

                    • See all categories

                    Related Questions

                    • Markkc

                      Google Reviews Plugin - Does This Impact Negatively On SEO By Diluting Optimisation

                      I know optimisation is now considered 'old hat' but like many old hats not only is it comfortable but it is (in my experience) still functional and working in ranking websites. Yes there are plenty of other drivers, but I still consider optimisation to be important, hence the question Google Reviews Plugin - Does This Impact Negatively On SEO By Diluting Optimisation? From my (limited in many ways) understanding this puts hundreds if not thousands of extra words on a page - so this must surely be reducing the amount of optimisation?  And then could it actually lead to a decline in rankings? Has anyone had any experience in this, I would love to use the Google Reviews plugin but just wanted to be sure first... Many thanks KT

                      On-Page Optimization | | Markkc
                      1
                    • CosiCrawley

                      Google Console returning 0 pages as being indexed

                      HI there, I submitted my site notebuster.net to Search Console over a month ago and it is showing 0 pages as being indexed under the index status report. I know this isn't right as I can see that in google alone by typing in (site:notebusters.net) there are 113 pages indexed. Any idea why this might be? Thanks

                      On-Page Optimization | | CosiCrawley
                      0
                    • Gaolga

                      How to remove subdomains in a clean way?

                      Hello, I have a main domain example.com where I have my main content and then I created 3 subdomains one.example.com, two.example.com and three.example.com I think the low ranking of my subdomains is affecting the ranking of my main domain, the one I care the most. So, I decided to get rid of the subdomains. The thing is that only for one.example.com I could transfer the content to my main domain and create 301 redirects. For the other two subdomains I cannot integrate the content in my main domain as it doesn't make sense. Whats the cleanest way to make them dissapear? (just put a redirect to my main domain even if the content is not the same) or just change the robots to "noindex" and put a 404 page in the index of each subdomain. I want to use the way that will harm the least the performance with Google. Regards!

                      On-Page Optimization | | Gaolga
                      0
                    • MilesMedia

                      SEO value of old press releases (as content)?

                      Howdy Moz Community, I'm working with a client on migrating content to a new site/CMS and am wondering whether anyone has thoughts on the value of old press releases. I'm familiar with the devaluation of press release links from early 2013, but I'm wondering more about their value as content. Does importing old press releases (3-5 years old) create contextual depth of content that has some value for the site as a whole (even though the news contained within is useless)? Or, do these old press releases just create clutter and waste time (in migration). The site has a wealth of additional content (articles and videos), so the press releases wouldn't be covering up for thin content. I'm just wondering whether there's any best practices or a general rule of thumb. Thanks!

                      On-Page Optimization | | MilesMedia
                      0
                    • Philip-DiPatrizio

                      Best way to separate blogs, media coverage, and press releases on WordPress?

                      I'm curious what some of your thoughts are on the best way to handle the separation of blog posts, from press releases stories, from media coverage.  With 1 WordPress installation, we're obviously utilizing the Posts for these types of content. It seems obvious to put press releases into a "press release" category and media coverage into a "media coverage" category.... but then what about blog posts?  We could put blog posts into a "blog" category, but I hate that.  And what about actual blog categories?  I tried making sub-categories for the blog category which seemed like it was going to work, until the breadcrumbs looked all crazy. Example: Homepage > Blog > Blog > Sub-Category Homepage = http://www.example.com First 'Blog' = http://www.example.com/blog Second 'Blog' = http://www.example.com/category/blog Sub-Category = http://www.example.com/category/blog/sub-category This just doesn't seem very clean and I feel like there has to be a better solution to this.  What about post types?  I've never really worked with them.  Is that the solution to my woes? All suggestions are welcome! EDIT: I should add that we would like the URL to contain /blog/ for blog posts /media-coverage/ for media coverage, and /press-releases/ for press releases.  For blog posts, we don't want the sub-category to be in the URL.

                      On-Page Optimization | | Philip-DiPatrizio
                      0
                    • jcgoodrich

                      What is the best way to execute a geo redirect?

                      Based on what I've read, it seems like everyone agrees an IP-based, server side redirect is fine for SEO if you have content that is "geo" in nature. What I don't understand is how to actually do this. It seems like after a bit of research there are 3 options: You can do a 301 which it seems like most sites do, but that basically means if google crawls you in different US areas (which it may or may not) it essentially thinks you have multiple homepages. Does google only crawl from SF-based IPs? 302 passes no juice, so probably don't want to do that. Yelp does a 303 redirect, which it seems like nobody else does, but Yelp is obviously very SEO-savvy. Is this perhaps a better way that solves for the above issues? Thoughts on what is best approach here?

                      On-Page Optimization | | jcgoodrich
                      0
                    • Kotkov

                      Right way to block google robots from ppc landing pages

                      What is the right way to completely block seo robots from my adword landing pages? Robots.txt does not work really good for that, as far I know. Adding metatags noindex nofollow on the other side will block adwords robot as well. right? Thank you very much, Serge

                      On-Page Optimization | | Kotkov
                      0
                    • david305

                      Howdy, do curse words on your content article hurt SEO in any way or form?

                      howdy, do curse words on your content article hurt SEO in any way or form? and if so is there a "list" of registered curse keywords that should be avoided?

                      On-Page Optimization | | david305
                      0

                    Get started with Moz Pro!

                    Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                    Start my free trial
                    Products
                    • Moz Pro
                    • Moz Local
                    • Moz API
                    • Moz Data
                    • STAT
                    • Product Updates
                    Moz Solutions
                    • SMB Solutions
                    • Agency Solutions
                    • Enterprise Solutions
                    • Digital Marketers
                    Free SEO Tools
                    • Domain Authority Checker
                    • Link Explorer
                    • Keyword Explorer
                    • Competitive Research
                    • Brand Authority Checker
                    • Local Citation Checker
                    • MozBar Extension
                    • MozCast
                    Resources
                    • Blog
                    • SEO Learning Center
                    • Help Hub
                    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                    • How-to Guides
                    • Moz Academy
                    • API Docs
                    About Moz
                    • About
                    • Team
                    • Careers
                    • Contact
                    Why Moz
                    • Case Studies
                    • Testimonials
                    Get Involved
                    • Become an Affiliate
                    • MozCon
                    • Webinars
                    • Practical Marketer Series
                    • MozPod
                    Connect with us

                    Contact the Help team

                    Join our newsletter
                    Moz logo
                    © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                    • Accessibility
                    • Terms of Use
                    • Privacy

                    Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.