Best practice for removing indexed internal search pages from Google?
-
Hi Mozzers
I know that it’s best practice to block Google from indexing internal search pages, but what’s best practice when “the damage is done”?
I have a project where a substantial part of our visitors and income lands on an internal search page, because Google has indexed them (about 3 %).
I would like to block Google from indexing the search pages via the meta noindex,follow tag because:
- Google Guidelines: “Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don't add much value for users coming from search engines.” http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769
- Bad user experience
- The search pages are (probably) stealing rankings from our real landing pages
- Webmaster Notification: “Googlebot found an extremely high number of URLs on your site” with links to our internal search results
I want to use the meta tag to keep the link juice flowing. Do you recommend using the robots.txt instead? If yes, why?
Should we just go dark on the internal search pages, or how shall we proceed with blocking them?
I’m looking forward to your answer!
Edit: Google have currently indexed several million of our internal search pages.
-
Hello,
Sorry for the late answer, I have the same problem and I think I found the solution. For me works this:
1. Add meta tag robots No Index , Follow for the internal search pages and wait for Google remove it from the index.
Be careful if you do **BOTH (**Adding meta tag robots and Disallow in Robots.txt ) Because of this:
Please note that if you do both: block the search engines in robots.txt and via the meta tags, then the robots.txt command is the primary driver, as they may not crawl the page to see the meta tags, so the URL may still appear in the search results listed URL-only. Souce: http://tools.seobook.com/robots-txt/
I hope this information can help you.
-
I would honestly exclude all your internal search pages from the Google index via robots.txt (noindex) exclusion. This will at least re-distribute crawl-time to other areas of your site.
Just having the noindex,follow in the meta-tag (without the robots.txt exclusion) will let GoogleBot crawl the page and then eventually remove it from the index.
I would also change your search-page canoncial to the search term (i.e. /search/iphone) and then have a noindex,follow on meta-tag.
-
It sounds like the meta noindex,follow tag is what you want.
robots.txt will block googlebot from crawling your search pages, but Google can still keep the search pages in its index.
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 Indexing
Hi We have roughly 8500 pages in our website. Google had indexed almost 6000 of them, but now suddenly I see that the pages indexed has gone to 45. Any possible explanations why this might be happening and what can be done for it. Thanks, Priyam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kh-priyam0 -
How do we decide which pages to index/de-index? Help for a 250k page site
At Siftery (siftery.com) we have about 250k pages, most of them reflected in our sitemap. Though after submitting a sitemap we started seeing an increase in the number of pages Google indexed, in the past few weeks progress has slowed to a crawl at about 80k pages, and in fact has been coming down very marginally. Due to the nature of the site, a lot of the pages on the site likely look very similar to search engines. We've also broken down our sitemap into an index, so we know that most of the indexation problems are coming from a particular type of page (company profiles). Given these facts below, what do you recommend we do? Should we de-index all of the pages that are not being picked up by the Google index (and are therefore likely seen as low quality)? There seems to be a school of thought that de-indexing "thin" pages improves the ranking potential of the indexed pages. We have plans for enriching and differentiating the pages that are being picked up as thin (Moz itself picks them up as 'duplicate' pages even though they're not. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggiaco-siftery0 -
Google not indexing images
Hi there, We have a strange issue at a client website (www.rubbermagazijn.nl). Webpage are indexed by Google but images are not, and have never been since the site went live in '12 (We recently started SEO work on this client). Similar sites like www.damenrubber.nl are being indexed correctly. We have correct robots and sitemap setup and directions. Fetch as google (Search Console) shows all images displayed correctly (despite scripted mouseover on the page) Client doesn't use CDN Search console shows 2k images indexed (out of 18k+) but a site:rubbermagazijn.nl query shows a couple of images from PDF files and some of the thumbnails, but no productimages or category images from homepage. (product page example: http://www.rubbermagazijn.nl/collectie/slangen/olie-benzineslangen/7703_zwart_nbr-oliebestendig-6mm-l-1000mm.html) We've changed the filenames from non-descriptive names to descriptive names, without any result. Descriptive alt texts were added We're at a loss. Has anyone encountered a similar issue before, and do you have any advice? I'd be happy to provide more information if needed. CBqqw
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Adriaan.Multiply0 -
Why is Google Ranking the Umbrella Category Page when Searching for Sub-Categories Within that Umbrella Category?
I have an e-commerce client who sells shoes. There is a main page for "Kids" shoes, and then right under it on the top-navigation bar there is a link to "Boys Shoes" and "Girls Shoes." All 3 of these links are on the same level - 1 click off the home page. (And linked to from every page on the website via the top nav bar). All 3 are perfectly optimized for their targeted term. However, when you search for "boys shoes" or "girls shoes" + the brand, the "Kids" page is the one that shows up in the #1 position. There are sitelinks beneath the listing pointing to "Girls" and "Boys." All the other results in Google are resellers of the "brand + girls" or "brand + boys" shoes. So our listing is the only one that's "brand + kids shoes." Our "boys" shoes page and "girls" shoes page don't even rank on the 1st page for "brand + boys shoes" or "brand + girls shoes." The only real difference is that "kids shoes" contains both girls and boys shoes on the page, and then "boys" obviously contains boys' shoes only, "girls" contains girls' shoes only. So in that sense there is more content on the "kids" page. So my question is - WHY is the kids page outranking the boys/girls page? How can we make the boys/girls pages be the ones that show up when people specifically search for boys/girls shoes?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FPD_NYC0 -
Panda Recovery - What is the best way to shrink your index and make Google aware?
We have been hit significantly with Panda and assume that our large index with some pages holding thin/duplicate content being the reason. We have reduced our index size by 95% and have done significant content development on the remaining 5% pages. For the old, removed pages, we have installed 410 responses (Page does not exist any longer) and made sure that they are removed from the sitempa submitted to Google; however after over a month we still see Google spider returning to the same pages and the webmaster tools shows no indicator that Google is shrinking our index size. Are there more effective and automated ways to make Google aware of a smaller index size in hope of Panda recovery? Potentially using the robots.txt file, GWT URL removal tool etc? Thanks /sp80
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sp800 -
To index or not to index search pages - (Panda related)
Hi Mozzers I have a WordPress site with Relevanssi the search engine plugin, free version. Questions: Should I let Google index my site's SERPS? I am scared the page quality is to thin, and then Panda bear will get angry. This plugin (or my previous search engine plugin) created many of these "no-results" uris: /?s=no-results%3Ano-results%3Ano-results%3Ano-results%3Ano-results%3Ano-results%3Ano-results%3Akids+wall&cat=no-results&pg=6 I have added a robots.txt rule to disallow these pages and did a GWT URL removal request. But links to these pages are still being displayed in Google's SERPS under "repeat the search with the omitted results included" results. So will this affect me negatively or are these results harmless? What exactly is an omitted result? As I understand it is that Google found a link to a page they but can't display it because I block GoogleBot. Thanx in advance guys.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ClassifiedsKing0 -
Help! Why did Google remove my images from their index?
I've been scratching my head over this one for a while now and I can't seem to figure it out. I own a website that is user-generated content. Users submit images to my sites of graphic resources (for designers) that they have created to share with our community. I've been noticing over the past few months that I'm getting completely dominated in Google Images. I used to get a ton of traffic from Google Images, but now I can't find my images anywhere. After diving into Analytics I found this: http://cl.ly/140L2d14040Q1R0W161e and realized sometime about a year ago my image traffic took a dive. We've gone back through all the change logs and can't find where we made any changes to the site structure that could have caused this. We are stumped. Does anyone know of any historical Google updates that could have caused this last year around the end of April 2010? Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shawn810 -
Google Places, Multiple locations best practice
What is the best practice with having multiple locations in Google Places. Does having multiple Google Places set up for each business have a big effect on local rankings for the individual areas? Should I use the home page for the website listed on each page or is it better to have a specific landing page for each Google Places listing? Any other tips? Thanks, Daniel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iSenseWebSolutions0