Robots.txt & meta noindex--site still shows up on Google Search

[RoxBrock]

I have set up my robots.txt like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

and I have this meta tag in my on a Wordpress site, set up with SEO Yoast

name="robots" content="noindex,follow"/>

I did "Fetch as Google" on my Google Search Console

My website is still showing up in the search results and it says this:

"A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt"

This site has not shown up for years and now it is ranking above my site that I want to rank for this keyword. How do I get Google to ignore this site? This seems really weird and I'm confused how a site with little content, that has not been updated for years can rank higher than a site that is constantly updated and improved.

[LoganRay]

Hi,

First things first, it's a common misconception that the robots.txt disallow: / will prevent indexing. It's only indented to prevent crawling, which is why you don't get a meta description pulled into the result snippet. If you have links pointing to that page and a disallow: / on your robots, it's still eligible for indexation.

Second, it's pretty weird that the noindex tag isn't effective, as that's the only sure-fire way to get de-indexed intentionally. I would recommend creating an XML sitemap for all URLs on that domain that are noindex'd and resubmit that in Search Console. If Google hasn't crawled your site since adding the noindex, they don't know it's there. In my experience, forcing them to recrawl via XML submission has been effective at getting noindex noticed quicker.

I would also recommend taking a look at the link profile and removing any possible links pointing to your noindex pages, this will help future attempts at indexing.

[RoxBrock]

I did read that about the robots.txt and that is why I added the noindex.

I use SEO Yoast for sitemap.xml, so shouldn't all my pages be there? I believe they are because I just looked at it a couple days ago.

So are you saying I should look through my backlink profile (WMT) and try to remove any backlinks?

Would 'Fetch as Google' not ping Google to tell them to recrawl?

Thanks for your help.

[Vijay-Gaur]

As mentioned by Logan,noindex meta tag

is the most effective way to remove indexed pages. It sometimes takes time, you have to submit the right sitemap.xml which cover the pages/post you wish to get removed from google index.

[CleverPhD]

Just to be clear on what Logan said. You have to allow Google to crawl your site by opening up your robots.txt to Google so it can see your noindex directive that is on each of the pages. Otherwise Google will never "see" the noindex directive on your pages.

Likewise, on sitemap.xml.  If you are not allowing Google to crawl the sitemap (because you are blocking it with robots.txt) then Google will not read the sitemap, find all your pages that have the noindex directive on them and then remove those pages from the index.

A great article is here

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710?hl=en&ref_topic=4598466

From the mouth of Google "Important! For the noindex meta tag to be effective, the page must not be blocked by a robots.txt file. If the page is blocked by a robots.txt file, the crawler will never see the noindex tag, and the page can still appear in search results, for example if other pages link to it."

The other point that logan makes is that Google might list your site if there are enough sites linking to it. The steps above should take care of this, as you are deindexing the page, but here is what I am thinking he is referencing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBdEwpRQRD0

Google will include a site that is blocked in robots.txt if enough pages link to it, even if they have not crawled the url.

You can go into Search Console and find all the links that they say are pointing to your site. You can also use tools like CognitiveSEO or Ahrefs, Majestic or Moz etc and gather up all of those sites to find links to your site and include those in a disavow file that you put into Search Console and tell Google to ignore all of those links to your site.

Secret bonus method.  Putting a noindex directive in your robots

https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/robots-txt-noindex-the-best-kept-secret-in-seo/

This allows you to manage your noindex directives in your robots.txt.  Makes it easier as you can control all your noindex directives from a central location and block whole folders at a time.  This would stop Google from crawling AND indexing pages all in one page and you can just leave the rest of the site alone and not worry about if a noindex tag should or should not be on a certain page.

Good luck!

[David-Kley]

This one has my vote. You have to allow them access in order to see that you don't want the pages indexed. If you block them from seeing this rule...well they won't be able to see it.

[LoganRay]

Thanks for that clarification CleverPhD, forgot to mention that.

[Vijay-Gaur]

CleverPhd,

Really since to see a detailed yet to the point answer.

Thanks for contributing, and being in the Moz community.

Regards,

Vijay