Google is indexing wordpress attachment pages

[ClickConsult]

Hi there,

This is common with WordPress, attatchments by default have their own pages.

Have you heard of Yoast's SEO plug-in before?

http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/

I'd recommend that you install Yoast's SEO plug-in, it has the ability to redirect attachment pages back to the main page which is what you're trying to achieve.

If you do use Yoast's SEO plug-in, let me know how you get on.

Good luck!

[TauriU]

Thank you for a quick answer.

Yoast's SEO plug-in is my main SEO plugin. I have tried option in the plugin that should Redirect attachment URL's to parent post URL's.  Unfortunately it doesn't work.

I get a error: "too many redirects occurred trying to open www.somesitename.com/?attachment_id=1982 ".

[ClickConsult]

Hmm, that's pretty strange. It sounds like you could have an issue with your htaccess file.

Could you paste your .htaccess file to pastebin.com?

You also said that you've attempted to use a few different plug-ins to achieve this - I'd suggest that you double check that the other plug-ins aren't active. Would you be able to send over a list of the plug-ins that are active too, in addition to the .htaccess file contents?

[mad2k]

For more than 2 months I'd been tested another SEO plugin - SEO Ultimate. IMHO it is the best plugin for WP at the time. It is very flexible and it is possible to decide about almost every element of a page. It has follow/nofollow and index/noindex manager and tons of other features.

SEO Ultimate

I don't have attachment pages indexed

[TauriU]

i posted my site .htaccess file to pastebin.com. ulr http://pastebin.com/cLVNNCkb

List of active plug-ins.

AdRotate

Better Tag Cloud

Cleanup Wordpress

Contact Form 7

Featured Page Widget

Flexi Pages Widget

Link Carousel

MailChimp Widget

WordPress Importer

WordPress SEO by Yoast's

WP-Table Reloaded

WP SlimStat

WP SlimStat ShortCodes

I hope it help:) those freaking attachment pages are messing up my rankings:)

[ClickConsult]

OK, there's nothing strange with the htaccess.

I'd suggest that you now disable all of the plug-ins expect for Yoast's just so you can debug if the issue is due to any other plug-ins installed.

I know it sounds strange, but I'd also suggest that you go to the permalinks section of the WordPress admin and update the settings - don't change anything at the moment, just update. Sometimes that can reset any issues with the permalinks.

[TauriU]

i have already done lots of optimization in Yoast plugin:) don't want to change plugins now. but i try it out when nothing else doesn't work

[TauriU]

I tried your suggestion, but it doesn't work unfortunately

i m using custom permalink structure. /%postname%

is there any possibility that issue lays in " /%postname% " structure.

[ClickConsult]

OK, do you happen to have Live HTTP Headers for FireFox (or any other tool/plug-in that'd be able to record all http headers) so you can see what exactly is happening with the redirects?

If so, could you again paste that over to pastebin.com?

[TauriU]

I wasn't able to figure out how this plugin works exactly:( lack of knowledge, on my part.

My site url is   if this is any help. And if you click here http://tinyurl.com/8x55yh8 you see what google site:domainname.com search bring out. All those attachment pages should redirect to parent post URL's.

i hope this is at least a bit helpful information

[KeriMorgret]

What I have done on my wordpress site is to make sure I'm linking directly to the image and not to the attachment page. If someone clicks on the image, they get a nice large (2000 pixel wide) image by itself, no attachment page or anything. I don't know if that will work for you, but it does work in my case.

[JohnTulley]

Hi Keri, I'm also having problems dozens of Wordpress attachment pages being indexed in google. When you say you link directly to the image do you mean that  when you add an image you use the add 'from URL' option?

[KeriMorgret]

I insert the image via the image icon, then I put the link in as the URL of the image itself. There's a button that talks about which to link to, can't remember exactly what it's called, but look for that option in the link page.

[RijoAbraham]

Having same problem, i have so many duplicate pages (more than 350) and all them caused by wordpress attachments. All i can do as keri said link images to direct image url or dont link at all.

Right now i'm going to remove all hyper-links from images. Easy way.

No wait  i used this option in yoast plugin and it redirects attachments. I don't know why its not working for "TauriU "

Tick: Redirect attachment URL's to parent post URL.

[Chad.Agrawal]

I found a great solution for this without using a plugin:

http://www.lancelhoff.com/wordpress-disable-image-attachment-page-links/

It works for me on my site

Chad

[yeagerd]

Just because you make it yourself and it doesn't install from the control panel.....  doesn't mean it is not a plugin.

However, it is a very specialized plugin that will do the job without cluttering anything else up.

Make sure you save a copy out to the side in case you loose it in updates.

[David_ODonnell]

This plugin automatically 301 redirects image attachment pages to the parent post, simply install and activate, done:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/attachment-pages-redirect/