a

Help! I noindexed my site and it’s still showing up in Google!

Jun 29, 2021SEO

Whether it’s a few pages you’re trying to hide or an entire staging site – almost everyone eventually has stuff showing up in Google that shouldn’t be there.

So let’s say you added a noindex meta tag (<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”> in the <head>) to the relevant pages and you’re still seeing them in Google (usually via a site: search). Now what?

Why hasnt google removed my pages?

Almost always, the issue is one of two things.

  1. Google can’t crawl the content
  2. Google hasn’t crawled the content

goOgle can’t crawl the content

This is because you either blocked crawling via robots.txt or put the pages behind a login. Both decent ways to prevent google from seeing pages in the first place, but not helpful after it’s already indexed pages.

Google hasnt crawled the content

Common for dev sites or pages that once we’re linked on your site but have been removed.

How you can fix this

In both cases mentioned above, the issue is Google doesn’t know you’ve added a noindex meta tag. Google doesn’t visit everything in it’s index every day or even every week, so we need to draw it’s attention.

  1. Open up crawling – take away logins or robots.txt crawl restrictions
  2. For more urgent issues, use the URL Removal Tool in search console (note – this is temporary!)
  3. Inspect the URL using the search bar at the top of every page of search console.
  4. Click Request Indexing

You read that right. You’re not really telling Google to index the url, you’re telling it to crawl. This will get Google to notice your noindex tag.

Once your page is removed from Google you can go back to putting the content behind a login or blocking via robots.txt.

but i have so mANY urls

Got a ton of pages? Maybe an entire site? No need to worry.

The easiest way to do this is creating an XML sitemap of your noindex pages and submitting that via search console.

If you have a list of URLs, there are sitemap generators out there. You can also use Screaming Frog to generate the file for you (and verify your noindex tags are all present at the same time).

This accomplishes the same thing (get Google to crawl your pages and see the noindex tags) at scale. You can also monitor the sitemap in search console to see the number of indexed pages drop to zero.

Simple as that! Go forth and make your content disappear.

WordPress SEO: Optimization, Tips, And Best Practices

In the ever-expanding digital landscape, a website's visibility in search engine results is often the key to its success. WordPress, a versatile and widely used content management system, offers a ton of tools and features to optimize your website's SEO performance....

Organic Traffic Loss After A Site Migration

Listen to the experts discuss.

How to Prioritize SEO & PPC for Startups

Listen to the experts discuss.

Magento SEO: Optimization, Tips, And Best Practices

Magento - also known as Adobe Commerce - is a “flexible and scalable commerce platform that lets you create uniquely personalized B2B and B2C experiences, no matter how many brands you have.” Magento is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms we encounter every...

Boosting Tourism Success: A Case Study of Effective SEO Strategies

Tourism was massively hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and we were tasked with growing organic traffic.

Empowering Startups: The CMS Choice From the SEO Experts

What is a CMS? A Content Management System - or CMS - is a powerful software application that enables website owners to create, edit, and manage digital content on their websites without requiring extensive technical expertise. A good CMS provides a user-friendly...

5 SEO Quick Wins You Can Do In 2023

SEO is complex. Understand the basics and empower yourself to improve your own site today.

Will AI Kill SEO?

Short answer - not today.  Still, it is a big deal. Don’t take this conclusion as a denial of the transformational potential of this moment we’re in. But with all big shifts in technology, there’s a rush to draw conclusions about how our world will change. For...

SEO for Site Migrations – Listen Up Developers!

I’ve seen sites lose as much as 75-80% of their traffic.

What do you think? Share your thoughts below.

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Want to learn even more cool stuff? Jay Ratkowski can help!

Reach out today! We’re happy to help talk more about whatever search marketing issue is keeping you up at night.