Most Painless way of getting Duff Pages out of SE's Index
-
Hi,
I've had a few issues that have been caused by our developers on our website. Basically we have a pretty complex method of automatically generating URL's and web pages on our website, and they have stuffed up the URL's at some point and managed to get 10's of thousands of duff URL's and pages indexed by the search engines.
I've now got to get these pages out of the SE's indexes as painlessly as possible as I think they are causing a Panda penalty.
All these URL's have an addition directory level in them called "home" which should not be there, so I have:
www.mysite.com/home/page123 instead of the correct URL www.mysite.com/page123
All these are totally duff URL's with no links going to them, so I'm gaining nothing by 301 redirects, so I was wondering if there was a more painless less risky way of getting them all out the indexes (IE after the stuff up by our developers in the first place I'm wary of letting them loose on 301 redirects incase they cause another issue!)
Thanks
-
If all /home directories should be removed, and they all correlate directly to the same URL without the /home then the best means to correct the issue would be a single regex expression to redirect the URLs.
Once you add the redirect Google's index should be cleaned up in about 30 days.
-
Add robots.txt to stop Google crawling the subdirectories you don't want shown such as /home
More information is available on http://www.seomoz.org/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
-
I need help on how best to do a complicated site migration. Replacing certain pages with all new content and tools, and keeping the same URL's. The rest just need to disappear safely. Somehow.
I'm completely rebranding a website but keeping the same domain. All content will be replaced and it will use a different theme and mostly new plugins. I've been building the new site as a different site in Dev mode on WPEngine. This means it currently has a made-up domain that needs to replace the current site. I know I need to somehow redirect the content from the old version of the site. But I'm never going to use that content again. (I could transfer it to be a Dev site for the current domain and automatically replace it with the click of a button - just as another option.) What's the best way to replace blahblah.com with a completely new blahblah.com if I'm not using any of the old content? There are only about 4 URL'st, such as blahblah.com/contact hat will remain the same - with all content replaced. There are about 100 URL's that will no longer be in use or have any part of them ever used again. Can this be done safely?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brickbatmove1 -
Google Indexed Site A's Content On Site B, Site C etc
Hi All, I have an issue where the content (pages and images) of Site A (www.ericreynolds.photography) are showing up in Google under different domains Site B (www.fastphonerepair.com), Site C (www.quarryhillvet.com), Site D (www.spacasey.com). I believe this happened because I installed an SSL cert on Site A but didn't have the default SSL domain set on the server. You were able to access Site B and any page from Site A and it would pull up properly. I have since fixed that SSL issue and am now doing a 301 redirect from Sites B, C and D to Site A for anything https since Sites B, C, D are not using an SSL cert. My question is, how can I trigger google to re-index all of the sites to remove the wrong listings in the index. I have a screen shot attached so you can see the issue clearer. I have resubmitted my site map but I'm not seeing much of a change in the index for my site. Any help on what I could do would be great. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cwscontent
Eric TeVM49b.png qPtXvME.png1 -
Difficulty with Indexing Pages - Desperate for Help!
I have a website with product pages that use the same URL, but load different data based on what's passed to them with GET. I am using a Wordpress website, but all of the page information is retrieved from a database using PHP and displayed with PHP. Somehow these pages are not being indexed by Google. I have done the following: 1. Created a site map pointing to each page. 2. Defined URL parameters in Search Console for these type of pages. 3. Created a product schema using schema.org, and tested it without errors. I have requested re-indexing repeatedly and these pages and images on the pages are still not being indexed! Does anybody have any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jacleaves0 -
Legal Client Wants to Change Domain Name... What's the best way to pass authority from old domain?
Hey Mozzers,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WhiteboardCreations
I received a call on Friday from a 6 attorney law office who have been my client for a long time. They have an established brand/domain in their market which isn't very big, but has a lot of competition. 2 of the attorneys are leaving to start their own firm and they want to remove a letter from their name abbreviation, thus their domain name as well. So, the other partners want to change the domain to reflect this. They want to buy a EMD [city]lawyers.com for about $1,600 along with some others to protect their new brand and name. I have a good idea as to what I need to do, BUT would love to hear advice from the community for this type of drastic change. 301 redirects? New Google Analytics code or same just different profile? Webmasters verifications? Content from old site? Old domain forwarding or keep active for a little bit? Is not the time to get them an SSL? Also, what should I prepare them for in terms of website traffic expectations and Google authority drops or remains the same? I know their Moz DA/PA will drop to 1/1, but anything else to look out for? Thank you in advance!
Fellow Pro Member - Patrick1 -
Why Google isn't indexing my images?
Hello, on my fairly new website Worthminer.com I am noticing that Google is not indexing images from my sitemap. Already 560 images submitted and Google indexed only 3 of them. Altough there is more images indexed they are not indexing any new images, and I have no idea why. Posts, categories and other urls are indexing just fine, but images not. I am using Wordpress and for sitemaps Wordpress SEO by yoast. Am I missing something here? Why Google won't index my images? Thanks, I appreciate any help, David xv1GtwK.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Worthminer1 -
Why are some pages indexed but not cached by Google?
The question is simple but I don't understand the answer. I found a webpage that was linking to my personal site. The page was indexed in Google. However, there was no cache option and I received a 404 from Google when I tried using cache:www.thewebpage.com/link/. What exactly does this mean? Also, does it have any negative implication on the SEO value of the link that points to my personal website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mRELEVANCE0 -
Incorrect cached page indexing in Google while correct page indexes intermittently
Hi, we are a South African insurance company. We have a page http://www.miway.co.za/midrivestyle which has a 301 redirect to http://www.miway.co.za/car-insurance. Problem is that the former page is ranking in the index rather than the latter. The latter page does index occasionally in the same position, but rarely. This is primarily for search phrases like "car insurance" and "car insurance quotes". The ranking was knocked down the index with Penquin 2.0. It was not ranking at all but we have managed to recover to 12/13. This abnormally has only been occurring since the recovery. The correct page does index for other search terms like "insurance for car". Your help would be appreciated, thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | miway0 -
How can you indexed pages or content on pages that are behind a pay wall or subscription login.
I have a client that has a boat of awesome content they provide to their client that's behind a pay wall ( ie: paid subscribers can only access ) Any suggestions mozzers? How do I get those pages index? Without completely giving away the contents in the front end.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BizDetox0