Google Webmaster Tools Parameters
-
We have several large ecommerce websites, and we've added some tracking parameters to GWT for google to ignore. All pages are correctly canonicaled.
Google has been ignoring the parameters and the canonicals, and still ranks many parametered pages for us. Has anyone run into this?
-
Building on Patrick's answer using Robots.txt was the fastest way for things to take effect, but if implemented wrong can impact you pretty bad.
In addition to adding the exclusions in the Robots.txt, I also put in a removal request to remove the pages with parameters from googles index using the Google Url Removal tool, this combined with the other options helped clean up my results in the google index.
Hope this helps.
-
Patrick:
I set up the "clicksource" parameter in Google Webmaster Tools in March, and we still have 2400 pages with parameters indexed.
-
Very often, it isn't enough to only try and complete this through parameter handling. As Patrick said, you can look at adding sets of 'disallows' in Robots.txt and no-index at a page level, if you want to have pages de-indexed, but be careful how you do this and make sure that Google can see and action a no-index before blocking access to the page.
-Andy
-
Hi there
When did you put these parameters in place? Sometimes it can take Google some time to crawl your site and see these requests via your GWMT. So, depending on how recently you implemented these parameters, you may still see some of these URLs ranking.
Do you have these parameters in your sitemap or internal links where they are not needed? If so, make sure you correct them.
You can also look into robots.txt opportunities with your web development team to block these parameters, although I would really research this so you don't accidentally block important URLs.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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
-
Google Update
My rank has dropped quite a lot this past week and I can see from the Moz tools that there is an unconfirmed Google update responsible. Is there any information from Moz on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Google Webmaster tools -Fixing over 20,000+ crawl errors
Hi, I'm trying to gather all the 404 crawl errors on my website after a recent hacking that I've been trying to rectify and clean up. Webmaster tools states that I have over 20 000+ crawl errors. I can only download a sample of 1000 errors. Is there any way to get the full list instead of correcting 1000 errors, marking them as fixed and waiting for the next batch of 1000 errors to be listed in Webmaster tools? The current method is quite timely and I want to take care of all errors in one shot instead of over a course of a month.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FPK0 -
The best tool
Hi friends !! I have a huge question . Which is the best tool for SEO? I am using a lot of tools but I would like to know more ways to position my website in the top . I hope that you can help me! Regards , Carlos Zambrana
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CarlosZambrana1 -
Link from Google.com
Hi guys I've just seen a website get a link from Google's Webmaster Snippet testing tool. Basically, they've linked to a results page for their own website test. Here's an example of what this would look like for a result on my website. http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.impression.co.uk There's a meta nofollow, but I just wondered what everyone's take is on Trust, etc, passing down? (Don't worry, I'm not encouraging people to go out spamming links to results pages!) Looking forward to some interesting responses!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomcraig860 -
Google webmaster tool (GWT) owner removal issue
Hi! I have a new client, the former agency added the client property with the agency account so we had to create a new GA account (as you can’t transfer ownership at the account level) but we also kept access to the former account to keep historical data. We were granted owner access to the GWT (which is more flexible, you can remove owners and creators) and we now want to remove former agency users. We have 3 adresses. One was verified with delegation method (no pb for removal), one with meta tag (no pb) and one with Google Analytics. Here it becomes tricky as Google says regarding GA verif method “If this account was verified using a Google Analytics tracking code, you should make sure that the user you want to unverify is no longer an administrator on the Analytics account. Otherwise, removal may not be permanent”. The thing is that this user has the same email address as the one used to create the agency GA account (no ownership transfer) so I basically can’t remove admin rights. The other possibility, as Google mentions when I try to unlink this user, is “remove the administrator status in Google Analytics or delete the Google Analytics tracking code on the website”. But we don’t want to remove the code as we still want to track data with the former account for historical analysis purposes. Has anyone ever faced this situation? Do you know how to handle this? Do you think that unlinking the GWT and the GA accounts will unverify the GA method? Many thanks in advance ! Ennick
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ennick0 -
Time for Google to change the emphasis?
Why doesn't Google recommend that links are nofollow as standard, via HTML5, etc., with follow being added if the link is on a quality site (defined by PR, or whatever.) and adds value. Wouldn't this save alot of time? Then they could whack all the sites with coding that doesn't comply, couldn't they? Also, instead of enabling negative SEO, why doesn't Google simply focus on wiping out the sites developed simply to pass on PR. I'm sure we could all send them a few thousand suggestions!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Disavow Tool - WWW or Not?
Hi All, Just a quick question ... A shady domain linking to my website is indexed in Google for both example.com and www.example.com. If I wan't to disavow the entire domain, do I need to submit both: domain:www.example.com domain:example.com or just: domain:example.com Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carlos-R0 -
Getting rid of a site in Google
Hi, I have two sites, lets call them site A and site B, both are sub domains of the same root domain. Because of a server config error, both got indexed by Google. Google reports millions of inbound links from Site B to Site A I want to get rid of Site B, because its duplicate content. First I tried to remove the site from webmaster tools, and blocking all content in the robots.txt for site B, this removed all content from the search results, but the links from site B to site A still stayed in place, and increased (even after 2 months) I also tried to change all the pages on Site B to 404 pages, but this did not work either I then removed the blocks, cleaned up the robots.txt and changed the server config on Site B so that everything redirects (301) to a landing page for Site B. But still the links in Webmaster Tools to site A from Site B is on the increase. What do you think is the best way to delete a site from google and to delete all the links it had to other sites so that there is NO history of this site? It seems that when you block it with robots.txt, the links and juice does not disappear, but only the blocked by robots.txt report on WMT increases Any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JacoRoux0