Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
De-indexing product "quick view" pages
-
Hi there,
The e-commerce website I am working on seems to index all of the "quick view" pages (which normally occur as iframes on the category page) as their own unique pages, creating thousands of duplicate pages / overly-dynamic URLs. Each indexed "quick view" page has the following URL structure:
www.mydomain.com/catalog/includes/inc_productquickview.jsp?prodId=89514&catgId=cat140142&KeepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=475&width=700
where the only thing that changes is the product ID and category number.
Would using "disallow" in Robots.txt be the best way to de-indexing all of these URLs? If so, could someone help me identify how to best structure this disallow statement? Would it be:
Disallow: /catalog/includes/inc_productquickview.jsp?prodID=*
Thanks for your help.
-
Just to add, if you block URLs in robots.txt they wont actually get deindexed. They will be for all intents and purposes be blocked (wont cause duplicate content issues etc) but they will drop into the omitted results:
_In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 13 already displayed._If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included. And will look like this in the SERPS (see attachment).If you want them removed from the SERPs you will need to use the robots NOINDEX meta tag, or use GWMT as William advised.
The disallow entry you posted will block these pages, as long as they all start with that way. Although you don't actually need the trailing wild card as that gets ignored, you can just leave it open. Google robots.txt specs
-
Thanks William. I think I will stick with the Robots file in this case. I am nervous about using that parameter feature in case ?prodID is used in any other URL that should be indexed.
-
You can use that in your robots.txt, which should work on crawls.
Or
you can also go into WMT and setup your parameters, in this case would be ?prodID.
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
-
Does redirecting from a "bad" domain "infect" the new domain?
Hi all, So a complicated question that requires a little background. I bought unseenjapan.com to serve as a legitimate news site about a year ago. Social media and content growth has been good. Unfortunately, one thing I didn't realize when I bought this domain was that it used to be a porn site. I've managed to muck out some of the damage already - primarily, I got major vendors like Macafee and OpenDNS to remove the "porn" categorization, which has unblocked the site at most schools & locations w/ public wifi. The sticky bit, however, is Google. Google has the domain filtered under SafeSearch, which means we're losing - and will continue to lose - a ton of organic traffic. I'm trying to figure out how to deal with this, and appeal the decision. Unfortunately, Google's Reconsideration Request form currently doesn't work unless your site has an existing manual action against it (mine does not). I've also heard such requests, even if I did figure out how to make them, often just get ignored for months on end. Now, I have a back up plan. I've registered unseen-japan.com, and I could just move my domain over to the new domain if I can't get this issue resolved. It would allow me to be on a domain with a clean history while not having to change my brand. But if I do that, and I set up 301 redirects from the former domain, will it simply cause the new domain to be perceived as an "adult" domain by Google? I.e., will the former URL's bad reputation carry over to the new one? I haven't made a decision one way or the other yet, so any insights are appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gaiaslastlaugh0 -
How to de-index old URLs after redesigning the website?
Thank you for reading. After redesigning my website (5 months ago) in my crawl reports (Moz, Search Console) I still get tons of 404 pages which all seems to be the URLs from my previous website (same root domain). It would be nonsense to 301 redirect them as there are to many URLs. (or would it be nonsense?) What is the best way to deal with this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chemometec0 -
Rel="self" and what to do with it?
Hey there Mozzers, Another question about a forum issue I encountered. When a forum thread has more than just one page as we all know the best course of action is to use rel="next" rel="prev" or rel="previous" But my forum automatically creates another line in the header called Rel="self" What that does is simple. If i have 3 pages http://www.example.com/article?story=abc1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Angelos_Savvaidis
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc2
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc3 **instead of this ** On the first page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc1 On the second page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc2 On the third page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc3: it creates this On the first page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc1 So as you can see it creates a url by adding the ?page=1 and names it rel=self which actually gives back a duplicate page because now instead of just http://www.example.com/article?story=abc1 I also have the same page at http://www.example.com/article?story=abc1?page=1 Do i even need rel="self"? I thought that rel="next" and rel="prev" was enough? Should I change that?0 -
Pages are Indexed but not Cached by Google. Why?
Here's an example: I get a 404 error for this: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.qjamba.com/restaurants-coupons/ferguson/mo/all But a search for qjamba restaurant coupons gives a clear result as does this: site:http://www.qjamba.com/restaurants-coupons/ferguson/mo/all What is going on? How can this page be indexed but not in the Google cache? I should make clear that the page is not showing up with any kind of error in webmaster tools, and Google has been crawling pages just fine. This particular page was fetched by Google yesterday with no problems, and even crawled again twice today by Google Yet, no cache.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood2 -
Links from non-indexed pages
Whilst looking for link opportunities, I have noticed that the website has a few profiles from suppliers or accredited organisations. However, a search form is required to access these pages and when I type cache:"webpage.com" the page is showing up as non-indexed. These are good websites, not spammy directory sites, but is it worth trying to get Google to index the pages? If so, what is the best method to use?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maxweb0 -
Why is "Noindex" better than a "Canonical" for Pagination?
"Noindex" is a suggested pagination technique here: http://searchengineland.com/the-latest-greatest-on-seo-pagination-114284, and everyone seems to agree that you shouldn't canonicalize all pages in a series to the first page, but I'd love if someone can explain why "noindex" is better than a canonical?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Best practice for removing indexed internal search pages from Google?
Hi Mozzers I know that it’s best practice to block Google from indexing internal search pages, but what’s best practice when “the damage is done”? I have a project where a substantial part of our visitors and income lands on an internal search page, because Google has indexed them (about 3 %). I would like to block Google from indexing the search pages via the meta noindex,follow tag because: Google Guidelines: “Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don't add much value for users coming from search engines.” http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769 Bad user experience The search pages are (probably) stealing rankings from our real landing pages Webmaster Notification: “Googlebot found an extremely high number of URLs on your site” with links to our internal search results I want to use the meta tag to keep the link juice flowing. Do you recommend using the robots.txt instead? If yes, why? Should we just go dark on the internal search pages, or how shall we proceed with blocking them? I’m looking forward to your answer! Edit: Google have currently indexed several million of our internal search pages.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HrThomsen0 -
Should I prevent Google from indexing blog tag and category pages?
I am working on a website that has a regularly updated Wordpress blog and am unsure whether or not the category and tag pages should be indexable. The blog posts are often outranked by the tag and category pages and they are ultimately leaving me with a duplicate content issue. With this in mind, I assumed that the best thing to do would be to remove the tag and category pages from the index, but after speaking to someone else about the issue, I am no longer sure. I have tried researching online, but there isn't anything that provided any further information. Please can anyone with any experience of dealing with issues like this or with any knowledge of the topic help me to resolve this annoying issue. Any input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PaulRogers0