Why are pages still showing in SERPs, despite being NOINDEXed for months?
-
We have thousands of pages we're trying to have de-indexed in Google for months now. They've all got . But they simply will not go away in the SERPs.
Here is just one example....
http://bitly.com/VutCFiIf you search this URL in Google, you will see that it is indexed, yet it's had for many months. This is just one example for thousands of pages, that will not get de-indexed. Am I missing something here? Does it have to do with using content="none" instead of content="noindex, follow"?
Any help is very much appreciated.
-
Thanks for your reply,
Let me know if you are able to deindex those pages. I will wait. Also please share what you have implemented to deindex those pages.
-
A page can have a link to it, and still not be indexed, so I disagree with you on that.
But thanks for using the domain name. That will teach me to use a URL shortener...
-
Hm, that is interesting. So you're saying that it will get crawled, and thus will eventually become deindexed (as noindex is part of the content="none" directive), but since it's a dead end page, it just takes an extra long time for that particular page to get crawled?
-
Just to add to the other answers, you can also remove the URLs (or entire directory if necessary) via the URL removal tool in Webmaster Tools, although Google prefers you to use it for emergencies of sorts (I've had no problems with it).
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=164734
-
No, nofollow will only tell the bot that the page is a dead end - that the bot should not follow any links on page. And that means any inks from those pages won't be visited by the bot - that is slowing the crawling process overall for those pages.
If you block a page in robots.txt and the page is already in the index - that will remain in the index as the noindex or content=none won't be seen by the bot so it won't be removed from the index - it will just won't be visited anymore.
-
Ok, so, nofollow is stopping the page from being read at all? I thought that nofollow just means the links on the page will not be followed. Is meta nofollow essentially the same as blocking a page in robots.txt?
-
Hi Howard,
The page is in Google index because you are still linking to that page from your website. Here is the page from where that page links:
http://www.2mcctv.com/product_print-productinfoVeiluxVS70CDNRDhtml.html
As you are linking that page Google indexing the page. Google come to know about "noindex" tag before that he has already indexed it. Sorry for bad English.
Lindsay has written awesome post about it here:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/robot-access-indexation-restriction-techniques-avoiding-conflicts
After reading above blog post, my all doubts about noindex, follow, robots.txt get clear.
Thanks Lindsay
-
We always use the noindex code in our robot.txt file.
-
Hi,
In order to deindex you should use noindex as content=none also means nofollow. You do need to follow now in order to reach all other pages and see the no index tag and remove those from the index.
When you have all of them out of the index you can set the none back on.
This is the main reason "none" as attribute is not very wide in usage as "shooting yourself in the foot" with it it's easy.
On the otehr hand you need to see if google bot is actually reaching those pages:
-
see if you don't have any robots.txt restrictions first
-
see when google's bot last have a hit on any of the pages - that will give you a good idea and you can do a prediction.
If those pages are in the sup index you can wait for some time for Google bit to revisit.
One last note: build xml sitemaps with all of those pages and submit those via WMT - that will help at 100% to get those in front of the firing squad and also to be able to monitor those better.
Hope it helps.
-
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
-
SERPs showing hundreds of nonexistent pages
My site has this page (URL) that actually exists on my site https://mysite.com/ranking/rankings-of-nike-running-shoes but somehow I can see the following versions in SERPs (these URLs are not physically available on my site): https://mysite.com/ranking/rankings-of-rankings-of-rankings-of-nike-running-shoes
Technical SEO | | webdesyaug17
https://mysite.com/ranking/rankings-of-rankings-of-nike-running-shoes I even started getting traffic from these URLs that are in Google's index. So, only the first one actually existins on my site: https://mysite.com/ranking/rankings-of-nike-running-shoes https://mysite.com/ranking**/rankings-of-rankings-of-**rankings-of-nike-running-shoes https://mysite.com/ranking/**rankings-of-**rankings-of-nike-running-shoes Questions are:
a. I'm not sure how the latter two - 2) and 3) - got in Google's index.
b. what do I do with them. My idea is to 301 redirect them to the actual page that exists https://mysite.com/ranking/rankings-of-nike-running-shoes Do I need to also somehow remove the faulty URLs - 2) and 3) - from Google's index or 301 redirecting is enough?0 -
What to do with old conversion pages
Hey folks! I have a ton of old conversion pages from past trade shows, old webinars, etc that are either getting no traffic or very little. Wondering if I should just 404 them out? Here's an example: http://marketing.avidxchange.com/rent-manager-user-conference-demo-request-2015 For the pages getting traffic (from PPC, referral links, organic) my presumption is to keep those. The only problem is we have multiple instances of the same asset (prior marketers would just clone them for different campaigns), so in those cases should I 301 them to one version? Looking for advice on best practices here for future instances. Such as future trade shows, after we use the conversion pages at an event, should I just delete/404 them? Cleaning up old pages should I just delete/404? They don't have any value really and they're annoying to have hanging around. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Bill_King0 -
Website SEO Product Pages - Condense Product Pages
We are managing a website that has seen consistently dropping rankings over the last 2 years (http://www.independence-bunting.com/). Our long term strategy has been purely content-based and is of high quality, but isn’t seeing the desired results. It is an ecommerce site that has a lot of pages, most of which are category or product pages. Many of the product pages have duplicate or thin content, which we currently see as one of the primary reasons for the ranking drops.The website has many individual products which have the same fabric and size options, but have different designs. So it is difficult to write valuable content that differs between several products that have similar designs. Right now each of the different designs has its own product page. We have a dilemma, because our options are:A.Combine similar designs of the product into one product page where the customer must choose a design, a fabric, and a size before checking out. This way we can have valuable content and don’t have to duplicate that content on other pages or try to find more to say about something that there really isn’t anything else to say about. However, this process will remove between 50% and 70% of the pages on the website. We know number of indexed pages is important to search engines and if they suddenly see that half of our pages are gone, we may cause more negative effects despite the fact that we are in fact aiming to provide more value to the user, rather than less.B.Leave the product pages alone and try to write more valuable content for each product page, which will be difficult because there really isn’t that much more to say, or more valuable ways to say it. This is the “safe” option as it means that our negative potential impact is reduced but we won’t necessarily see much positive trending either. C.Test solution A on a small percentage of the product categories to see any impact over the next several months before making sitewide updates to the product pages if we see positive impact, or revert to the old way if we see negative impact.Any sound advice would be of incredible value at this point, as the work we are doing isn’t having the desired effects and we are seeing consistent dropping rankings at this point.Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thank you,
Technical SEO | | Ed-iOVA0 -
Advice on whether we 301 redirect a page or update existing page?
Hi guys, any advice would be really appreciated. We have an existing page that ranks well for 'red widgets'. The page isn't monetised right now, but we're bringing in a new product onto our site that we optimised for 'blue widgets'. Unfortunately, not enough research was done for this page and we've now realised that consumers actually search for 'red widgets' when looking for the product we're creating as 'blue widgets'. The problem with this is that the 'red widgets' page is in a completely different category of our site than what it needs to be (it needs to be with 'blue widgets'). So, my question is; Should we do a 301 redirect from our 'red-widgets' page to our 'blue-widgets' page which we want to update and optimise the content on there for 'red-widgets'. Or, should we update the existing red-widgets page to have the right products and content on there, even thought it is in the wrong place of our site and users could get confused as to why they are there. If we do a 301 redirect to our new page, will we lose our rankings and have to start again, or is there a better way around this? Thanks! Dave
Technical SEO | | davo230 -
What to do with "show all" page
Hello, What should I do with the following situation: In e-commerce shop I have an option to "show all products" (list all products in one page) - do I need to put canonnical or 301 redirect to somewhere or should I leave as normal page - I think google consider this is as duplicate since everything is the same (only number of products is different) ? Regards, Nenad
Technical SEO | | Uniline0 -
Unreachable Pages
Hi All Is there a tool to check a website if it has stand alone unreachable pages? Thanks for helping
Technical SEO | | Joseph-Green-SEO0 -
Diagnostic says too many links on a page and most of the pages are from blog entries. Are tags considered links? How do I decrease links?
I just ran my first diagnostic on my site and the results came back were negative in the area of too many links one a page. There were also quite a few 404 errors. What is the best way to fix these problems? Most of the pages with too many links are from blog posts, are the tags counted as well and is this the reason for too many links?
Technical SEO | | Newport10300 -
Will Google Continue to Index the Page with NoIndex Tag Upon Google +1 Button Impression or Click?
The FAQs for Google +1 button suggests as follows: "+1 is a public action, so you should add the button only to public, crawlable pages on your site. Once you add the button, Google may crawl or recrawl the page, and store the page title and other content, in response to a +1 button impression or click." If my page has NoIndex tag, while at the same time inserted with Google +1 button on the page, will Google recognise the NoIndex Tag on the page (and will not index the page) despite the +1 button's impression or clicks send signals to Google spiders?
Technical SEO | | globalsources.com0