When should we use Remove URLs feature on Google Webmasters Tool?
-
Hi there,
I run an ecommerce website on Magento. We are no longer using a category. It actually does not appear on the menu:
If this is the case, do you recommend to remove it through the Removal URL feature on GWT?
I don't want this to affect the juice of other links of the site such as:
Thanks very much.
Regards
-
I would just 301 that URL to similar products that are as close as possible and or the home page of the site as this would be a better user experience than returning a 404. Although If some URLs on your site 404, this fact alone does not hurt you or count against you in Google’s search results.
You could 410 them as 410's tend to drop out of the index faster. If the page has gotten a lot of traffic, then I might want to NOINDEX it. All in all there isn't a real one size fits all thing here, especially for eCommerce.
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
-
What could cause Google to not honor canonical URLs?
I have a strange situation on a website, when I do a Google query of site:example.com all the top indexed results appear to be queries that users can perform on the website. So any random term the user searches for on the website for some reason is causing the search result page to get indexed - like example.com/search/query/random-keywords However, the search results page has a canonical tag on it that points to example.com/search, but that doesn't seem to be doing anything. Any thoughts or ideas why this could be happening?
Technical SEO | | IrvCo_Interactive0 -
Change URL or use Canonicals and Redirects?
We just completed a conclusive a/b test on a client's landing page. The new page saw a 30% bump in conversions, yay! Now what? Option 1: Change the url of the new page to that of the old page, retire the old page. Option 2: Redirect the old page and anything that was pointing to it to the new page, make the new page the canonical. I'm afraid of option 1 because I think Google's WTF penalty will be a bit harsher than option 2, but I wanted to sanity check that here. Any thoughts or experienced advice would be very appreciated!
Technical SEO | | LindsayDayton0 -
Will Google Recrawl an Indexed URL Which is No Longer Internally Linked?
We accidentally introduced Google to our incomplete site. The end result: thousands of pages indexed which return nothing but a "Sorry, no results" page. I know there are many ways to go about this, but the sheer number of pages makes it frustrating. Ideally, in the interim, I'd love to 404 the offending pages and allow Google to recrawl them, realize they're dead, and begin removing them from the index. Unfortunately, we've removed the initial internal links that lead to this premature indexation from our site. So my question is, will Google revisit these pages based on their own records (as in, this page is indexed, let's go check it out again!), or will they only revisit them by following along a current site structure? We are signed up with WMT if that helps.
Technical SEO | | kirmeliux0 -
Rogue url foung in webmaster toos
Buon Giorno from 2 degrees C thick fog wetherby UK 🙂 On this site www.davidclick.com I ran a crawl test and came across a url that doesnt exist in my site, the findings are illustrated here: http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/rogue-urlcopy_zps6c58ee46.jpg The plot thickens... the source of the referring traffic to a page that doesnt exist can be seen here: http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/rogue-link-source_zpsc70a34fc.jpg My intial thoughts rae to disavow via this tool:
Technical SEO | | Nightwing
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main So my question is please: Is this sinister or should I just sit back drink a cup of horlicks and return to a Zen like status of inner peace? Any insights welcome 😉 Grazie tanto, David0 -
I was googling the word "best web hosting" and i notice the 1st and 3rd result were results with google plus. Does Google plus now play a role in improving ranking for the website?
I was googling the word "best web hosting" and i notice the 1st and 3rd result were results with google plus. Does Google plus now play a role in improving ranking for the website?I see a person's name next to the website too
Technical SEO | | mainguy0 -
Trailing Slashes In Url use Canonical Url or 301 Redirect?
I was thinking of using 301 redirects for trailing slahes to no trailing slashes for my urls. EG: www.url.com/page1/ 301 redirect to www.url.com/page1 Already got a redirect for non-www to www already. Just wondering in my case would it be best to continue using htacces for the trailing slash redirect or just go with Canonical URLs?
Technical SEO | | upick-1623910 -
How do I eliminate duplicate url, duplicate title issues using Joomla CMS?
We have a site using Joomla CMS, integrated with Jreviews and Jomsocial. Utilizing ACE SEF to generate Dynamic URL structure. Our issue is that we are recieving multiple instances of duplicate url's and duplicate titles due to the way joomla is working with jreviews for all our 7,000+ business listings. Site is already ranked for many broad/national keywords, concerned that our state and local rankings are limited by these errors. How can we prevent this from happening without re-writing the entire website?
Technical SEO | | mdmcn0 -
Access To Client's Google Webmaster Tools
Hi, What's the best/easiest way for a client to grant access to his Google Webmaster Tools to me? Thanks! Best...Michael
Technical SEO | | 945010