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    4. Should I use noindex or robots to remove pages from the Google index?

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    Should I use noindex or robots to remove pages from the Google index?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
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    • Tylerj
      Tylerj last edited by

      I have a Magento site and just realized we have about 800 review pages indexed. The /review directory is disallowed in robots.txt but the pages are still indexed.

      From my understanding robots means it will not crawl the pages BUT if the pages are still indexed if they are linked from somewhere else.

      I can add the noindex tag to the review pages but they wont be crawled.

      https://www.seroundtable.com/google-do-not-use-noindex-in-robots-txt-20873.html

      Should I remove the robots.txt and add the noindex? Or just add the noindex to what I already have?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • SwanseaMedicine
        SwanseaMedicine @LoganRay last edited by

        Thanks, Logan!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • LoganRay
          LoganRay @SwanseaMedicine last edited by

          Rhys,

          Your web dev team is confused. You cannot de-index by simply disallowing them in your robots.txt file. Google will still index anything they find (that doesn't have a noindex tag) from a link, this is the reason you often see search results that say "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt" as the description.

          Here's a quote from Google regarding the subject: "You should not use robots.txt as a means to hide your web pages from Google Search results." - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062608?hl=en

          SwanseaMedicine 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • SwanseaMedicine
            SwanseaMedicine last edited by

            Hi all,

            Sorry to jump in here but I've been told the opposite by our web dev team. We're removing indexed 404s at the moment, and our web dev team said we simply need to add robots.txt to the pages and they'll be de-indexed. If this incorrect? I thought I'd need to add a noindex tag but was argued down...

            Cheers,

            Rhys

            LoganRay 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • dohertyjf
              dohertyjf last edited by

              Hi there. Good question and one that comes up a lot.

              You need to do the following:

              • Put the noindex on those pages
              • Remove the block in robots.txt
              • Monitor these pages falling out of the index
              • Once they are all out, then put the block back in place

              You both want them to a) drop out and b) then not be crawled, so the above will take care of that for you.

              Hope that helps!

              John

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Tylerj
                Tylerj last edited by

                Thanks.

                That is what I figured just wanted to double check.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • LoganRay
                  LoganRay last edited by

                  Hi Tyler,

                  Yes, remove the robots.txt disallow for that section and add a noindex tag. Noindex is the only sure-fire way to de-index URLs, but the crawlers need to be allowed to crawl those pages to see the tag.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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