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.
Blocked URL parameters can still be crawled and indexed by google?
-
Hy guys,
I have two questions and one might be a dumb question but there it goes. I just want to be sure that I understand:
IF I tell webmaster tools to ignore an URL Parameter, will google still index and rank my url?
IS it ok if I don't append in the url structure the brand filter?, will I still rank for that brand?
Thanks,
PS: ok 3 questions :)...
-
If you want to permanently remove URLs from the index, this is the basic process:
Have your developer implement NoIndex, Follow to all pages that have the URL parameter you want removed. For example, if the URL contains categoryFilter= (like above), then add the NoIndex, Follow tag to the of the page. Do this for all URL paramters you want removed from the index.
Make sure Google is allowed to crawl those pages. If they are blocked by robots.txt or told not to crawl them via Google Webmaster Tools, Google will not be able to see the newly implement NoIndex, Follow tag.
Then, give it some time and wait. It may take Google a long time to crawl all of these paramtered URLs again. Fallout of the index might be slow.
Once the URLs are gone, consider blocking the crawling of them via robots.txt or in GWT parameter handling.
-
Hi Anthony,
What if we are trying to permanently remove e-commerce website URL's that have multiple parameters from (Google) index. How would we apply noindex to all these URL's with parameters??
The aim is to recrawl and rebuild the index of the whole website using appropriate robots, canonical's & meta-tags, rather than using GWT.
Many thanks
-
Parameter handling in Google Webmaster Tools won't get a URL out of the index if it is already indexed.
You need to use the NoIndex robots meta tag in the of your page. Once you add this tag, be sure you are allowing Google to crawl the page. Make sure it is Not blocked via robots.txt or with Parameter handling.
Once the pages have left the index, you can block them from being crawled.
-
If you want a page or url not crawled then you should use the robots.txt file and robots meta tags. Then, in WMT, make sure those same pages are actually not being crawled
Hope that answers your question
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
-
Google is indexing bad URLS
Hi All, The site I am working on is built on Wordpress. The plugin Revolution Slider was downloaded. While no longer utilized, it still remained on the site for some time. This plugin began creating hundreds of URLs containing nothing but code on the page. I noticed these URLs were being indexed by Google. The URLs follow the structure: www.mysite.com/wp-content/uploads/revslider/templates/this-part-changes/ I have done the following to prevent these URLs from being created & indexed: 1. Added a directive in my Htaccess to 404 all of these URLs 2. Blocked /wp-content/uploads/revslider/ in my robots.txt 3. Manually de-inedex each URL using the GSC tool 4. Deleted the plugin However, new URLs still appear in Google's index, despite being blocked by robots.txt and resolving to a 404. Can anyone suggest any next steps? I Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Tom3_150 -
Not all images indexed in Google
Hi all, Recently, got an unusual issue with images in Google index. We have more than 1,500 images in our sitemap, but according to Search Console only 273 of those are indexed. If I check Google image search directly, I find more images in index, but still not all of them. For example this post has 28 images and only 17 are indexed in Google image. This is happening to other posts as well. Checked all possible reasons (missing alt, image as background, file size, fetch and render in Search Console), but none of these are relevant in our case. So, everything looks fine, but not all images are in index. Any ideas on this issue? Your feedback is much appreciated, thanks
Technical SEO | | flo_seo1 -
How to fix Google index after fixing site infected with malware.
Hi All Upgraded a Joomla site for a customer a couple of months ago that was infected with malware (it wasn't flagged as infected by google). Site is fine now but still noticing search queries for "cheap adobe" etc with links to http://domain.com/index.php?vc=201&Cheap_Adobe_Acrobat_xi in web master tools (about 50 in total). These url's redirect back to home page and seem to be remaining in the index (I think Joomla is doing this automatically) Firstly, what sort of effect would these be having on on their rankings? Would they be seen by google as duplicate content for the homepage (moz doesn't report them as such as there are no internal links). Secondly what's my best plan of attack to fix them. Should I setup 404's for them and then submit them to google? Will resubmitting the site to the index fix things? Would appreciate any advice or suggestions on the ramifications of this and how I should fix it. Regards, Ian
Technical SEO | | iragless0 -
How to block text on a page to be indexed?
I would like to block the spider indexing a block of text inside a page , however I do not want to block the whole page with, for example , a noindex tag. I have tried already with a tag like this : chocolate pudding chocolate pudding However this is not working for my case, a travel related website. thanks in advance for your support. Best regards Gianluca
Technical SEO | | CharmingGuy0 -
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?
Technical SEO | | rhoadesjohn0 -
Mobile URL parameter (Redirection to desktop)
Hello, We have a parallel mobile website and recently we implemented a link pointing to the desktop website. This redirect is happening via a javascript code and results in a url followed by this paramenter: ?m=off Example:
Technical SEO | | echo1
http://www.m.website.com redirects to:
http://www.website.com/?m=off Questions: Will the "http://www.website.com/?m=off" be considered duplicate content with "http://www.website.com" since they both return the same content? Is there any possibility that Google will take into consideration the url ending in "/?m=off"? How should we treat this new url? The webmaster tools URL parameter configuration at the moment isn't experiencing problems but should we submit the parameter anyway in order not to be indexed or should we wait first and see the error response? In case we should submit this for removal... what's the best way to do it? Like this? Parameter: ?m=off Does this parameter change page content seen by the user? - doesn't affect page content Any help is much appreciated.
Thank you!0 -
CDN Being Crawled and Indexed by Google
I'm doing a SEO site audit, and I've discovered that the site uses a Content Delivery Network (CDN) that's being crawled and indexed by Google. There are two sub-domains from the CDN that are being crawled and indexed. A small number of organic search visitors have come through these two sub domains. So the CDN based content is out-ranking the root domain, in a small number of cases. It's a huge duplicate content issue (tens of thousands of URLs being crawled) - what's the best way to prevent the crawling and indexing of a CDN like this? Exclude via robots.txt? Additionally, the use of relative canonical tags (instead of absolute) appear to be contributing to this problem as well. As I understand it, these canonical tags are telling the SEs that each sub domain is the "home" of the content/URL. Thanks! Scott
Technical SEO | | Scott-Thomas0 -
Do search engines still index/crawl private content?
If you have a membership site, which requires a payment to access specific content/images/videos, do search engines still use that content as a ranking/domain authority factor? Is it worth optimizing these "private" pages for SEO?
Technical SEO | | christinarule1
