Should Blog Category Archive URLs be Set to "No-Index" in Wordpress?

[Kingalan1]

It appears that Google Webmaster Tools is listing about 120 blog archives URLs in Google Index>Index Status that should not be listed. Our site map contains 650 pages, but Google shows 860.

Pages like:

<colgroup><col width="464"></colgroup>
| http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/category/manhattan-office-space |

With Titles Like:

<colgroup><col width="454"></colgroup>
| Manhattan Office Space Archives - Metro Manhattan Office Space |

Are listed when in the Rogerbot crawl report for the site.

How can we remove such pages from Google Webmaster Tools, Index Status? Our site map shows about 650 pages, yet Google show these extra pages. We would prefer that they not be indexed.

Note that these pages do not appear when we run  a site:www.nyc-officespace-leader.com search.

The site has suffered a drop in ranking since May and we feel it prudent to keep Google from indexing useless URLs. Before May 650 pages showed on the Webmaster Tools Index status, and suddenly in early June when we upgraded the site the index grew by about 175 pages. I suspect the 120 blog archives URLs may have something to do with it. How can we get them removed?

Can we set them to "No-Index", or should the robot text be used to remove them? Or can some type of removal request be made to Google?

My developers have been struggling with this issue since early June. The bloat on the site is about 175 URLs not on the site map. Is there any go to authority on this issue (it is apparently rather complicated) that can provide a definitive answer?

Thanks!!
Alan

[DanielFreedman]

You wrote:

The site has suffered a drop in ranking since May and we feel it prudent to keep Google from indexing useless URLs. Before May 650 pages showed on the Webmaster Tools Index status, and suddenly in early June when we upgraded the site the index grew by about 175 pages. I suspect the 120 blog archives URLs may have something to do with it. How can we get them removed?

But is it possible this is an unwarranted conclusion? Perhaps you are heading down the wrong path in attempting removal.

Have you exhausted all other possibilities?

[Kingalan1]

Hi Daniel:

You are correct other factors are probably contributing to the drop. The 175 extra URLs are  a contributing factor.  Our site contains 310 property listing pages of which 250 have a few sentences. It appears we were penalized by Panda 4.0 in May, which apparently targets thin content.

To reverse the penalty we intend to take the following steps:

-Set all listing pages with thin content pages to "No-Index, Follow"
-Somehow remove the 175 URLs that have magically appeared in June. Either set as "no-index, follow", "no-index, no-follow" canonicalize or somehow delete use robot text. My concern is that these 175 extra URLs could be construed as thin content and could be aggravating the Panda penalty.
-Enhance content on 30-40 critical pages.

Does this seem reasonable?

Thanks, Alan

[DanielFreedman]

Yup!