DeIndexing pagination
-
I have a custom made blog with boat loads of undesirable URLs in Google's index like this:
.com/resources?start=150
.com/resources?start=160
.com/resources?start=170I've identified this is a source of duplicate title tags and had my programmer put a no index tag to automatically go on all of these undesirable URLs like this:
However doing a site: search in google shows the URLs to still be indexed even though I've put the tag up a few weeks ago.
How do I get google to remove these URLs from the index? I'm aware that the Search Console has an answer here https://support.google.com/webmasters/topic/4598466?authuser=1&authuser=1&rd=1 but it says that blocking with meta tags should work.
Do I just get google to crawl the URL again so it sees the tag and then deindexes the URLs? Or is there another way I'm missing.
-
Adding a meta noindex tag can mean it takes a few weeks for a page to fall out of the index. These pages probably aren't doing you much harm, so if you wanted to just wait for them to fall out, that's probably fine (although I would update the tag content to "noindex, follow" to help Google crawl to the other noindexed pages). If you really want them out of the index faster, you could use the "Remove URLs" function under Google Index in Google Search Console, which will temporarily remove them from the index while Google is registering the noindex tags, or you can use the Fetch + Render tool and then Submit URLs in Google Search Console, which will cause Google to come back and crawl your pages and find the noindex tag.
-
You could use URL parameter settings in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools - if all ?start= URLs can be treated the same way by Google.
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
-
Why is pagination SEO such a mystery in 2021?
Hi folks. I would like to discuss pagination. I use WordPress (Genesis, specifically). I ran my site through a site scan and it flagged an error which told me that my blog was producing duplicate meta descriptions because the blog is paginated - the same meta description from the blog page is being used on Page 2, Page 3 etc. I looked into this and the Internet is awash with many other people scratching around for a solution. My understanding is that using a canonical link on the first page is not a good idea, because it says to Google that only Page 1 of the blog is important. I also read an article that states Google no longer reads the Rel=Prev/Next code that could be used to tell Google to ignore the issue. So, what's the solution? Do I even need one? As a side-thought, it seems to me that pagination is, well, pretty useless. I mean, if my blog has 20 pages and I've worked hard to create content, who is going to click through to anywhere near page 20? Nobody. There has to be a smarter way for people on-site to access content. I would love your thoughts on all of this. Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody16165422281340 -
Homepage is deindexed in Google
Please help for some reason my website home page has disappeared, we have been working on the site but nothing that I can think of which would block it. There are no warnings in google console? Can anyone lend a hand in understanding what has gone wrong, I would really appreciate it. The site is: http://www.discountstickerprinting.co.uk/ Seems to be working again but I had to fetch the home page in google console, any idea why this has happened cannot afford a heat op at this age lol?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Pagination and matching title tags - does it matter when using rel="prev" and "next" attributes?
I'm looking at a site with the rel="prev" and "next" HTML attributes in place, to deal with pagination. However, the pages in each paginated category have identical page titles - is this an issue? Rand gives an example of how he'd vary page titles here, to prevent problems, though I'm not entirely sure whether this advice applies to sites with the rel="prev" and "next" HTML attributes in place: https://moz.com/blog/pagination-best-practices-for-seo-user-experience Any advice would be welcome - many thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Pagination on a product page with reviews spread out on multiple pages
Our current product pages markup only have the canonical URL on the first page (each page loads more user reviews). Since we don't want to increase load times, we don't currently have a canonical view all product page. Do we need to mark up each subsequent page with its own canonical URL? My understanding was that canonical and rel next prev tags are independent of each other. So that if we mark up the middle pages with a paginated URL, e.g: Product page #1http://www.example.co.uk/Product.aspx?p=2692"/>http://www.example.co.uk/Product.aspx?p=2692&pageid=2" />**Product page #2 **http://www.example.co.uk/Product.aspx?p=2692&pageid=2"/>http://www.example.co.uk/Product.aspx?p=2692" />http://www.example.co.uk/Product.aspx?p=2692&pageid=3" />Would mean that each canonical page would suggest to google another piece of unique content, which this obviously isn't. Is the PREV NEXT able to "override" the canonical and explain to Googlebot that its part of a series? Wouldn't the canonical then be redundant?Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Don340 -
Pagination causing duplicate content problems
Hi The pagination on our website www.offonhols.com is causing duplicate content problems. Is the best solution adding add rel=”prev” / “next# to the hrefs As now the pagination links at the bottom of the page are just http://offonhols.com/default.aspx?dp=1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | offonhols
http://offonhols.com/default.aspx?dp=2
http://offonhols.com/default.aspx?dp=3
etc0 -
Potential Pagination Issue/ Duplicate content issue
Hi All, We upgraded our framework , relaunched our site with new url structures etc and re did our site map to Google last week. However, it's now come to light that the rel=next, rel=Prev tags we had in place on many of our pages are missing. We are putting them back in now but my worry is , as they were previously missing when we submitted the , will I have duplicate content issues or will it resolve itself , as Google re-crawls the site over time ?.. Any advice would be greatly appreciated? thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Canonical Tags being indexed on paginated results?
On a website I'm working on which has a search feature with paginated results, all of the pages of the search results are set with a canonical tag back to the first page of the search results, however Google is indexing certain random pages within the result set. I can literally do a search in Google and find a deep page in the results, click on it and view source on that page and see that it has a canonical tag leading back to the first page of the set. Has anyone experienced this before? Why would Google not honor a canonical tag if it is set correctly? I've seen several SEO techniques for dealing with pagination, is there another solution that you all recommend?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IrvCo_Interactive0 -
Pagination with rel=“next” and rel=“prev”
Hey mozzers Would be interested to know if anyone has used the rel=“next” and rel=“prev” attributes more info here http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html If you have used it, has it worked and what are your thoughts etc:? And for those that have used it, is it a better way of handling pagination other than the obvious of Google saying so. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CraigAddyman0