How do I eliminate indexed products?

[trophycentraltrophiesandawards]

Alan, thank you so much for this. I am the founder of the business and not a webmaster, so parden these questions:

1. I originally thought it was the mobile site that caused this given the timing, but was told that somehow google was on the lookout for mobile.xxx and that it was not an issue.**  I am sure you are right!  How can I get rid of the indexed pages? ** I turned the mobile redirect off a couple of weeks ago so it is not even active.

2. My search provider told me they made changes to get rid of most of the pages, but since I are still seeing them, I am concerned.  Is thiere something I can do to get rid of the pages?

3. I can easily change strictlygifts - this is the only thing that was intentional (but done about 8 years ago!).

4. How can I tell which are bad links - low page rank?

I have made thousands of changes based on the advice of others - improved the site speed, removed crawl errors, got rid of hundreds of pages, added duplicate content, etc.  We were not given any sort of manual penalty - can I still submit a request after the above is done?

Thank you again.  I have built this business over the last 10 years and to see it destroyed overnight is heartbreaking. I can't tell you how much your help is appreciated.

[AlanBleiweiss]

This is a sad reality that many business owners face.  SEO is a very complex process and unfortunately it's a case of two-fold barriers to success.

On the one hand, not all SEO's really know, or even if they do, don't consider long-term ramifications of what they might be recommending.  Many of us in the industry think and act otherwise, however it is a problem nonetheless.

On the other hand, Google constantly changes their rules to a certain extent - as more people look for ways to game the system, what may have been acceptable previously can become unacceptable as Google tries to clean up the mess.  It's a vicious circle.

So...

You can get "rid" of indexed pages by blocking them through a robots.txt file - if there are patterns to their URLs.  if it's an entire site, you can block the whole site in one line in the robots.txt file.  If it's multiple sections of a site, you can block entire sections while leaving other sections open for search indexing. A professional should be tapped to help you with that.

Its important to consider whether pages should be blocked, or instead, redirected to other pages that you want indexed or are indexed that are similar in nature.

Bad link evaluation is a professional process and should not be undertaken lightly.  In many cases, site owners will ignore your requests, so it's important to at least get the request process right and to document the process. Again, a professional is needed for that.

And yes, you can submit a request after that's done.

Unfortunately, anyone you task to do the work that would be able to help you will both charge you for their time and cannot guarantee that what is done will be enough.  It's another reality of the world we operate in because Google cannot reveal trade secrets to help you know what exactly needs to be done.

[trophycentraltrophiesandawards]

Alan, thank you!  I just sent a note to the programmer who created the mobile site. For now, I am going to have them get it out of the index and I have stopped the redirection so that there is no mobile site.  This may not be the best thing for the long-run, but for now I can at least be sure I fix the mobile issue. I have also fixed the strictlygifts linking.  Working on removing more duplicate content now.

Thanks again!

[trophycentraltrophiesandawards]

Sorry to bother you again - last question - I promise!  Where did you see the mobile.trophycentral.com pages indexed?  I when on to google and didn't see them in the main index.  Thanks!

[AlanBleiweiss]

site:trophycentral.com -www  shows all content indexed not within the www subdomain.

[AlanMosley]

If they are noindex, then it should not be  problem, but i would not no-follow as all links pointing the the no follow pages will waster their link juice, if you have no-index follow then the link jucie will flow back out of the no-indexed pages.

but having a look at the page, i can not see any no-index tag in the page

[trophycentraltrophiesandawards]

I can see them now - THANK YOU!!!

[trophycentraltrophiesandawards]

Thanks, Alan.  I had put a no-index, no-follow on the main category (inserts1.html) so that google could not get to the individual products to index them.  That was the quickest thing I could do given how many products I need to update.  Based on your note though, I will go through the individual products with a no-index, but it will take some time.  Thanks again!

[AlanMosley]

Remeber 6that should be a no-index,follow not a no-index,no-follow

[trophycentraltrophiesandawards]

Got it - thanks.  I will be making the changes over the next few days.  Unfortunately, I published the site last night and it will take about 18 hours so I can't access it for a while.