Please help :) Troubles getting 3 types of content de-indexed

[evolvingSEO]

Hi There

For all these cases above, this may be a situation where you've BOTH blocked these in robots.txt and added noindex tags. You can not block the directories in robots.txt and get them deindexed, because Google can not then crawl the URLs to see the noindex tag.

If this is the case, I would remove any disallows to /tag/ etc in robots.txt, allow Google to crawl the URLs to see the nodinex tags - wait a few weeks and see what happens.

As far as the URL removal not working, make sure you have the correct subdomain registered - www or non-www etc for the URLs you want removed.

If neither one of those is the issue, please write back so I can try to help you more with that. Google should noindex the pages in a week or two under normal situations. The other thing is, check the cache date of the pages. If the cache dates are prior to the date you added the noindex, Google might not have seen the noindex directives yet.

-Dan

[Ltsmz]

Hey Dan thanks,
well, so google had indexed all my tags, categories and stuff.

The only things I had blocked in my robots was
/go/ for affiliate links
and
/plugins/ for plugins

so I did let google see that categories and archives pages were no-indexed.

I have also submit the removal request many months ago but I haven't quite understood what you say about the cache dates. What should I check?

Thanks for your help!

[evolvingSEO]

Hi There

Should have explained better

if you type cache: in front of any web URL for example cache:apple.com you get;

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Aapple.com&oq=cache%3Aapple.com&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.8119j0j7&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8

And see the "cache" date? This is not the same as the crawl date, but it can give you a rough indication of how often Google might be looking at your pages.

So try that on some of your tag archives and if the cache date is say 4+ weeks ago maybe Google isn't looking at the site very often.

But it's odd they haven't been removed yet, especially with the URL removal tool - that tool usually only takes a day. Noindex tags usually only take a week or two.

Have you examined the source code to make sure it does in fact say "noindex" by the robots tag - or that there is not a conflicting duplicate robots noindex tag? Sometimes wordpress themes and plugins both try adding SEO tags and you can end up with duplicates.

-Dan

[Ltsmz]

Hey Dan, thanks a lot for your help.

I have tried the cache trick on my home page and the cached version was about 4-5 days old.

I have then tried to cache:mywebsite/tag/ and it gives me a google 404 not found which I suppose is a good sign.

But if they have been de-indexed why do they appear in search results then?

I am not sure how to check the double SEO no-index in the source code though. How do I do that exactly? What should I look for after right-clicking -> source code?

Thanks for your help!

My MOZ account ends in two days so I may not be able to reply back next time.

[evolvingSEO]

Hey There

You want to look for this;

You can just do a cntrl-f (to search text in the source) and type in "noindex" and it should be present on the Tag archives.

-Dan

[Ltsmz]

Hey Dan,
thanks for the quick reply.

I have gone trough site:mywebsite.com and I found that tags and categories disappeared but there still is some content that shouldn't be indexed like this:

mywebsite.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-flash-countdown/counter_cs3_v2_NoReflectLight.swf

and this:
mywebsite.com/go/affiliate-product/

and I found this:Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
in my robots.txt

Thing is that:

1. I have deleted that wp-flash-countdown plugin at least 9 months ago
2. I have manually removed all the urls with /go/ from GWMT and when I search for a cached version of them they are not there
3. If I remove Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/ from my robots.txt won't that get all my plugins' pages to be indexed? So how do I make sure they are not indexed?

Thank you so much for your help!So far you have been the most helpful answerer in this forum.

[evolvingSEO]

Hi There

1. For the flash file NoReflectLight.swf - I would do a removal request in WMT and maintain the blocking in robots.txt of /plugins/

2. When you do a URL removal in WMT the files need to either be blocked in robots.txt or have a noindex on them or 404. Doesn't that sort of link redirect to your affiliate product? In other words, if I were to try to visit /go/affiliate-product/ it would redirect to www.affiliateproductwebsite.com ?Or does /go/affiliate-product/ load it's on page on your site?

3. I would maintain the robots.txt bloking on /plugins/ - if no other files from there are indexed, they will not be in the future.

-Dan

[Ltsmz]

Hi Dan,

1. Ok! I will.

2. When I click on the /go/ link in search results it redirects me to the affiliate website. I asked for the removal of /go/ a few days ago, but they (about 30 results) still appear in google when I search with the site:mywebsite.com trick.

What should I do about it? How can I get rid of them? They were created with the SimpleUrl plugin which I deleted about 3 months ago though.

3. Got it!

Thanks!
Fabio

[evolvingSEO]

Hey Fabio

Regarding #2 I'd give it a little bit more time. 301's take a little longer to drop out, so maybe check back in a week or two Technically the URL removal will mainly work if the content now 404's, is noindexed or blocked in robots.txt but with a redirdect you can do none of those, so you just have to wait for them to pick up on the redirects.

-Dan

[Ltsmz]

Hey Dan thanks a lot for all your help!
There still is a problem though. A while ago I had created an adult subdomain: adult.mywebsite.com

Then I completely deleted everything inside it (even though I noticed the subfolder is still in my account).
A few days ago, when I started this thread, I also created a GWMT account for adult.mywebsite.com and submitted a removal request for all those URLs (about 15).

Now today when I check:
site:mywebsite.com
or
site.adult.mywebsite.com

the URLs still appear in search results.

When I check
cache:adult.mywebsite.comit sends me to a google 404 page:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?/complete/search?client=hp&hl=en&gs_rn=31&gs_ri=hp&cp=26&gs_id=s xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

So I don't know what this means...
Does it mean google hasn't deindexed them?
How do I get them deindexed?
Is it possible google is having troubles de-indexing them because they have no content in them or something like that?

What should I do to get rid of them?

Thanks a lot!!!!!!!!!!
Fabio

[evolvingSEO]

Hi There

You should ensure the content either;

• has meta noindex tags
• or is blocked with robots.txt
• or 404's or 410's (is missing)

And then use the URL removal tool again and see if that works.

[Ltsmz]

Hey Dan,there is no content.
The whole website has been deleted, but it still appears in search results.

What should I do?
should I put back some content and then de-index it?

Thanks!
fabio

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Fabio

If the content is gone when you visit your old URLs do you get a 404 code? You can plug the old URLs into urivalet.com to see what code is returned. If you do, then you're all set. If you don't, see if you can just upload a robots.txt file to that subdomain and block all search engines. Here's info on how to do that http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html

-Dan