Test contet/pages indexed by search engines
-
During the web development stages of our Joomla CMS website, we have managed to get our site indexed for totally irrelevant test pages mainly to do with Joomla and some other equally irrelevant test content. How damaging is this to our domain from an SEO prospective and is there something we can do about it?
When we do a site:domain.com search we see hundreds of testpages with test/irrelevant meta tags etc.
-
Search engines regularly recrawl every website and will update their information based on changes you make to your site. It is a natural part of the internet. The "site under construction" information is not harmful, but in the future should be blocked from indexing.
-
Thankfully its only test urls that have been indexed by Google only.
However all 3 major engines have indexed our domain against "Site under construction" page with untitled/incomplete tags.
Is this harmful or will this be overwritten when we launch properly and get our site indexed?
-
When you begin developing a site, you should use the robots.txt file to block all search engine access to the site. This is one of the few times where a robots.txt file is very useful.
With respect to fixing the issue, it depends on whether the URLs will be used on the live site, how long it will be until your site launched, and whether unique URLs such as /testing were used or you are working with the same URLs which will exist on the live site.
If your site is still in testing and it will remain in testing for 30+ days, you could add the noindex tag sitewide. Once all the pages were removed from the index, you can then add the robots.txt file. Be careful not to adjust the robots.txt file prior to the pages being removed as the search engines wont be able to see the noindex tag.
You did not mention which search engine indexed your pages. If you are working with Google and the URLs will not exist on the live site, you could use the Google Removal Tool. This is really overkill and should not be necessary, but if the site owner is paranoid about the test pages causing damage to SEO you can take this approach. Any URL removed in this manner cannot be re-added to the index for 90 days.
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
-
My website is not configured in AMP pages, but it is mobile-friendly.
Hi
Algorithm Updates | | rayabahadur
My website is not configured in AMP pages, but it is mobile-friendly.
Last month, my website was ranked to 10 positions for this keyword (Magento Development Company).
Sometimes it's showing on 25 positions but not in the top 5 positions. Here is my URL (for analysis):
https://www.nevinainfotech.com/magento-development-service/
Would you please explain why my keyword rankings are often not showing in the search listings?
Would you mind letting me know is there anything I need to change?
Thank0 -
Search Console Click Through Results
Hi Moz Community, I've newly started using Google's search console on a regular basis, and I have a query about the results coming from the platform. For example, I added this article URL to the console with field "URL containing" and "URL exact", and the results showed 71 clicks and 436 impressions over 12 months. However, when looking at the queries that show in the results to see where the clicks are coming from, all of them state there's no clicks from the dozen or so queries that show. Am I doing something wrong here? Is there a field I need to fill in to show more results/top results? I've tested a few article URL's and the same has happened. Thanks in advance for any help.
Algorithm Updates | | FunktionEvents1 -
Googles Search Intent – Plural & Singular KW’s
This is more of a ‘gripe’ than a question, but I would love to hear people’s views. Typically, when you search for a product using the singular and plural versions of the keyword Google delivers different SERPs. As an example, ‘leather handbag’ and ‘leather handbags’ return different results, but surely the search intent is exactly the same? You’d have thought Google was now clever enough to work this out. We tend to optimise our webpages for both the plural and singular variations of the KW’s, but see a mixed bag of results when analysing rankings. Is Google trying to force us to create a unique webpage for the singular version, and another unique webpage for the plural version? This would confuse the visitor, and make no sense.. the search intent is the same! How do you combat this problem? Many thanks in advance. Lee.
Algorithm Updates | | Webpresence0 -
Dealing with Omitted Page
For my most competitive term, the wrong page ranks (and not well either). The landing page I built for it has never shown up for that term except after I include the omitted results. The page that does rank is category page page above it. All that's fine, because neither page was all that great...BUT, I have completely re-written the content for the landing page, got local area pictures, local testimonials and a video. So here's my question: Should I put all that content on the landing page that's been omitted or tweak the page that ranks and put it there? To me it makes the most sense to put the content on the page that has been omitted, but I don't know how google treats pages that have been omitted in the past. Is it going to have some sort of bias against the page, because it was omitted so many times earlier for that keyword? Or, will it be treated just like any other page, and if the content is good enough, then it will rank just fine. If anyone's dealt with this, then I'd love to hear all about it! Thanks, Ruben
Algorithm Updates | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Home page rank for keyword
Hi Mozers I have traded from my website balloon.co.uk for over 10 years. For a long while the site ranked first for the word 'balloon' across the UK on google.co.uk (first out of 41 million). Around the time Penguin launched the site began to drop and currently sits on about page 5. What's confusing is that for a search on 'balloons' ('s' on the end of balloon) it ranks 2nd in the location of Birmingham where I'm based. That's 2nd in the real search rather than a map local search. But - if I search 'balloon' from the location of Birmingham my contact page ranks 5th: http://www.balloon.co.uk/contact.htm but the home page ranks nowhere. So - it's gone from ranking 1st nationally to ranking nowhere with my contact page ranking above the home page (which is a generic word domain). Any ideas?
Algorithm Updates | | balloon.co.uk0 -
Google's Local Search Results for Broad Keywords
I have a question regarding Google's local search results for broad keywords. Since Google is changing their algo to reflect local results for broad words, would it be beneficial now to start going after those words as well? For example: we have a client ranking for 'miami security alarm', but I would like to know if it would be beneficial to start optimizing for 'security alarm' as well. Also, since Google's keyword research tool reflects searches on a national level, how would I be able to find out how many searches a broad keyword is receiving on a local level? Thank you in advanced!
Algorithm Updates | | POPCreative0 -
Canonicalization on more than one page?
is it proper to "canocalize" more than one page in a site? Or should it only be on the home page? eg: http://www.sundayschoolnetwork.com">
Algorithm Updates | | sakeith0 -
Changing the # of results per page in Google search settings displays totally different results. Why is this?
Curious what's going on here. This is the first time I've seen this before. What's happening is this ... In Google, I search for "mobile apps orange county" and get a standard list of 10 results. I go to Google's search settings in the top right corner of the page (button is grey with a gear) to change the number of results per page from 10 to 50 (also did 100). When I go back to Google and search again for "mobile apps orange county" I get a much larger list but with completely different results. This time around the top 10-12 are dominated by the same website (ocregister.com) What's going on here that Google would now show different results? Why is this one website all of a sudden dominating the first 12 results? Thanks everyone! ByteLaunch
Algorithm Updates | | ByteLaunch0