How to safely exclude search result pages from Google's index?
-
Hello everyone,
I'm wondering what's the best way to prevent/block search result pages from being indexed by Google. The way search works on my site is that search form generates URLs like:
/index.php?blah-blah-search-results-blahI wanted to block everything of that sort, but how do I do it without blocking /index.php ?
Thanks in advance and have a great day everyone!
-
Hi Louise,
If you can ID the parameters, you can also look at blocking these in Webmaster Tools. This page explains more. As with any blocking of URLs, of course, proceed with caution.
-
I agree that can be effective. The reason I suggested the robots.txt is because Louise mentioned "blocking and preventing" as an objective. Robots.txt are particularly useful in the example where results from a search bar or something of that nature is involved. A NOINDEX, FOLLOW will not prevent bots from getting tired and dizzy, whereas the robots.txt can "block and prevent" bots from crawling certain parameters.
With all of that said, I think it is important to understand whether you need the bots to crawl and not index (in which case Spencer's answer is correct), or if you need to prevent bots from crawling the parameters altogether.
Hope that is more clear
-
I'm not sure that robots.txt is effective when url parameters are involved.
I would just add a meta robots tag to the head section of the search results template:
-
If you are able to identify a url parameter, you may excluded them using robots.txt. Here is a great resource on Robots.txt - http://moz.com/learn/seo/robotstxt
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
-
How to set goal in Google Analytics that required specific page
So our company has new page that has just implemented (let say "page x" --> not a landing page) and we want to see how many visitors that through "page x " convert into the goal (let say "page y"). If I just make the goal destination like "/page y" the goal number that appear is ALL the visitors who reach "page y" (through or not through "page x"), so how I set the goal setting to only show the visitors who reach "page y" through "page x" ? Thank you
Reporting & Analytics | | ddspg0 -
How to interpret universal results?
Hi After adding some keywords to our new campaign for www.vayamundo.be/nl, the keyword "Vayamundo" ranked +51, which is strange. I then found this little marker in the universal results column which says: Universal Result: Local Contains: 3 results Vayamundo Ol Fosse d'Outh
Reporting & Analytics | | SoftelBE
http://www.vayamundo.be/ Vayamundo
http://www.vayamundo.be/ Zumba Oostende in Vayamundo Ravelingen
https://www.zumba-oostende.be/ View Ranking History for more details
Learn more about universal results I clicked the two links, but still do not understand how to interpret this universal result. Why was it labeled a universal result to begin with? Can somebody help me out? Thanks in advance. Greetings Jorien0 -
In Google Search Console: Total Clicks differ from the sum clicks on search queries
Hi.This may be a google technical question, but I've searched a lot and I couldn't find any certain information about that.The problem appears when you look at two stats in Search Console ( WebMasters Tools, some months ago), particulary in the Search Analysis.1- Total clicks2- Sum of clicks at every search query.I attached an image to make me clear.8IZsxs6.png
Reporting & Analytics | | NachoRetta2 -
Migrated website but Google Analytics still displays old URL's and none new?!
I migrated a website from a .aspx to a .php and hence had to 301 all the old urls to the new php ones. It's been months after and I'm not seeing any of the php pages showing results but I'm still getting results from the old .aspx pages. Has any one had any experience with this issue or knows what to do? Many thanks,
Reporting & Analytics | | CoGri0 -
Google News Bug
During today and yesterday we are getting a lot of visits (Over 400) from http://news.google.com the visits are all at the same time and to different pages, the visits are very brief so much so that it pushes our bounce rate up to 69% in GA. Is there anything we can do to stop this? Thank you in advance?
Reporting & Analytics | | Palmbourne0 -
Where have the 'most changed keyword rankings' gone from the weekly summary emails?
Since the change to Moz we have noticed that the weekly summary emails do not show the 'most changed keyword rankings' table. We found these extremely helpful and would be disappointed to see these go. Are these going to make a come back?
Reporting & Analytics | | RedAntSolutions2 -
Google analytics question
Ok so in my traffic sources break down I have 3 sections: direct, organic, and referral. My question is under the referral tab I have recently noticed a new traffic source, my own website.... How is this possible? My top referring site is my own website.... Is this considered direct traffic or how is this being traced?
Reporting & Analytics | | jameswalkerson0 -
Difference between site: search and Total Indexed in Google Webmaster Tools.
This morning I did a search on Google for my site using the site: operator. I noticed that the number of results returned was significantly different than the "Total indexed" in Google Webmaster Tools. What is the difference and is it normal to have two very different numbers here?
Reporting & Analytics | | Gordian0