Is there a way to prevent Google Alerts from picking up old press releases?
-
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?
-
Thanks for the post Keri.
Yep, the OCR option would still make the image option for hiding "moo"
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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!
-
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.
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
-
The particular page cannot be indexed by Google
Hello, Smart People!
On-Page Optimization | | Viktoriia1805
We need help solving the problem with Google indexing.
All pages of our website are crawled and indexed. All pages, including those mentioned, meet Google requirements and can be indexed. However, only this page is still not indexed.
Robots.txt is not blocking it.
We do not have a tag "nofollow"
We have it in the sitemap file.
We have internal links for this page from indexed pages.
We requested indexing many times, and it is still grey.
The page was established one year ago.
We are open to any suggestions or guidance you may have. What else can we do to expedite the indexing process?1 -
Why am not ranking on google with 30 of domain authority
Hello my name is Alexander muller and around 2 years ago i have build this website https://muller-designs.com/ i love to use MOZ to analyze other sites, so i know that my page is better than some others but they still aut rank my website can someone give me an explanation for this ? and i also have a couple of other questions it would be great if someone can help me Is on-site optimisation really that important??? How often should I update my blog???
On-Page Optimization | | alexmuller871 -
Website Titles in Google
I currently have a Wordpress platform website and previously I noticed that when I optimized my pages, if I indicated what I wanted my page names to be (through an application like SEO Yoast) that most times, the keyword would show up exactly how I had it typed in. Recently I have noticed that the title of my website is showing in my page titles too. So for example: Before: Shoe Stores Windsor - XYZ Company Now: XYZ Company | Shoe Stores Windsor - XYZ Company In SEO practices, I know it's most often best to have the keyword you would like as close to the front of your title tag, but now this recent search adds my website title first. Plus this also seems to be making my titles longer. I know Google ultimately has the 'final say' in a page title and I have ensured that I have the "rewrite titles/descriptions option" check in Wordpress to allow me to overwrite titles, but I am hoping someone can possibly provide me with a tip or trick to avoid this in search rankings. I think it's important to have the name of my site entered through Wordpress so that any pages that I have no optimized default to the page name and site name, but the ones I have optimized seem to be showing differently all of a sudden. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | MainstreamMktg0 -
Google Data Highlighter
Hello Mozers! Anyone out there have any experience using the Google data highlighter tool in WMT? I'm just curious if it is something I should be utilizing or should just try to get the same results using microdata markup. I'm not a fan of "tools" per se...I'd rather get my hands dirty. Just looking for any thoughts or experiences in using it.
On-Page Optimization | | adamxj21 -
Why am I ranking on both Bing and Yahoo and yet the rankings are declining on Google
I'm seeing ranking go up on both Bing and Yahoo and yet they are going down on Google. I did see a bunch of spammy links show up about a month ago but have managed to get all those taken down although did not get any warnings from Google in Webmaster tools about them was more of a preemptive measure. The site in question. http://www.gocitrusnow.com
On-Page Optimization | | mwaters19790 -
Google Panda This Past Weekend Impact
I understood that Google was implementing a major Panda refresh this past weekend. Did it happen? Anyone notice any impacts? What changed?
On-Page Optimization | | lbohen0 -
Stumped on why Google is not showing main site pages anymore
Recently had sites homepage listing taken off first page for brand name search even though search term is not competitive. Does anyone have any ideas?
On-Page Optimization | | Luia0 -
Google SERPS showing wrong page.
I am new to SEO and trying to rank for keyword 'corporate entertainment' and my site is currently at 26. However google is showing the homepage http://www.musicliveuk.com in SERPS as opposed to my optomised page http://www.musicliveuk.com/home/corporate-entertainment. Any ideas why it is choosing so show the home page as the most relevant result?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0