Should We Remove Content Through Google Webmaster Tools?
-
We recently collapsed an existing site in order to relaunch it as a much smaller, much higher quality site. In doing so, we're facing some indexation issues whereas a large number of our old URLs (301'd where appropriate) still show up for a site:domain search.
Some relevant notes:
- We transitioned the site from SiteCore to Wordpress to allow for greater flexibility
- The Wordpress CMS went live on 11/22 (same legacy content, but in the new CMS)
- The new content (and all required 301s) went live on 12/2
- The site's total number of URLS is currently at 173 (confirmed by ScreamingFrog)
- As of posting this question, a site:domain search shows 6,110 results
While it's a very large manual effort, is there any reason to believe that submitting removal requests through Google Webmaster Tools would be helpful?
We simply want all indexation of old pages and content to disappear - and for Google to treat the site as a new site on the same old domain.
-
As Donna pointed out, the 'delay' tween what you expect time-line wise and what Google can 'do' is often longer than anyone would wish........
-
I agree with Ray-pp. It can take some time - weeks to months - for Google to catch up with the changes made to the site. Sounds like something else might be going on causing you to have so many extra pages indexed. Can you explain the cause of having ~5,000 extra pages indexed? When did they first start to appear? Are you sure you've configured your wordpress implementation to minimize unnecessary duplicates?
-
If you have implemented 301 redirects properly, then the old URLs (the ones redirecting to the new site) will naturally drop from the search engines as Google deems appropriate. There are a number of factors that influence when a page gets deindexed, such as the crawl rate for a website and how many links it may have.
If you really desire the pages to be removed, then as you've suggested you can ask for their removal from GWT. However, there is no harm is allowing them to stay indexed and waiting for Google to adjust appropriately.
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
-
Ranking on google search
Hello Mozzers Moz On page grader shows A grade for the particular URL,but my page was not ranking on top 100 Google search. Any help is appreciated ,Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sobanadevi0 -
Webmaster Tools: Total Indexed VS Ever Crawled
Ok, In WMT's under health > index status I have both total indexed and ever crawled ticked - It also looks like the data is broken up weekly. As an example say you have the following: Total Indexed: 1000 Ever Crawled: 5000 What is this say? It found 5000 pages but only indexed 1000 (20%). Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bondara0 -
Duplicate content mess
One website I'm working with keeps a HTML archive of content from various magazines they publish. Some articles were repeated across different magazines, sometimes up to 5 times. These articles were also used as content elsewhere on the same website, resulting in up to 10 duplicates of the same article on one website. With regards to the 5 that are duplicates but not contained in the magazine, I can delete (resulting in 404) all but the highest value of each (most don't have any external links). There are hundreds of occurrences of this and it seems unfeasible to 301 or noindex them. After seeing how their system works I can canonical the remaining duplicate that isn't contained in the magazine to the corresponding original magazine version - but I can't canonical any of the other versions in the magazines to the original. I can't delete the other duplicates as they're part of the content of a particular issue of a magazine. The best thing I can think of doing is adding a link in the magazine duplicates to the original article, something along the lines of "This article originally appeared in...", though I get the impression the client wouldn't want to reveal that they used to share so much content across different magazines. The duplicate pages across the different magazines do differ slightly as a result of the different Contents menu for each magazine. Do you think it's a case of what I'm doing will be better than how it was, or is there something further I can do? Is adding the links enough? Thanks. 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alex-Harford0 -
Somthing weird in my Google Webmaster Tools Crawl Errors...
Hey, I recently (this past may) redesigned my e-commerce site from .asp to .php. I am trying to fix all the old pages with 301 redirects that didn't make it in the switch, but I keep getting weird pages coming up in GWT. I have about 400 pages under crawl errors that look like this "emailus.php?id=MD908070" I delete them and they come back. my site is http://www.moondoggieinc.com the id #'s are product #'s for products that are no longer on the site, but the site is .php now. They also do not show a sitemap they are linked in or any other page that they are linked from. Are these hurting me? and how do I get rid of them? Thanks! KristyO
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KristyO0 -
Is this duplicate content?
My client has several articles and pages that have 2 different URLs For example: /bc-blazes-construction-trail is the same article as: /article.cfm?intDocID=22572 I was not sure if this was duplicate content or not ... Or if I should be putting "/article.cfm" into the robots.txt file or not.. if anyone could help me out, that would be awesome! Thanks 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATMOSMarketing560 -
Should I remove footer links?
I added footer links to my site some months ago as I figured that any authority my home page had would be distributed to several of my other most important pages on my site helping them to rank. Would I be better to remove them and would that improve the authority of my home page as less 'link juice' is being distributed. I did originally set up a page per keyword on my site and start building links to each one but as my home page has a good authority I am going to target several keywords on my home page instead as I have some way to go to improve the authority of my other important pages and think this would be a better solution. It would reduce the number of links I have per page however I did see Matt Cutts say that the no more than 100 links per page rule doesn't apply any more. Do footer links add any SEo value?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
HTTP Errors in Webmaster Tools
We recently added a 301 redirect from our non-www domain to the www version. As a result, we now have tons of HTTP errors (403s to be exact) in Webmaster Tools. They're all from over a month ago, but they still show up. How can we fix this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kylesuss0 -
Google.ca vs Google.com Ranking
I have a site I would like to rank high for particular keywords in the Google.ca searches and don't particularly care about the Google.com searches (it's a Canadian service). I have logged into Google Webmaster Tools and targeted Canada. Currently my site is ranking on the third page for my desired keywords on Google.com, but is on the 20th page for Google.ca. Previously this change happened quite quickly -- within 4 weeks -- but it doesn't seem to be taking here (12 weeks out and counting). My optimization seems to be fine since I'm ranking well on Google.com: not sure why it's not translating to Google.ca. Any help or thoughts would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seorm0