Having trouble removing homepage from google

[Dr-Pete]

Just the home-page, or the entire site? GWT is usually the fastest and most reliable way. I'd block the entire site in Robots.txt, too - sometimes, Google wants to see that prior to a GWT removal (although, usually, NOINDEX Is enough).

I assume they still want the page active for visitors (and just want it off of Google)?

[Grumpy_Carl]

Thanks for the reply.

You're correct that they still want the homepage working but not indexed. They wish for sections to remain indexed. I will try the robots idea but it I block the site there would it still crawl the page to pick up the no index tag?

[Copstead]

The best way to do this would be at page level.  For the pages you don't want indexed, add

This will tell the search engines not to index that page, but to follow and index the other pages.

But I do have to say, I have never heard of anyone trying to not index the home page.  It will be interesting to see how this turns out.

[Dr-Pete]

Typically, for a regular NOINDEX situation, you wouldn't want to use Robots.txt (you're right, it could prevent the page-level signal), but in this extreme of a situation and to really get the GWT signal to work, you may need the Robots.txt directive in place.

I'm confused, though, they want the home-page out of Google but NOT the rest of the site? By blocking the home-page, they'll kill the link-juice to other pages, and do massive SEO damage. I have to think there's another alternative.

For example, could they canonical the home-page to another, Google-safe page (let users see the original but send SERPs elsewhere)? Another alternative would be to move the current home-page content to a deeper page, 302-redirect to that page for visitors, and leave Google on the Google-safe home-page.

My gut reaction is that this sounds like a very dangerous maneuver, but it's really tough to say without understanding the logic behind it.

[Grumpy_Carl]

It's a very strange situation I admit. The main reason is that they used to have a contract to supply certain services on behalf on a third party. They seoed for the company name but have since lost the contract and now being threatened with legal action for ranking for the trade mark because they no longer have permission to use it. We plan on creating a new homepage at welcome.asp which would be seoed as the site homepage for both branded and non branded terms. However we need to get the trademark issue out the way asap

[Dr-Pete]

I'm not a legal expert, but are they still using the trademark on the home-page? If they're not using it at all, but are only ranking on it from past efforts, there's not much of a case. They can't control the algorithm - they can only remove references on the site. Of course, it depends on how pervasive those references are and how much you want to fight it.

I just worry that de-indexing the home-page is going to have much broader, long-term consequences.

If you want to make the party threatening action happy at any cost to your site, you could rel-canonical your home-page to their home-page. I wouldn't do it, but it's another possibility.

Ultimately, though, all these things take time to process. If you, in good faith, have removed all trademark references and have requested removal with Google, you can't control the rest and I doubt you're liable for it.

[Grumpy_Carl]

I fully agree with you about the trademark but you know clients can be when they hear the words 'legal action. Hopefully we can get the page out and appease the trademark owner.

Thanks for your advice on this matter

[blacey]

I agree. You never want to de-index your homepage as (in my opinion) the heart of your website. You're showing willing to co-operate by removing references of the trademark throughout your site and personally I would think that would be sufficient.

If you have pages within your site then I would use a .htaccess 301 redirect for the pages in question and redirect users to the homepage instead, that way you attribute the page rank (link juice) from the removed pages back to the homepage.

If the client has suggested you remove the index from the homepage I would cover your back and write a letter informing them of the negative issues of de-indexing the homepage and just say that it can be done but you hold no responsibility for loss of search engine traffic as a result. It might also be worth adding an annotation within Google Analytics noting the date the homepage was de-indexed so the client (and you) can see the impact it has on the site.

[Grumpy_Carl]

Very true, I agree with you fully on this. However the client is very much in a 'get it out of the engine and we will worry about the traffic 'tomorrow'' frame of mind.

To be honest as long as the page still works for direct traffic we could seo a replacement homepage /welcome.asp to rank for the company name easily enough but for now it's the hassle of trying to get the page out

[Dr-Pete]

Unfortunately, GWT removal is one of the fastest ways I know of. If Google isn't honoring that, they're probably trying (in their minds) to protect you from de-indexing your home-page. I think the next most extreme step would be to rel-canonical your home-page to another page (possibly even another site) - that's going to be hard to undo later, though.

[Grumpy_Carl]

yes, we have resorted to this. We have a canonical tag to the blocked .com version of the site so hopefully that gets rid of the page. The client want's it removed 'yesterday' but only so much I can do when I don't control Google personally!

Thanks again for the advice