Pages to be indexed in Google
-
Hi,
We have 70K posts in our site but Google has scanned 500K pages and these extra pages are category pages or User profile pages.
Each category has a page and each user has a page. When we have 90K users so Google has indexed 90K pages of users alone.
My question is. Should we leave it as they are or should we block them from being indexed? As we get unwanted landings to the pages and huge bounce rate.
If we need to remove what needs to be done? Robots block or Noindex/Nofollow
Regards
-
Thank you Gagan!
-
Its a much better and clear explanation... +1 to it. Cheers !!
-
One key point on using robots.txt vs the meta tag noindex. It is not that the noindex meta tag is "superior" they just work differently.
If you use robots.txt - it will stop the spider from visiting that page, but it will not remove the page from the index. Also, if you have a page in robots.txt and on that page have a 301 redirect, or a canonical or a meta noindex Google will not see the page (due to the robots.txt directive) and then not be able to act on the 301 or canonical or the meta noindex.
A meta noindex, because the spider crawls the page, will not only tell Google not to visit the page anymore, but also tells Google to remove the page from the index. This is key if you want the pages removed from the Google index.
The rule of thumb I use is that
-
If you have a page that is not in the Google index and you want to keep it out of the index put that file in robots.txt.
-
If you have a page that is in the Google index and you want it removed, then use the noindex meta tag, do not put it into the robots.txt for reasons mentioned above. Over time, once the pages are removed (and this may take a while depending on how often the page is cralwed) then you can put into robots.txt for good measure.
-
-
In order to exclude individual pages from search engine indices, **the noindex meta tag **is actually superior to robots.txt.
-
Noindex is good or robots deny
Whats the difference or can do both?
-
If they have pretty low content or do not add any value and is not searched by users too
Will be better to add noindex so as to have search engines crawl your site in a better way.
-
if those are generating a high bounce rate I would block them for search engines. The easiest way is probably by a robots.txt
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
-
Website homepage temporarily getting removed from google index
hi, website: www.snackmagic.com The home page goes out of google index for some hours and then comes back. We are not sure why our home page is getting de-indexed temporarily. This doesn't happen with other pages on our website. This has been happening intermittently in the gap of 2-3 days. Any inputs will be very useful for us to debug this issue Thanks
Technical SEO | | manikbystadium0 -
Removing a site from Google index with no index met tags
Hi there! I wanted to remove a duplicated site from the google index. I've read that you can do this by removing the URL from Google Search console and, although I can't find it in Google Search console, Google keeps on showing the site on SERPs. So I wanted to add a "no index" meta tag to the code of the site however I've only found out how to do this for individual pages, can you do the same for a entire site? How can I do it? Thank you for your help in advance! L
Technical SEO | | Chris_Wright1 -
Single page website vs Google
Hi, I was wondering on this issue: There is a website for guesthouse. It has all information on one page (it is a valid page, with legitimate content). How google treats those pages? Would it treat it as Doorway Page? Or give some other penalties? What about a bounce rate? Because it will be pretty high, as there is no option to go somewhere else? What is your opinion on single page websites - SEO wise? Is it a shot in the foot? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | LeszekNowakowski0 -
Why seomoz.org still in Google index?
I searched in Google, the number of URLs indexed left in the seomoz.org domain since it changed to moz.comI am surprised that after all this time more than 15,000 URLs indexed:https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=site%3Aseomoz.org%20inurl%3Aseomoz.org If I clicked on any of the results it will be redirect (301) to the new domain, so it is working, but Google still keep these URLs in the index.
Technical SEO | | Yosef
What could be the reason?Will not cause duplicated content issue on moz.com?0 -
Missing files in Google and Bing Index
We uploaded our sitemap a while back and we are no longer see around 8 out of 33 pages. We try submitting the sitemap again about 1-2 weeks ago and there but no additional pages are seen when I do site: option in both search engines. I reviewed the sitemap and it includes all the pages. I am not seeing any errors in the seo moz for these pages. Any ideas what I should try?
Technical SEO | | EZSchoolApps0 -
YouTube & Google + Pages
Hello, Has anyone had luck associating their Google + business page with their YouTube channel? Our YouTube page is associated with our Google + profile (and we would like it to be associated with the Google + business page.) There are numerous articles out there that Google is working on an update to allow the Channel/Google+ business page association but I am wondering if there is news we might have missed. Or if there is a way to get around it? We want to implement video on some site pages and would rather use YouTube code as opposed to customizing a solution. Do most folks think Google will have an easy solution once it at arrives? Meaning if you upload videos to your channel that is currently associated with the profile page, do you think there will be a way to convert everything over to a Google + business page once they unveil an update. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | SEOSponge0 -
Will a drop in indexed pages significantly affect Google rankings?
I am doing some research into why we were bumped from Google's first page into the 3rd, fourth and fifth pages in June of 2010. I always suspected Caffeine, but I just came across some data that indicates a drop in indexed pages from 510 in January of that year to 133 by June. I'm not sure what happened but I believe our blog pages were de-indexed somehow. What I want to know is could that significant drop in indexed pages have had an effect on our rankings at that time? We are back up to over 500 indexed pages, but have not fully recovered our first page positions.
Technical SEO | | rdreich490 -
Why google index my IP URL
hi guys, a question please. if site:112.65.247.14 , you can see google index our website IP address, this could duplicate with our darwinmarketing.com content pages. i am not quite sure why google index my IP pages while index domain pages, i understand this could because of backlink, internal link and etc, but i don't see obvious issues there, also i have submit request to google team to remove ip address index, but seems no luck. Please do you have any other suggestion on this? i was trying to do change of address setting in Google Webmaster Tools, but didn't allow as it said "Restricted to root level domains only", any ideas? Thank you! boson
Technical SEO | | DarwinChinaSEO0