Why blocking a subfolder dropped indexed pages with 10%?
-
Hy Guys,
maybe you can help me to understand better:
on 17.04 I had 7600 pages indexed in google (WMT showing 6113).
I have included in the robots.txt file, Disallow: /account/ - which contains the registration page, wishlist, etc. and other stuff since I'm not interested to rank with registration form.
on 23.04 I had 6980 pages indexed in google (WMT showing 5985).
I understand that this way I'm telling google I don't want that section indexed, by way so manny pages?, Because of the faceted navigation?
Cheers
-
The thing is that I am checking indexed pages on a regular basis and usually the fluctuations are not big, only changes few pages. But never such manny pages. The traffic from organic did drop, but just slightly and rankings were never affected.
But as you said, I will keep an eye on this.
-
Hi,
If nothing significant, and no noticeable loss in rankings (e.g. no pages that were bringing in legitimate traffic were affected), I would wait this out and keep and eye on indexed pages. I've definitely seem similar rises / falls in indexed pages, but if the activity doesn't coincide with "real world" traffic / ranking consequences, it tends to be Google removing unnecessary pages (pagination, etc.) or even reporting error.
-
Hi Jane,
It was a small drop in traffic, but only few visits, nothing significant.
-
Hi,
The drop could be unrelated to your disallowing the account pages (but perhaps check if the CMS allows random query strings, and look into whether it could have created any upon user action, etc. just in case). It's pretty common to see fluctuations in the number of indexed pages, especially with numbers of pages in the thousands or higher. Have you noticed a decrease in traffic from search that you can match with deindexation of pages that were previously bringing in visitors?
-
I don't think so, because the URLs are static (www.domain.com/account/register), these urls don't parameters.
-
Maybe there are multiple URL variations created. For example, URL parameters, which will create multiple URLs to be indexed in Google.
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
-
Pages Indexed Not Changing
I have several sites that I do SEO for that are having a common problem. I have submitted xml sitemaps to Google for each site, and as new pages are added to the site, they are added to the xml sitemap. To make sure new pages are being indexed, I check the number of pages that have been indexed vs. the number of pages submitted by the xml sitemap every week. For weeks now, the number of pages submitted has increased, but the number of pages actually indexed has not changed. I have done searches on Google for the new pages and they are always added to the index, but the number of indexed pages is still not changing. My initial thought was as new pages are added to the index, old ones are being dropped. But I can't find evidence of that, or understand why that would be the case. Any ideas on why this is happening? Or am I worrying about something that I shouldn't even be concerned with since new pages are being indexed?
Technical SEO | | ang1 -
Index page 404 error
Crawl Results show there is 404 error page which is index.htmk **it is under my root, ** http://mydomain.com/index.htmk I have checked my index page on the server and my index page is index.HTML instead of index.HTMK. Please help me to fix it
Technical SEO | | semer0 -
Homepage dropping back to page 30 and being replaced by a random page?
Hi All Please accept my apologies if i have posted this in the wrong place, i am new to this. I have asked for help over and over again on Google Webmaster Forum but everytime i am faced with sarcastic, unhelpful answers and then moaned at for asking the same question again when i get no answers. Well, my website is http://www.hillfieldscampingandleisure.co.uk. The site is nearly 2 years old and is an ecommerce online camping equipment store. It is hosted on the EKMPOWERSHOP Platform. After a about a year of adding products and designing my site i decided to hire an SEO Company based in the UK, they were a good company with some big clients. Anyways to cut a really long story short....they completely ripped me off by £700 a month for 7 months for my site to keep going backwards, they wouldnt target the keywords i wanted and all they did was provide really spammy, non relevant, no page rank links...my site ended up on number 31 of Google. I managed to drop the company and try to do things myself. I optimized my sites content so it wasn't keyword stuffed I re-wrote all my alt tags to look more natural I optimized my meta and h1 tags I carried on with trying to build relevant, high page rank links Anyways i managed to get my homepage to page 3/4 of Google. It stayed there for a few weeks but over the past few weeks my Homepage is dropping back to page 28-30 and being replaced with a random page of my site on page 4-6. It corrects itself after a while and my homepage returns but then it happens all over again....today i have a random page on page 4 and my homepage is on page 29. Any ideas on what is causing this and how can i get my site up there? I have had some ideas come back that it is the EKM platform i am using but since the seo company took the p out of me, its the only one i can afford at the moment until i start selling. I am a small business with stock waiting to be sold but no matter how much i read and rules to follow my site just doesn't seem to move. Any help would be really really apreciated and be nice!
Technical SEO | | hillfields0 -
Summarize your question.Sitemap blocking or not blocking that is the question?
Hi from wet & overcast wetherby UK 😞 Ones question is this... " Is the sitemap plus boxes blocking bots ie they cant pass on this page http://www.langleys.com/Site-Map.aspx " Its just the + boxes that concern me, i remeber reading somewherte javascript nav can be toxic. Is there a way to test javascript nav set ups and see if they block bots or not? Thanks in advance 🙂
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0 -
Will rel=canonical cause a page to be indexed?
Say I have 2 pages with duplicate content: One of them is: http://www.originalsite.com/originalpage This page is the one I want to be indexed on google (domain rank already built, etc.) http://www.originalpage.com is more of an ease of use domain, primarily for printed material. If both of these sites are identical, will rel=canonical pointing to "http://www.originalsite.com/originalpage" cause it to be indexed? I do not plan on having any links on my site going to "http://www.originalsite.com/originalpage", they would instead go to "http://www.originalpage.com".
Technical SEO | | jgower0 -
301 redirecting some pages directly, and the rest to a single page
I've read through the Redirect guide here already but can't get this down in my .htaccess I want to redirect some pages specifically (/contactinfo.html to the new /contact.php) And I want all other pages (not all have equivalent pages on the new site) to redirect to my new (index.php) homepage. How can I set it up so that some specific pages redirect directly, and all others go to one page? I already have the specific oldpage.html -> newpage.php redirects in place, just need to figure out the broad one for everything else.
Technical SEO | | RyanWhitney150 -
Should I Block Tag, Category, Author Pages
Just finished reviewing the first crawl of my first SEOmoz campaign for a site that I am working on. The site I"m working on uses Wordpress as a CMS, and most if not all of the warnings and notices have to do with author, category, and tag pages. Should I block these from being indexed? Why or why not?
Technical SEO | | Falconberg0