How to block "print" pages from indexing
-
I have a fairly large FAQ section and every article has a "print" button. Unfortunately, this is creating a page for every article which is muddying up the index - especially on my own site using Google Custom Search.
Can you recommend a way to block this from happening?
Example Article:
Example "Print" page:
http://www.knottyboy.com/lore/article.php?id=052&action=print
-
Donnie, I agree. However, we had the same problem on a website and here's what we did the canonical tag:
Over a period of 3-4 weeks, all those print pages disappeared from the SERP. Now if I take a print URL and do a cache: for that page, it shows me the web version of that page.
So yes, I agree the question was about blocking the pages from getting indexed. There's no real recipe here, it's about getting the right solution. Before canonical tag, robots.txt was the only solution. But now with canonical there (provided one has the time and resources available to implement it vs adding one line of text to robots.txt), you can technically 301 the pages and not have to stop/restrict the spiders from crawling them.
Absolutely no offence to your solution in any way. Both are indeed workable solutions. The best part is that your robots.txt solution takes 30 seconds to implement since you provided the actually disallow code :), so it's better.
-
Thanks Jennifer, will do! So much good information.
-
Sorry, but I have to jump in - do NOT use all of those signals simultaneously. You'll make a mess, and they'll interfere with each other. You can try Robots.txt or NOINDEX on the page level - my experience suggests NOINDEX is much more effective.
Also, do not nofollow the links yet - you'll block the crawl, and then the page-level cues (like NOINDEX) won't work. You can nofollow later. This is a common mistake and it will keep your fixes from working.
-
Josh, please read my and Dr. Pete's comments below. Don't nofollow the links, but do use the meta noindex,follow on the page.
-
Rel-canonical, in practice, does essentially de-index the non-canonical version. Technically, it's not a de-indexation method, but it works that way.
-
You are right Donnie. I've "good answered" you too.
I've gone ahead and updated my robots.txt file. As soon as I am able, I will use no indexon the page, no follow on the links, and rel=canonical.
This is just what I needed, a quick fix until I can make a more permanent solution.
-
Your welcome : )
-
Although you are correct... there is still more then one way to skin a chicken.
-
But the spiders still run on the page and read the canonical link, however with the robot text the spiders will not.
-
Yes, but Rel=Canonical does not block a page it only tells google which page to follow out of two pages.The question was how to block, not how to tell google which link to follow. I believe you gave credit to the wrong answer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_link_element
This is not fair. lol
-
I have to agree with Jen - Robots.txt isn't great for getting indexed pages out. It's good for prevention, but tends to be unreliable as a cure. META NOINDEX is probably more reliable.
One trick - DON'T nofollow the print links, at least not yet. You need Google to crawl and read the NOINDEX tags. Once the ?print pages are de-indexed, you could nofollow the links, too.
-
Yes, it's strongly recommended. It should be fairly simple to populate this tag with the "full" URL of the article based on the article ID. This approach will not only help you get rid of the duplicate content issue, but a canonical tag essentially works like a 301 redirect. So from all search engine perspective you are 301'ing your print pages to the real web urls without redirecting the actual user's who are browsing the print pages if they need to.
-
Ya it is actually really useful. Unfortunately they are out of business now - so I'm hacking it on my own.
I will take your advice. I've shamefully never used rel= canonical before - so now is a good time to start.
-
True but using robots.txt does not keep them out of the index. Only using "noindex" will do that.
-
Thanks Donnie. Much appreciated!
-
I actually remember Lore from a while ago. It's an interesting, easy to use FAQ CMS.
Anyways, I would also recommend implementing Canonical Tags for any possible duplicate content issues. So whether it's the print or the web version, each one of them will contain a canonical tag pointing to the web url of that article in the section of your website.
rel="canonical" href="http://www.knottyboy.com/lore/idx.php/11/183/Maintenance-of-Mature-Locks-6-months-/article/How-do-I-get-sand-out-of-my-dreads.html" /> -
-
Try This.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /*&action=print
-
Theres more then one way to skin a chicken.
-
Rather than using robots.txt I'd use a noindex,follow tag instead to the page. This code goes into the tag for each print page. And it will ensure that the pages don't get indexed but that the links are followed.
-
That would be great. Do you mind giving me an example?
-
you can block in .robot text, every page that ends in action=print
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
-
Indexing Issue of Dynamic Pages
Hi All, I have a query for which i am struggling to find out the answer. I unable to retrieve URL using "site:" query on Google SERP. However, when i enter the direct URL or with "info:" query then a snippet appears. I am not able to understand why google is not showing URL with "site:" query. Whether the page is indexed or not? Or it's soon going to be deindexed. Secondly, I would like to mention that this is a dynamic URL. The index file which we are using to generate this URL is not available to Google Bot. For instance, There are two different URL's. http://www.abc.com/browse/ --- It's a parent page.
Technical SEO | | SameerBhatia
http://www.abc.com/browse/?q=123 --- This is the URL, generated at run time using browse index file. Google unable to crawl index file of browse page as it is unable to run independently until some value will get passed in the parameter and is not indexed by Google. Earlier the dynamic URL's were indexed and was showing up in Google for "site:" query but now it is not showing up. Can anyone help me what is happening here? Please advise. Thanks0 -
Alternatives 301? Issues redirection of index.html page with Adobe Business Catalyst
Hi Moz community, As for now we have two different versions of a client's homepage that’s dividing our traffic. One of the urls is the index.html version of the other url. We are using Adobe Business Catalyst for one of our clients and they told us they can’t 301 redirect. Adobe Business Catalyst does 301 redirects, but not to itself like an .htaccess rewrite. Doing a 301 redirect using BC from index.html to / creates an infinite loop and break the page. Are there alternatives to a 301 or any suggestions how to solve this? Thanks for all your answers and thoughts in advance,
Technical SEO | | Anna_Hoesl
Anna0 -
Google Indexing Pages with Made Up URL
Hi all, Google is indexing a URL on my site that doesn't exist, and never existed in the past. The URL is completely made up. Anyone know why this is happening and more importantly how to get rid of it. Thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | brian-madden0 -
Website Migration - Very Technical Google "Index" Question
This is my understanding of how Google's search works, and I am unsure about one thing in specifc: Google continuously crawls websites and stores each page it finds (let's call it "page directory") Google's "page directory" is a cache so it isn't the "live" version of the page Google has separate storage called "the index" which contains all the keywords searched. These keywords in "the index" point to the pages in the "page directory" that contain the same keywords. When someone searches a keyword, that keyword is accessed in the "index" and returns all relevant pages in the "page directory" These returned pages are given ranks based on the algorithm The one part I'm unsure of is how Google's "index" connects to the "page directory". I'm thinking each page has a url in the "page directory", and the entries in the "index" contain these urls. Since Google's "page directory" is a cache, would the urls be the same as the live website? For example if webpage is found at wwww.website.com/page1, would the "page directory" store this page under that url in Google's cache? The reason I ask is I am starting to work with a client who has a newly developed website. The old website domain and files were located on a GoDaddy account. The new websites files have completely changed location and are now hosted on a separate GoDaddy account, but the domain has remained in the same account. The client has setup domain forwarding/masking to access the files on the separate account. From what I've researched domain masking and SEO don't get along very well. Not only can you not link to specific pages, but if my above assumption is true wouldn't Google have a hard time crawling and storing each page in the cache?
Technical SEO | | reidsteven750 -
Page Indexing increase when I request Google Site Link demote
Hi there, Has anyone seen a page crawling increase in Google Web Master Tools when they have requested a site link demotion? I did this around the 23rd of March, the next day I started to see page crawling rise and rise and report a very visible spike in activity and to this day is still relatively high. From memory I have asked about this in SEOMOZ Q&A a couple of years ago in and was told that page crawl activity is a good thing - ok fine, no argument. However at the nearly in the same period I have noticed that my primary keyword rank for my home page has dropped away to something in the region of 4th page on Google US and since March has stayed there. However the exact same query in Google UK (Using SEOMOZ Rank Checker for this) has remained the same position (around 11th) - it has barely moved. I decided to request an undemote on GWT for this page link and the page crawl started to drop but not to the level before March 23rd. However the rank situation for this keyword term has not changed, the content on our website has not changed but something has come adrift with our US ranks. Using Open Site Explorer not one competitor listed has a higher domain authority than our site, page authority, domain links you name it but they sit there in first page. Sorry the above is a little bit of frustration, this question is not impulsive I have sat for weeks analyzing causes and effects but cannot see why this disparity is happening between the 2 country ranks when it has never happened for this length of time before. Ironically we are still number one in the United States for a keyword phrase which I moved away from over a month ago and do not refer to this phrase at all on our index page!! Bizarre. Granted, site link demotion may have no correlation to the KW ranking impact but looking at activities carried out on the site and timing of the page crawling. This is the only sizable factor I can identify that could be the cause. Oh! and the SEOMOZ 'On-Page Optimization Tool' reports that the home page gets an 'A' for this KW term. I have however this week commented out the canonical tag for the moment in the index page header to see if this has any effect. Why? Because as this was another (if not minor) change I employed to get the site to an 'A' credit with the tool. Any ideas, help appreciated as to what could be causing the rank differences. One final note the North American ranks initially were high, circa 11-12th but then consequently dropped away to 4th page but not the UK rankings, they witnessed no impact. Sorry one final thing, the rank in the US is my statistical outlier, using Google Analytics I have an average rank position of about 3 across all countries where our company appears for this term. Include the US and it pushes the average to 8/9th. Thanks David
Technical SEO | | David-E-Carey0 -
After I 301 redirect duplicate pages to my rel=canonical page, do I need to add any tags or code to the non canonical pages?
I have many duplicate pages. Some pages have 2-3 duplicates. Most of which have Uppercase and Lowercase paths (generated by Microsoft IIS). Does this implementation of 301 and rel=canonical suffice? Or is there more I could do to optimize the passing of duplicate page link juice to the canonical. THANK YOU!
Technical SEO | | PFTools0 -
Micro formats to block HTML text portions of pages
I have a client that wants to use micro formatting to keep a portion of their page (the disclaimer) from being read by the search engines. They want to do this because it will help with their keyword density on the rest of the page and block the “bad keywords” that come from their legally required disclaimer. We have suggested alternate methods to resolve this problem, but they do not want to implement those, they just want a POV from us explaining how this micro formatting process will work. And that’s where the problem is. I’ve never heard of this use case and can’t seem to find anyone who has. I'm posting the question to the Moz Community to see if anyone knows how microformats can keep copy from being crawled by the bots. Please include any links to sites that you know that are using micro formatting in this way. Have you implemented it and seen results? Do you know of a website that is using it now? We're looking for use cases please!
Technical SEO | | Merkle-Impaqt0 -
I have both a ".net" and a ".com" address for the Same Website.....
I have mysite.net and mysite.com......They are both the same age, however, we always had it so that the mysite.com address forwarded to the mysite.net address. The mysite.net address was our main address forever. We recently reversed that and made the mysite.com address the main address and just have mysite.net forward to the mysite.com address. I'm wondering if this change will affect our rankings since a lot of the backlinks we've acquired are actually pointing to mysite.net and not mysite.com (our new main address)???
Technical SEO | | B24Group0