Is there a way to prevent Google Alerts from picking up old press releases?
-
I have a client that wants a lot of old press releases (pdfs) added to their news page, but they don't want these to show up in Google Alerts. Is there a way for me to prevent this?
-
Thanks for the post Keri.
Yep, the OCR option would still make the image option for hiding "moo"
-
Harder, but certainly not impossible. I had Google Alerts come up on scanned PDF copies of newsletters from the 1980s and 1990s that were images.
The files recently moved and aren't showing up for the query, but I did see something else interesting. When I went to view one of the newsletters (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2S0WP3ixBdTVWg3RmFadF91ek0/edit?pli=1), it said "extracting text" for a few moments, then had a search box where I could search the document. On the fly, Google was doing OCR work and seemed decently accurate in the couple of tests I had done. There's a whole bunch of these newsletters at http://www.modelwarshipcombat.com/howto.shtml#hullbusters if you want to mess around with it at all.
-
Well that is how to exclude them from an alert that they setup, but I think they are talking about anyone who would setup an alert that might find the PDFs.
One other idea I had, that I think may help. If you setup the PDFs as images vs text then it would be harder for Google to "read" the PDFs and therefore not catalog them properly for the alert, but then this would have the same net effect of not having the PDFs in the index at all.
Danielle, my other question would be - why do they give a crap about Google Alerts specifically. There has been all kinds of issues with the service and if someone is really interested in finding out info on the company, there are other ways to monitor a website than Google Alerts. I used to use services that simply monitor a page (say the news release page) and lets me know when it is updated, this was often faster than Google Alerts and I would find stuff on a page before others who did only use Google Alerts. I think they are being kind of myopic about the whole approach and that blocking for Google Alerts may not help them as much as they think. Way more people simply search on Google vs using Alerts.
-
The easiest thing to do in this situation would be to add negative keywords or advanced operators to your google alert that prevent the new pages from triggering the alert. You can do this be adding advanced operators that exclude an exact match phrase, a file type, the clients domain or just a specific directory. If all the new pdf files will be in the same directory or share a common url structure you can exclude using the "inurl:-" operator.
-
That also presumes Google Alerts is anything near accurate. I've had it come up with things that have been on the web for years and for whatever reason, Google thinks they are new.
-
That was what I was thinking would have to be done... It's a little complicated on why they don't want them showing up in Alerts. They do want them showing up on the web, just not as an Alert. I'll let them know they can't have it both ways!
-
Robots.txt and exclude those files. Note that this takes them out of the web index in general so they will not show up in searches.
You need to ask your client why they are putting things on the web if they do not want them to be found. If they do not want them found, dont put them up on the web.
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
-
Why is Google replacing my meta title with the business name on home page?
For all queries that return the home page, Google is not showing my meta title. Instead it replaced it with the official business name which of course makes it harder to rank for key terms since they don't exist now in the meta title. You can see this is you search on "mt view estate planning attorney". The site in question is dureelaw.com and the title showing is "The Law Office of Daniel L. DuRee." View the source and you'll see my meta title. Why is Google substituting it?
On-Page Optimization | | katandmouse0 -
When do Panda ranking factors apply when Google deindexes a page
Here is 2 scenarios Scenario 1 Lets say I have a site with a ton of pages (100,000+) that all have off site duplicate content. And lets say that those pages do not contain any rel="noindex" tags on them. Google then decides to de-index all those pages because of the duplicate content issue and slaps me with a Panda penalty. Since all those pages are no longer indexed by Google does the Panda Penalty still apply even though all those pages have been deindexed? Scenario 2 I add a rel="noindex" to all those 100,000+ off site duplicate content pages. Since Google sees that I have decided to not index them does the Panda penalty come off? What I am getting at is that I have realized that I have a ton of pages with off site duplicate content, even though those pages are already not indexed by Google does me by simply adding the rel="noindex" tag to them tell Google that I am trying to get rid of duplicate content and they lift the Panda penalty? The pages are useful to my users so I need them to stay. Since in both scenarios the pages are not indexed anyways, will Google acknowledge the difference in that I am removing them myself and lift the panda ban? Hope this makes sense
On-Page Optimization | | cbielich0 -
My Site's Name Not Ranking in Google
Hey all, I've seen a few posts like this. But I wanted to start a new thread in hopes I may find the underlying issue. I've had my site: http://www.ctrl-alt-success.com for about 2 years. Recently I've started really adding a lot of content to it. (about 2-3 posts a week). I get zero organic views which is fine as I know it's still in the beginning. But here's my main question. If I type "ctrl-alt-success" into google. I get some site that shows up. "ctrlaltsuccess.com" I've been looking at this issue forever. That site has been "coming soon" for nearly 2 years. lol My site doesn't even show up on the first 10 pages of google. However in Bing and Yahoo it ranks on the first page. What could my site be doing wrong that it's not even ranking for the exact domain name? Keep in mind, if I google "ctrl-alt-success.com" my site comes up fine. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Ctrl-Alt-Success0 -
What is the best way to execute a geo redirect?
Based on what I've read, it seems like everyone agrees an IP-based, server side redirect is fine for SEO if you have content that is "geo" in nature. What I don't understand is how to actually do this. It seems like after a bit of research there are 3 options: You can do a 301 which it seems like most sites do, but that basically means if google crawls you in different US areas (which it may or may not) it essentially thinks you have multiple homepages. Does google only crawl from SF-based IPs? 302 passes no juice, so probably don't want to do that. Yelp does a 303 redirect, which it seems like nobody else does, but Yelp is obviously very SEO-savvy. Is this perhaps a better way that solves for the above issues? Thoughts on what is best approach here?
On-Page Optimization | | jcgoodrich0 -
Is it better to delete old job pages on a recruitment site?
My client (online recruitment) has over 1.5 million pages indexed, the majority of which are old job posts and listings since they began. I wanted to know if it would be better to keep all of the pages, or advise my client to delete some of the archive as these pages will no longer be attracting traffic.
On-Page Optimization | | AxonnMedia0 -
What's the best way to name an image for SEO?
Hi Guys,
On-Page Optimization | | krseo
I'm thinking about images and SEO. What's the best way for naming and using images in HTML Code? For example: Image-Name: keyword-keyword2-keyword3.jpg or keywordkeyword2keyword3.jpg ?
How many Keywords should I use max for a picture? And also do you use the alt tag as description of the image and the title tag or only the alt tag? If you use the title, what do you use it for? Maybe someone can copy a HTML-Code example for me 😉 Thank you 🙂
Alex0 -
Customer Review Capture / Google Approved Review Sites
We are interested in showing customer reviews on our website (in UK for seo purposes- UGC) and are initially reluctant to use a 'What customer say' or Testimonial page as we think customers may think we have just made these reviews up? I wanted to ask what methods you folks use to capture reviews? If you use 3rd party providers do you have any recommendations? (I found this link but it seems a little outdated as it doesn't include for example eKomi:http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-rank-well-in-google-products-search-a-big-list-of-places-to-get-reviews) Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | jannkuzel0 -
Google Place Pages - Definitive Guide?
Hi good folk of SEOmoz, I've recently updated a number of place pages for my client who is an estate agent. I have to admit that they were a little keyword stuffed, but at the time my competitor; who ranks first, was filled with keywords. For example in their title it states "[company name] estate agent [location]" I thought that this was a big no-no and it should not be done? They also have keywords stuffed into categories and description. Im confused on how they are getting away with this? I have searched on the Google place page support forum and can not find a definitive guide on the exact rules. Could anybody be so kind to help me out? i.e Where to put keywords and locations in the title and categories Thankyou.
On-Page Optimization | | Lakeside0