404's being re-indexed
-
Hi All,
We are experiencing issues with pages that have been 404'd being indexed. Originally, these were /wp-content/ index pages, that were included in Google's index. Once I realized this, I added in a directive into our htaccess to 404 all of these pages - as there were hundreds. I tried to let Google crawl and remove these pages naturally but after a few months I used the URL removal tool to remove them manually.
However, Google seems to be continually re/indexing these pages, even after they have been manually requested for removal in search console. Do you have suggestions? They all respond to 404's.
Thanks
-
Just to follow up - I have now actually 410'd the pages and the 410's are still being re-indexed.
-
I'll check this one out as well, thanks! I used a header response extension which reveals the presence of x-botots headers called web developer.
-
First it would be helpful to know how you are detecting that it isn't working. What indexation tool are you using to see whether the blocks are being detected? I personally really like this one: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/seo-indexability-check/olojclckfadnlhnlmlekdihebmjpjnoa?hl=en-GB
Or obviously at scale - Screaming Frog
-
Thank you for the quick response,
The pages are truly removed, however, because there were so many of these types of pages that leaked into the index, I added a redirect to keep users on our site - no intentions of being "shady", I just didn't want hundreds of 404's getting clicked and causing a very high bounce rate.
For the x-robots header, could you offer some insight into why my directive isn't working? I believe it's a regex issue on the wp-content. I have tried to troubleshoot to no avail.
<filesmatch <strong="">"(wp-content)">
Header set X-Robots-Tag: "noindex, nofollow"</filesmatch>I appreciate the help!
-
Well if a page has been removed and has not been moved to a new destination - you shouldn't redirect a user anyway (which kind of 'tricks' users into thinking the content was found). That's actually bad UX
If the content has been properly removed or was never supposed to be there, just leave it at a 410 (but maybe create a nice custom 410 page, in the same vein as a decent UX custom 404 page). Use the page to admit that the content is gone (without shady redirects) but to point to related posts or products. Let the user decide, but still be useful
If the content is actually still there and, hence you are doing a redirect - then you shouldn't be serving 404s or 410s in the first place. You should be serving 301s, and just doing HTTP redirects to the content's new (or revised) destination URL
Yes, the HTTP header method is the correct replacement when the HTML implementation gets stripped out. HTTP Header X-Robots is the way for you!
-
Thank you! I am in the process of doing so, however with a 410 I can not leave my JS redirect after the page loads, this creates some UX issues. Do you have any suggestions to remedy this?
Additionally, after the 410 the non x-robots noindex is now being stripped so it only resolves to a 410 with no noindex or redirect. I am still working on a noindex header, as the 410 is server-side, I assume this would be the only way, correct?
-
You know that 404 means "temporarily gone but will be coming back" right? By saying a page is temporarily unavailable, you actively encourage Google to come back later
If you want to say that the page is permanently gone use status code 410 (gone)
Leave the Meta no-index stuff in the HTTP header via X-Robots, that was a good call. But it was a bad call to combine Meta no-index and 404, as they contradict each other ("don't index me now but then do come back and index me later as I'll probably be back at some point")
Use Meta no-index and 410, which agree with each other ("don't index me now and don't bother coming back")
-
Yes, all pages have a noindex. I have also tried to noindex them using htaccess, to add an extra layer of security, but it seems to be incorrect. I believe it is an issue with the regex. Attempting to match anything with wp-content.
<filesmatch "(wp-content)"="">Header set X-Robots-Tag: "noindex, nofollow"</filesmatch>
-
Back to basics. Have you marked those pages/posts as 'no-index'. With many wp plugins, you can no-index them in bulk then submit for re-indexation.
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
-
My old URL's are still indexing when I have redirected all of them, why is this happening?
I have built a new website and have redirected all my old URL's to their new ones but for some reason Google is still indexing the old URL's. Also, the page authority for all of my pages has dropped to 1 (apart from the homepage) but before they were between 12 to 15. Can anyone help me with this?
Technical SEO | | One2OneDigital0 -
How can I get the most out of uploading a print magazine to my client's website?
Hi Mozers, My client is just about to launch a print magazine for her watch business. There is so much valuable content in the magazine and we want to feature it on the website both for SEO purposes and also for those who prefer to read articles online instead of reading a physical magazine. My question is: what is the best method of displaying the magazine to get the most from search rankings and also to capitalise on the beautiful imagery from the magazine. The best option that I can think of is to upload the magazine as a flipbook and create a separate page on the website to display each article so that search engine crawlers can index the content. I do understand that this could be problematic if users are only spending time reading the flipbook and not so much time on the article pages. Do you guys have any suggestions about how to get the most out of this opportunity for my client? THANK YOU IN ADVANCE. Meaghan
Technical SEO | | StoryScout0 -
Different IP's in one Server
Hi, I just want to ask if there is no bad effect in SEO if we do have different websites that has different IP address but has shared in only 1 server? Thank you
Technical SEO | | TirewebMarketing0 -
Should I worry about these 404's?
Just wondering what the thought was on this. We have a site that lets people generate user profiles and once they delete the profile the page then 404's. I was told there is nothing we can do about those from our developers, but I was wondering if I should worry about these...I don't think they will affect any of our rankings, but you never know so I thought I would ask. Thanks
Technical SEO | | KateGMaker1 -
I'm redesigning a website which will have a new URL format. What's the best way to redirect all the old URLs to the new ones? Is there an automated, fast way to do this?
For example, the new URL will be: https://oregonoptimalhealth.com/about_us.html while the old one's were like this: http://www.oregonoptimalhealth.com/home/ooh/smartlist_1/services.html I have redirect almost 100 old pages to the correct new page. What's the best and easiest way to do this?
Technical SEO | | PolarisMarketing0 -
Can JavaScrip affect Google's index/ranking?
We have changed our website template about a month ago and since then we experienced a huge drop in rankings, especially with our home page. We kept the same url structure on entire website, pretty much the same content and the same on-page seo. We kind of knew we will have a rank drop but not that huge. We used to rank with the homepage on the top of the second page, and now we lost about 20-25 positions. What we changed is that we made a new homepage structure, more user-friendly and with much more organized information, we also have a slider presenting our main services. 80% of our content on the homepage is included inside the slideshow and 3 tabs, but all these elements are JavaScript. The content is unique and is seo optimized but when I am disabling the JavaScript, it becomes completely unavailable. Could this be the reason for the huge rank drop? I used the Webmaster Tolls' Fetch as Googlebot tool and it looks like Google reads perfectly what's inside the JavaScrip slideshow so I did not worried until now when I found this on SEOMoz: "Try to avoid ... using javascript ... since the search engines will ... not indexed them ... " One more weird thing is that although we have no duplicate content and the entire website has been cached, for a few pages (including the homepage), the picture snipet is from the old website. All main urls are the same, we removed some old ones that we don't need anymore, so we kept all the inbound links. The 301 redirects are properly set. But still, we have a huge rank drop. Also, (not sure if this important or not), the robots.txt file is disallowing some folders like: images, modules, templates... (Joomla components). We still have some html errors and warnings but way less than we had with the old website. Any advice would be much appreciated, thank you!
Technical SEO | | echo10 -
If a page isn't linked to or directly sumitted to a search engine can it get indexed?
Hey Guys, I'm curious if there are ways a page can get indexed even if the page isn't linked to or hasn't been submitted to a search engine. To my knowledge the following page on our website is not linked to and we definitely didn't submit it to Google - but it's currently indexed: <cite>takelessons.com/admin.php/adminJobPosition/corp</cite> Anyone have any ideas as to why or how this could have happened? Hopefully I'm missing something obvious 🙂 Thanks, Jon
Technical SEO | | TakeLessons0 -
What's the best way to deal with an entire existing site moving from http to https?
I have a client that just switched their entire site from the standard unsecure (http) to secure (https) because of over-zealous compliance issues for protecting personal information in the health care realm. They currently have the server setup to 302 redirect from the http version of a URL to the https version. My first inclination was to have them simply update that to a 301 and be done with it, but I'd prefer not to have to 301 every URL on the site. I know that putting a rel="canonical" tag on every page that refers to the http version of the URL is a best practice (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394), but should I leave the 302 redirects or update them to 301's. Something seems off to me about the search engines visiting an http page, getting 301 redirected to an https page and then being told by the canonical tag that it's actually the URL they were just 301 redirected from.
Technical SEO | | JasonCooper0