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.
Bulk URL Removal in Webmaster Tools
-
One of Wordpress sites was hacked (for about 10 hours), and Google picked up 4000+ urls in the index. The site is fixed, but I'm stuck with all those urls in the index. All the urls of of the form:
walkerorthodontics.com/index.php?online-payday-cash-loan.htmloncewe
The only bulk removal option I could find was to remove an entire folder, but I can't do that, as it would only leave the homepage and kill off everything else. For some crazy reason, the removal tools doesn't support wildcards, so that obvious solution is right out.
So, how do it get rid of 4000 results? And no, waiting around for them to 404 out of the index isn't an option.
-
Hi Michael,
Is a .htaccess an option? Mention the URL's by hand or with wildcards and give an 410-header code to make sure search engines know these pages are really gone.
These links might get you started:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33247849/using-htaccess-to-410-any-wildcard-url-that-contains-a-question-mark
http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2014/11/http-410-error-pages-htaccess/Hope that helps.
Bas
-
Hello,
Perhaps you could set up 404 for these pages, and then submit all these URLS via a sitemap in Google Search Console ?
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
-
?_escaped_fragment_= Duplicate error in Webmaster
Hi I am not sure where this came from ... ?escaped_fragment= But in webmaster we are seeing hundreds of pages with this and thus webmaster is saying that we have Pages with duplicate title tags How do I fix this, or remove it. Regards T
Technical SEO | | Taiger0 -
Is it Detrimental to Repeat a Word in Our URL?
Hey guys! We run a tour company in Barcelona. Our company name is Barcelona Experience. We're customizing our URL's to include keywords which can be found in all the important areas on the page (title tage, meta descp., etc).
Technical SEO | | BarcelonaExperience
We want to change "www.barcelonaexperience.com/bike-tours" to "www.barcelonaexperience.com/barcelona-bike-tours"
We're worried the repetition of "barcelona" could be a bad thing. True, or not true? Thanks!0 -
Is there a tool to see all redirects?
I'm thinking this is a silly question, but I've never had to deal with it I thought I'd ask. Ok is there a tool out there that will show all the redirects to a domain. I'm working on a project that I keep stumbling on urls that redirect to the site I'm studying. They don't show up in Open Site or ahrefs as linking domains, but they keep popping up on me. Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | BCutrer0 -
Removing Redirected URLs from XML Sitemap
If I'm updating a URL and 301 redirecting the old URL to the new URL, Google recommends I remove the old URL from our XML sitemap and add the new URL. That makes sense. However, can anyone speak to how Google transfers the ranking value (link value) from the old URL to the new URL? My suspicion is this happens outside the sitemap. If Google already has the old URL indexed, the next time it crawls that URL, Googlebot discovers the 301 redirect and that starts the process of URL value transfer. I guess my question revolves around whether removing the old URL (or the timing of the removal) from the sitemap can impact Googlebot's transfer of the old URL value to the new URL.
Technical SEO | | RyanOD0 -
Landing Page URL Structure
We are finally setting up landing pages to support our PPC campaigns. There has been some debate internally about the URL structure. Originally we were planning on URL's like: domain.com /california /florida /ny I would prefer to have the URL's for each state inside a "state" folder like: domain.com /state /california /florida /ny I like having the folders and pages for each state under a parent folder to keep the root folder as clean as possible. Having a folder or file for each state in the root will be very messy. Before you scream URL rewriting :-). Our current site is still running under Classic ASP which doesn't support URL rewriting. We have tried to use HeliconTech's ISAPI rewrite module for IIS but had to remove it because of too many configuration issues. Next year when our coding to MVC is complete we will use URL rewriting. So the question for now: Is there any advantage or disadvantage to one URL structure over the other?
Technical SEO | | briankb0 -
Old URL redirect to New URL
Alright I did something dumb a year a go and I'm still paying for it. I changed my hyphenated URL to the non-hyphenated version when I redesigned my website. I say it was dumb because I lost most of my link juice even though I did 301 redirects (via the htaccess file) for almost all of the pages I could find in Google's index. Here's my problem. My new site took a huge hit in traffic (down 60%) when I made the change and even though I've done thousands of redirects my old site is still showing up in the SERPS and send much if not most of my traffic. I don't want to take the old site down in fear it will kill all of my traffic. What should I do? Is there a better method I should explore then 301 redirects? Could the other site be affecting my current rank since it's still there? (FYI...both sites are built on the WP platform). Any help or ideas are greatly appreciated. Thank you! Joe
Technical SEO | | kaje0 -
Drupal URL Aliases vs 301 Redirects + Do URL Aliases create duplicates?
Hi all! I have just begun work on a Drupal site which heavily uses the URL Aliases feature. I fear that it is creating duplicate links. For example:: we have http://www.URL.com/index.php and http://www.URL.com/ In addition we are about to switch a lot of links and want to keep the search engine benefit. Am I right in thinking URL aliases change the URL, while leaving the old URL live and without creating search engine friendly redirects such as 301s? Thanks for any help! Christian
Technical SEO | | ChristianMKTG0
