URLs are not indexed
-
My website has 0.5 million pages with urls like this- **http://www.mycity4kids.com/Delhi-NCR/collage-painting-classes-%3cnear%3e-shalimar-bagh ****, **none of these urls are indexed.
Question 1- What can be the possible reason for this issue? Users see this url as : http://www.mycity4kids.com/Delhi-NCR/collage-painting-classes-<near>-shalimar-bagh</near>
The symbol "<" and ">" get converted into "%3c" and "%3e" respectively, is this the reason for these urls not getting indexed? -
Hi Prashant,
If these URLs are only created when a user searches for a term, but are not linked to anywhere in HTML either on your site or elsewhere on the Internet, this is a very good reason why they are not indexed.
Google does not usually perform queries on a site (e.g. fill in forms) to "discover" what content might be displayed when those forms are filled in. It's tried and tested method of crawling is just that - crawling links and text in HTML. It has become more adventurous with different technology and sometimes finds things that it wouldn't have previously, but linking is still the primary way to ensure something gets crawled.
In many cases, you wouldn't want Google finding content that it has to perform queries / fill in forms or searches to get to: this is how some sites create massive amounts of duplicate content by accident. So in a way, Google is doing everyone a favour by not indexing URLs like this.
We have submitted these urls on google webmaster using a "sitemap" for indexing still none of them are indexed.
I tend to think of sitemaps like road maps: they're a guide. The site itself is the road. If a map tells me that I can drive across a river but when I get there, this is no bridge, I'm not going to drive across the river. Maybe I will if I have a huge four-wheel-drive car with a snorkel, but possibly not. Maybe Google will index URLs it can't find on the web itself, but possibly not.
If you want the URLs to be found, link to them
Cheers,
Jane
-
Just Google the URL it can't be simpler, if there is a result it's indexed.
-
Thanks Martijn
Could you please tell how many ways are there to check whether a page is indexed or not?
Someone on a different forum told me that we can check "indexed status" of a url by directly googling that url, there is no need to use "site:" operator.
-
Hi Prashant,
Then that's definitely your issue, I wouldn't index any pages to be honest that I couldn't find in any navigation besides self finding the pages. I would link from any related pages to the pages that you want to have indexed.
-
Thanks Martijn,
Yes, if a user enter a search term then these URL get formed. for example if you visit : www.mycity4kids.com and enter Collage Painting Classes in 1st search box and Shalimar Bagh in 2nd search box then you will see this:** http://www.mycity4kids.com/Delhi-NCR/collage-painting-classes-<near>-shalimar-bagh</near>** url in address bar.
We have submitted these urls on google webmaster using a "sitemap" for indexing still none of them are indexed.
-
Hi Prashant,
Can these pages be found via the navigation or do you have to enter a search term to get to them? I can't find any links to the first page you've listed in your question. If that's the case than it's quite normal that Google didn't index the page as they just aren't able to find the page in the first place.
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
-
¿Disallow duplicate URL?
Hi comunity, thanks for answering my question. I have a problem with a website. My website is: http://example.examples.com/brand/brand1 (good URL) but i have 2 filters to show something and this generate 2 URL's more: http://example.examples.com/brand/brand1?show=true (if we put 1 filter) http://example.examples.com/brand/brand1?show=false (if we put other filter) My question is, should i put in robots.txt disallow for these filters like this: **Disallow: /*?show=***
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thekiller990 -
Cleaning up backlinks and changing URLs
Currently we are performing very poorly in organic clicks. We are a e-commerce site with over 2000 products. Issues we thought plagued us: Copied Images from competitors Site wide duplicate content duplicate content from competitor site Number of internal links on a page (300+) Bad backlinks (2.3k from 22 domains and ips) being linked to from sites like m.biz URLs URLs are abbreviated, over 50% lack our keywords Lack of meta descriptions, or too long meta descriptions Current State of fixing these issues: 50% images are now our own Site wide duplicate content near 100% completed Internal links have been dealt with Rewrote content for every product 90% of meta descriptions are fixed From all of these changes we have yet to see increase in traffic...10% increase at best in organic clicks. We think we have penalties on certain URLs. My question for the MOZ community is what is the best way to attack the lack of organic clicks. Our main competition is getting 900% more clicks than us. Any more information you need on the topic let me know and will get back to you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TITOJAX0 -
URL Parameter Being Improperly Crawled & Indexed by Google
Hi All, We just discovered that Google is indexing a subset of our URL’s embedded with our analytics tracking parameter. For the search “dresses” we are appearing in position 11 (page 2, rank 1) with the following URL: www.anthropologie.com/anthro/category/dresses/clothes-dresses.jsp?cm_mmc=Email--Anthro_12--070612_Dress_Anthro-_-shop You’ll note that “cm_mmc=Email” is appended. This is causing our analytics (CoreMetrics) to mis-attribute this traffic and revenue to Email vs. SEO. A few questions: 1) Why is this happening? This is an email from June 2012 and we don’t have an email specific landing page embedded with this parameter. Somehow Google found and indexed this page with these tracking parameters. Has anyone else seen something similar happening?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kevin_reyes
2) What is the recommended method of “politely” telling Google to index the version without the tracking parameters? Some thoughts on this:
a. Implement a self-referencing canonical on the page.
- This is done, but we have some technical issues with the canonical due to our ecommerce platform (ATG). Even though page source code looks correct, Googlebot is seeing the canonical with a JSession ID.
b. Resubmit both URL’s in WMT Fetch feature hoping that Google recognizes the canonical.
- We did this, but given the canonical issue it won’t be effective until we can fix it.
c. URL handling change in WMT
- We made this change, but it didn’t seem to fix the problem
d. 301 or No Index the version with the email tracking parameters
- This seems drastic and I’m concerned that we’d lose ranking on this very strategic keyword Thoughts? Thanks in advance, Kevin0 -
Urls missing from product_cat sitemap
I'm using Yoast SEO plugin to generate XML sitemaps on my e-commerce site (woocommerce). I recently changed the category structure and now only 25 of about 75 product categories are included. Is there a way to manually include urls or what is the best way to have them all indexed in the sitemap?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kisen0 -
URL with a # but no ! being indexed
Given that it contains a #, how come Google is able to index this URL?: http://www.rtl.nl/xl/#/home It was my understanding that Google can't handle # properly unless it's paired with a ! (hash fragment / bang). site:http://www.rtl.nl/xl/#/home returns nothing, but: site:http://www.rtl.nl/xl returns http://www.rtl.nl/xl/#/home in the result set
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EdelmanDigital0 -
Search Refinement URLs
My site is using search refinement and I am concerned about the URL adding additional characters when it's refined. My current URL is: http://www.autopartscheaper.com/Air-Conditioning-Heater-Parts-s/10280.htm and when someone chooses their specific year, make, and model then it changes to: http://www.autopartscheaper.com/Air-Conditioning-Heater-Parts-s/10280.htm?searching=Y&Cat=10280&RefineBy_7371=7708. Will this negatively affect SEO for this URL? Will the URL be counted twice? Any help would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrandLabs0 -
Sudden increase in number of indexed URLs. How ca I know what URLs these are?
We saw a spike in the total number of indexed URLs (17,000 to 165,000)--what would be the most efficient way to find out what the newly indexed URLs are?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Indexing non-indexed content and Google crawlers
On a news website we have a system where articles are given a publish date which is often in the future. The articles were showing up in Google before the publish date despite us not being able to find them linked from anywhere on the website. I've added a 'noindex' meta tag to articles that shouldn't be live until a future date. When the date comes for them to appear on the website, the noindex disappears. Is anyone aware of any issues doing this - say Google crawls a page that is noindex, then 2 hours later it finds out it should now be indexed? Should it still appear in Google search, News etc. as normal, as a new page? Thanks. 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alex-Harford0