I'm looking for a bulk way to take off from the Google search results over 600 old and inexisting pages?
-
When I search on Google site:alexanders.co.nz still showing over 900 results.
There are over 600 inexisting pages and the 404/410 errrors aren't not working.
The only way that I can think to do that is doing manually on search console using the "Removing URLs" tool but is going to take ages.
Any idea how I can take down all those zombie pages from the search results?
-
Just here to add some to Will almost complete answer:
The 'site:' often shows results that won't be displayed in Google search results and don't represent the entirely nor precisely the pages that are indexed.I'd suggest to you:
1- If those pages are already serving 404 or 410, then wait for a little. Google won't show them in search results and eventually won't be seen in a site: search. You can check whether those URLs are being shown in searches through search console.
2- There is a script made by a webmaster that helps you using the GSC URL removal tool for a big list of URLs. Please, use it carefully and try it first within a riskless GSC propertyHope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston -
What is the business issue this is causing? Are you seeing these 404 / 410 pages appearing in actual searches?
If it's just that they remain technically indexed, I'd be tempted not to be too worried about it - they will drop out eventually.
Unfortunately, most of the ways to get pages (re-)indexed are only appropriate for real pages that you want to have remain in the index (e.g.: include in a new sitemap file and submit that) or are better for individual pages which has the same downside as removing them via search console one by one.
You can remove whole folders at a time via search console, if that would speed things up - if the removed pages are grouped neatly into folders?
Otherwise, I would probably consider prioritising the list (using data about which are getting visits or visibility in search) and removing as many as you can be bothered to work through.
Hope that helps.
-
Hi, Thanks for that, the problem is that those pages are really old they are generating 0 traffic so we set up a 404 error page a long time ago but Google is not going to remove those pages because without traffic there is not crawl and without a few crawls Google is not going to know that those pages don't exist anymore. They are literally zombie pages! Any idea?
-
What about creating a load of 301 redirects, from the none existent URLs to the still active ones , &/ or, updating your 404 pages to better inform users what happened to the "missing" pages. regardless Google will just stop indexing them after a short while.
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
-
Magento 1.9 SEO. I have product pages with identical On Page SEO score in the 90's. Some pull up Google page 1 some won't pull up at all. I am searching for the exact title on that page.
I have a website built on Magento 1.9. There are approximately 290,000 part numbers on the site. I am sampling Google SERP results. About 20% of the keywords show up on page 1 position 5 thru 10. 80% don't show up at all. When I do a MOZ page score I get high 80's to 90's. A page score of 89 on one part # may show up on page one, An identical page score on a different part # can't be found on Google. I am searching for the exact part # in the page title. Any thoughts on what may be going on? This seems to me like a Magento SEO issue.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CTOPDS0 -
In the google index but search redirects to homepage
Hi everyone, thanks for reading i have a website "www.gardeners.scot" and have the following pages listed in google site: command http://www.gardeners.scot/garden-landscaping-Edinburgh.htm & http://www.gardeners.scot/garden-maintenance-Edinburgh.htm however when a user searches for "garden landscaping Edinburgh" or "garden maintenance Edinburgh" we are in the rankings but google search links these phrases to the home page not to their targeted pages. the site is about a year old have checked the robots.txt, sitemap.xml & .htaccess files but can see anything wrong there. any ideas out there?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | livingphilosophy0 -
How do we better optimize a site to show the correct domain in organic search results for the location the user is searching in?
For example, chicago-company.com has the same content as springfield-company.com and I am searching for a general non-brand term (i.e. utility bill pay) and am located in Chicago. How can we optimize the chicago-company.com to ensure that chicago's site results are in top positions over springfields site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aelite1 -
Google Is Indexing The Wrong Page For My Keyword
For a long time (almost 3 mounth) google indexing the wrong page for my main keyword.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tiedemann_Anselm
The problem is that each time google indexed another page each time for a period of 4-7 days, Sometimes i see the home page, sometimes a category page and sometimes a product page.
It seems though Google has not yet decided what his favorite / better page for this keyword. This is the pages google index: (In most cases you can find the site on the second or third page) Main Page: http://bit.ly/19fOqDh Category Page: http://bit.ly/1ebpiRn Another Category: http://bit.ly/K3MZl4 Product Page: http://bit.ly/1c73B1s All links I get to the website are natural links, therefore in most cases the anchor we got is the website name. In addition I have many links I get from bloggers that asked to do a review on one of my products, I'm very careful about that and so I'm always checking the blogger and their website only if it is something good, I allowed it. also i never ask for a link back (must of the time i receive without asking), and as I said, most of their links are anchor with my website name. Here some example of links that i received from bloggers: http://bit.ly/1hF0pQb http://bit.ly/1a8ogT1 http://bit.ly/1bqqRr8 http://bit.ly/1c5QeC7 http://bit.ly/1gXgzXJ Please Can I get a recommendation what should you do?
Should I try to change the anchor of the link?
Do I need to not allow bloggers to make a review on my products? I'd love to hear what you recommend,
Thanks for the help0 -
Pipe ("|") in my website's title is being replaced with ":" in Google results
Hi , One of the websites I'm promoting and working on is www.pau-brasil.co.il.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kadel
It's wordpress-based website and as you can see the html's Title is "PauBrasil | some hebrew slogan".
(Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/2f80EEY.gif)
When I'm searching for "PauBrasil" (Which is the brand's name) , one of the results google shows is "PauBrasil: Some Hebrew Slogan" (Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/eJxNHrO.gif ) Why does the pipe is being replaced with ":" ?
And not just that , as you can see there's a "blank space" missing between the the ":" to the slogan.
(note: the websites has been indexed by google crawler at least 4 times so I find it hard to believe it can be the reason) I've keep on looking and found out that there's another page in that website with the exact same title
but when I'm looking for it in google , it shows the title as it really is , with pipe. ("|").
(Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/dtsbZV2.gif) Have you ever encountered something like that?
Can it be that the duplicated title cause that weird "replacement"? Thanks in advance,
Kadel0 -
Google Filter? Drop from top first page to bottom second page?
My site has dropped from the first page top spots to the bottom second page, about 2 month ago. From time to time it reappears in the first page, is this some kind of google filter? How do I solve this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ofer230 -
Help! Optimizing dynamic internal search results pages...
Hi guys, Now I have always been against this, and opted to noindex internal search results pages to stop the waste of link juice, dupe content, and crawl loops... however, I'm in a discussion with somebody who feels there may be a solution, and that the pages could actually be optimized to rank (for different keywords to the landing pages of course). Anybody come across such a thing before? My only solution would be still to noindex and then build static pages with the most popular search results in but that won't suffice in this case. Any recommendations would be much appreciated 🙂 Thanks, Steve 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SteveOllington0 -
Why do I have better results with absolute search
Hi, I completed the optimization of my website, and while my rankings have improved, i seem to have consistently better resultats with absolute search terms: ex: i'm better ranked on "word1 word2" than just word1 word2 without the guillemets. Do you have any idea why? As most people perform search without guillemets, i would like to improve my rankings with these searches too. thanks, cedric
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smartgrains0