404'd pages still in index
-
I recently launched a site and shortly after performed a URL rewrite (not the greatest idea, i know). The developer 404'd the old pages instead of a permanent 301 redirect. This caused a mess in the index. I have tried to use Google's removal tool to remove these URL's from the index. These pages were being removed but now I am finding them in the index as just URL's to the 404'd page (i.e. no title tag or meta description). Should I wait this out or now go back and 301 redirect the old URL's (that are 404'd now) to the new URL's? I am sure this is the reason for my lack of ranking as the rest of my site is pretty well optimized and I have some quality links.
-
Will do. Thanks for the help.
-
I think the latter - robot and 301.
but (if you can) leave a couple without 301 and see what (if any) difference you get - would love to hear how it works out.
-
Is it better to remove the robots.txt entries that are specific to the old URL's so Google can see the 404 so Google will remove those pages at their own pace or remove those bits of the robots.txt file specific to the old URL's and 301 them to the new URL's. It seems those are my two options....? Obviously, I want to do what is best for the site's rankings and will see the fastest turnaround. Thanks for your help on this by the way!
-
I'm not saying remove the whole robots.txt file - just the bits relating to the old urls (if you have entries in a robots.txt that affect the old urls).
e.g. say you're robots.txt blocks access to
then you should remove that line from the robots.txt otherwise google won't be able to crawl those pages to 'see' the 404 and realise that they're not there.
My guess is a few weeks before it all settles down, but that really is a finger in the air guess. I went through a similar scenario with moving urls and then moving them again shortly after the first move - took a month or two.
-
I am a little confused regarding removal of the robots.txt file since that is a step in requesting removal from google (per their removal tool requirements). My natural tendency is to 301 redirect the old URL's to the new ones. Will I need to remove the robots.txt file prior to permanently redirecting the old URL's to the new ones? How long does it take Google (estimate) to remove old URL's after a 301?
-
Ok, got that, so that sounds like an external rewrite - which is fine. url only, but no title or description - that sounds like what you get when you block crawling via robots.txt - if you've got that situation, I'd suggest removing the block so that google can crawl them and find that they are 404s. Sounds like they'll fall out of the index eventually. Another thing you could try to hurry things along is: 301 the old urls to the new ones. submit a sitemap containing the old urls (so that they get crawled and the 301s are picked up) update your sitemap and resubmit with only the new urls.
-
When I say URL rewrite, I mean we restructured the URL's to be cleaner and more search friendly. For example, take a URL that was www.example.com/index/home/keyword and structure it to be www.example.com/keyword. Also, the old URL's (i.e. www.example.com/index/home/keyword) are being shows towards the end of the site:example.com search with just the old URL - no title or meta description. Is this a sign that they are on the way out of the index? Any insight would be helpful.
-
Couple of things probably need clarifying: When you say URL rewrite, I'm assuming you mean an external rewrite (in effect, a redirect)? If you do an internal rewrite, that (of itself) should make no difference at all to how any external visitors/engines see your urls/pages. If the old pages had links or traffic I would be inclined to 301 them to the new pages. If the old pages didn't have traffic/links, leave them, they'll fall out eventually - they're not in an xml sitemap by any chance are they (in which case update the sitemap). You often see a drop in rankings when restructuring a site and (in my experience), it can take a few weeks to recover. To give you an example, it took nearly two months for the non-www version of our site to disappear from the index after a similar move (and messing about with redirects).
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
-
External 404 pages
A client of mine is linking to a third-party vendor from their main site. The page being linked to loads with a Page Not Found error and then replaces some application content once the Javascript kicks in. This process is not visible to users (the application loads fine for front-end users) but it is being picked up as a 404 error in broken link reports. This link is part of the site skin so it's on every page. Outside of the annoyance of having lots of 404 errors being flagged in a broken link report, does this cause any actual issue? Eg, do search enginges see that my client is linking to something that is a 404 error, and does that cause them any harm?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mkleamy0 -
Duplicate Page getting indexed and not the main page!
Main Page: www.domain.com/service
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ishrat-Khan
Duplicate Page: www.domain.com/products-handler.php/?cat=service 1. My page was getting indexed properly in 2015 as: www.domain.com/service
2. Redesigning done in Aug 2016, a new URL pattern surfaced for my pages with parameter "products-handler"
3. One of my product landing pages had got 301-permanent redirected on the "products-handler" page
MAIN PAGE: www.domain.com/service GETTING REDIRECTED TO: www.domain.com/products-handler.php/?cat=service
4. This redirection was appearing until Nov 2016.
5. I took over the website in 2017, the main page was getting indexed and deindexed on and off.
6. This June it suddenly started showing an index of this page "domain.com/products-handler.php/?cat=service"
7. These "products-handler.php" pages were creating sitewide internal duplicacy, hence I blocked them in robots.
8. Then my page (Main Page: www.domain.com/service) got totally off the Google index Q1) What could be the possible reasons for the creation of these pages?
Q2) How can 301 get placed from main to duplicate URL?
Q3) When I have submitted my main URL multiple times in Search Console, why it doesn't get indexed?
Q4) How can I make Google understand that these URLs are not my preferred URLs?
Q5) How can I permanently remove these (products-handler.php) URLs? All the suggestions and discussions are welcome! Thanks in advance! 🙂0 -
Ranking 1st for a keyword - but when 's' is added to the end we are ranking on the second page
Hi everyone - hope you are well. I can't get my head around why we are ranking 1st for a specific keyword, but then when 's' is added to the end of the keyword - we are ranking on the second page. What could be the cause of this? I thought that Google would class both of the keywords the same, in this case, let's say the keyword was 'button'. We would be ranking 1st for 'button', but 'buttons' we are ranking on the second page. Any ideas? - I appreciate every comment.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brett-S0 -
Robots.txt, Disallow & Indexed-Pages..
Hi guys, hope you're well. I have a problem with my new website. I have 3 pages with the same content: http://example.examples.com/brand/brand1 (good page) http://example.examples.com/brand/brand1?show=false http://example.examples.com/brand/brand1?show=true The good page has rel=canonical & it is the only page should be appear in Search results but Google has indexed 3 pages... I don't know how should do now, but, i am thinking 2 posibilites: Remove filters (true, false) and leave only the good page and show 404 page for others pages. Update robots.txt with disallow for these parameters & remove those URL's manually Thank you so much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thekiller990 -
Is there a way to get a list of Total Indexed pages from Google Webmaster Tools?
I'm doing a detailed analysis of how Google sees and indexes our website and we have found that there are 240,256 pages in the index which is way too many. It's an e-commerce site that needs some tidying up. I'm working with an SEO specialist to set up URL parameters and put information in to the robots.txt file so the excess pages aren't indexed (we shouldn't have any more than around 3,00 - 4,000 pages) but we're struggling to find a way to get a list of these 240,256 pages as it would be helpful information in deciding what to put in the robots.txt file and which URL's we should ask Google to remove. Is there a way to get a list of the URL's indexed? We can't find it in the Google Webmaster Tools.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sparrowdog0 -
Dev Subdomain Pages Indexed - How to Remove
I own a website (domain.com) and used the subdomain "dev.domain.com" while adding a new section to the site (as a development link). I forgot to block the dev.domain.com in my robots file, and google indexed all of the dev pages (around 100 of them). I blocked the site (dev.domain.com) in robots, and then proceeded to just delete the entire subdomain altogether. It's been about a week now and I still see the subdomain pages indexed on Google. How do I get these pages removed from Google? Are they causing duplicate content/title issues, or does Google know that it's a development subdomain and it's just taking time for them to recognize that I deleted it already?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Mystery 404's
I have a large number of 404's that all have a similar structure: www.kempruge.com/example/kemprugelaw. kemprugelaw keeps getting stuck on the end of url's. While I created www.kempruge.com/example/ I never created the www.kempruge.com/example/kemprugelaw page or edited permalinks to have kemprugelaw at the end of the url. Any idea how this happens? And what I can do to make it stop? Thanks, Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
1 of the sites i work on keeps having its home page "de-indexed" by google every few months, I then apply for a review and they put it back up. But i have no idea why this keeps happening and its only the home page
1 of the sites i work on (www.eva-alexander.com) keeps having its home page "de-indexed" by google every few months, I then apply for a review and they put it back up. But i have no idea why this keeps happening and its only the home page I have no idea why and have never experienced this before
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GMD10