Dev Site Out of SERP But Still Indexed
-
One of our dev sites get indexed (live site robots.txt was moved to it, that has been corrected) 2-3 weeks ago. I immediately added it to our Webmaster Tools and used the Remove URL tool to get the whole thing out of the SERPs.
A site:devurl search in Google now returns no results, but checking Index Status in WMT shows 2,889 pages of it still indexed. How can I get all instances of it completely removed from Google?
-
Don'worry! It will take time. Google isn't lightning quick with drop requests or URL removals. They take time to filter out. Give it time and monitor it weekly to see they start to diminish
Cheers!
-
See my original post - I did that and in its WMT it still shows pages indexed.
-
Thumbs up on Mike and Robs comments. What you may want to do is to setup a GWT account for the dev.website.ext and then go in and delete it from within GWT. That will truly deep 6 it and then the robots.txt is the final blow.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663427
Just leave the form blank when you request removal and it removes the entire subdomain. The robots.txt then makes sure it stays out.
-
As Mike said, it could take months for Google to remove all the indexed content from the DEV side (that was crawled and indexed). Looks like you did it all right too. I wouldn't worry, let it filter out. You won't be able to rush it any faster.
-
Hi David,
It sounds like you did everything right. As long as you cannot see the dev site in the live SERPs, you should be safe.
I have seen it take MONTHS for WMT to update any information regarding crawl stats, resolved errors, etc.
Just keep a close eye on things, but you should be safe if you can't find it by doing a Google search.
Hope this helps,
Mike
PS you may want to check Bing as well.
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
-
Poor Load Balancer Implementation, now the site is indexed 4 times
I was brought on to a project where the network admin has set up a load balancer to distribute traffic but somehow has incorrectly deployed the strategy. Now the site is listed 4 times as links to the primary domain in search console. How can I remove these from the index? I have already requested he no-index them, but they still remain in search console. What else can I do to ensure Google only sees this as a single site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DonFerrari21690 -
Still Not Secure in Chrome
Hi We migrated to HTTPs in November - but we still aren't showing as Secure. I thought it was due to there being an Insecure SHA-1 script in the SSlL Certificate, so am waiting to get this fixed. We had a few http links outstanding so they have been updated, but we're still getting the issue. Does anyone have an idea of what it could be? https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
How to make sure dev site is not index in wordpress and how would it be affected?
hi guys! I'm currently having a dev version of my site (dev.website.com) that once everything is done i would move the dev to the public domain (website.com). But since is a total duplicate content of my real site would it affect the seo? if so, i tried setting the reading privacy in wordpress so google would not index it but im afraid when i live it in the future and revert the setting back to normal it would affect the site seo. any opinion and suggestion on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andrewwatson920 -
Why is this site not indexed by Google?
Hi all and thanks for your help in advance. I've been asked to take a look at a site, http://www.yourdairygold.ie as it currently does not appear for its brand name, Your Dairygold on Google Ireland even though it's been live for a few months now. I've checked all the usual issues such as robots.txt (doesn't have one) and the robots meta tag (doesn't have them). The even stranger thing is that the site does rank on Yahoo! and Bing. Google Webmaster Tools shows that Googlebot is crawling around 150 pages a day but the total number of pages indexed is zero. It does appear if you carry out a site: search on Google however. The site is very poorly optimised in terms of title tags, unnecessary redirects etc which I'm working on now but I wondered if you guys had any further insights. Thanks again for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iProspect-Ireland0 -
Index, Nofollow Issue
We are having on our site a couple of pages that we want the page to be indexed, however, we don't want the links on the page to be followed. For example url: http://www.printez.com/animal-personal-checks.html. We have added in our code: . Bing Webmaster Tools, is telling us the following: The pages uses a meta robots tag. Review the value of the tag to see if you are not unintentionally blocking the page from being indexed (NOINDEX). Question is, is the page using the right code as of now or do we need to do any changes in the code, if so, what should we use for them to index the page, but not to follow the links on the page? Please advise, Morris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PrintEZ0 -
Potential problems with my site
Dear Mozzers I hope you can help me with the following problems: My site is up and running for a year now and may be there has been problem with the homepage, because it ranks on first page for a competitive keyword on Google.com and Google.com.au only, however in other countries it just shows up as internal page and does not rank well. google.com/Google.com.au: homepage ranks top 10 (example.com)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SteveTran2013
Other countries (.co.uk, .ca..ect) an internal page shows up, example.com/internalpage.html - shows on page 3-4. I can not find the homepage of example.com anywhere around top 1000. Can you please tell me what are the potential problems. Thank you very much. BR/Tran0 -
To index search results or to not index search results?
What are your feelings about indexing search results? I know big brands can get away with it (yelp, ebay, etc). Apart from UGC, it seems like one of the best ways to capture long tail traffic at scale. If the search results offer valuable / engaging content, would you give it a go?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Redirection to mobile site
Calling all SEO ninjas! I'm currently developing single web pages for various clients which function as abbreviated versions of their main websites. They are all related & under a single domain. When a user visits these pages on a mobile device, CSS is used to display mobile friendly versions of these pages. My clients are thrilled with these mobile versions and now want to also redirect mobile visitors from their main site (which is not mobile optimised) to these pages. My questions are: Are there any negative implications if we did this? ie. redirecting to a different domain What is the best method for redirection? eg. JavaScript Can this be achieved by adding a single line of code to their main site Can this be done in an SEO friendly way so that the redirection acts like a backlink? Many thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | martyc0