Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Better to 301 or de-index 403 pages
-
Google WMT recently found and called out a large number of old unpublished pages as access denied errors. The pages are tagged "noindex, follow." These old pages are in Google's index.
At this point, would it better to 301 all these pages or submit an index removal request or what? Thanks... Darcy
-
Sounds solid. Thanks, Dirk!
-
The main reason why errors are listed is that you can solve them (if necessary). If these are old pages that don't have existing links on your pages - you can just forget about these warnings. However, if these warnings appear because actual pages are linking to non-existing pages this will lead to a degraded user experience and user experience is a factor which counts for SEO.
If you look at the 403 errors - normally WMT lists how the bot got to these pages. If the pages that are linking to this 403 pages are still on your site, you have to remove these links.
If you have dropped in traffic, you could try to do a full crawl of your site using screaming frog of Xenu, to do a quick check-up of the technical health of your site.
If you still have an old sitemap, or the most popular pages in Google Analytics from the period before migration, you could also use these url's as input for Screamingfrog - and check if all pages were properly redirected. If errors pop-up, these would be the ones I would redirect. I understood from your initial question that the 403's where coming from very old pages which were never meant to be accessible.
rgds
Dirk
-
Hi Dirk,
Thanks for the message. You may be right. Thing is, GWT's discovery of this large number of now blocked pages (previously indexed) seems to have coincided with a big drop in search overall.
I guess the part that I wonder about it is, if these now blocked pages as 403s are no problem and Google will just figure it out, why does it bother to list them in errors... just in case you didn't know, but that it doesn't in fact care one way or the other search-wise and it won't affect your other pages? Just wondering. Thanks... Darcy
-
It's not really necessary to 301 these pages - a 403 status code informs Google that the access is denied (Literally: The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it. Authorization will not help and the request SHOULD NOT be repeated.)
Normally these pages will disappear from WMT after a while. If you find these 403 annoying in your WMT reports, you can always 301 them - but this isn't strictly necessary.
Removal tool - Google's advice is not to use the tool "to clean up cruft, like old pages that 404" (source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1269119?hl=en).
rgds
Dirk
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should I index resource submission forms, thank you pages, etc.?
Should I index resource submission forms, thank you, event pages, etc.? Doesn't Google consider this content too thin?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | amarieyoussef0 -
Password Protected Page(s) Indexed
Hi, I am wondering if my website can get a penalty if some password protected pages are showing up when I search on google: site:www.example.com/sub-group/pass-word-protected-page That shows that my password protected page was indexed either before or after adding the password protection. I've seen people suggest no indexing the page. Is that the best method to take care of this? What if we are planning on pushing the page live later on? All of these pages have no title tag, meta description, image alt text, etc. Should I add them for each page? I am wondering what is the best step, especially if we are planning on pushing the page(s) live. Thanks for any help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aua0 -
Is a 301 Redirect and a Canonical Tag on Uppercase to Lowercase Pages Correct?
We have a medium size site that lost more than 50% of its traffic in July 2013 just before the Panda rollout. After working with a SEO agency, we were advised to clean up various items, one of them being that the 10k+ urls were all mixed case (i.e. www.example.com/Blue-Widget). A 301 redirect was set up thereafter forcing all these urls to go to a lowercase version (i.e. www.example.com/blue-widget). In addition, there was a canonical tag placed on all of these pages in case any parameters or other characters were incorporated into a url. I thought this was a good set up, but when running a SEO audit through a third party tool, it shows me the massive amount of 301 redirects. And, now I wonder if there should only be a canonical without the redirect or if its okay to have tens of thousands 301 redirects on the site. We have not recovered yet from the traffic loss yet and we are wondering if its really more of a technical problem than a Google penalty. Guidance and advise from those experienced in the industry is appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ABK7170 -
How long does google take to show the results in SERP once the pages are indexed ?
Hi...I am a newbie & trying to optimize the website www.peprismine.com. I have 3 questions - A little background about this : Initially, close to 150 pages were indexed by google. However, we decided to remove close to 100 URLs (as they were quite similar). After the changes, we submitted the NEW sitemap (with close to 50 pages) & google has indexed those URLs in sitemap. 1. My pages were indexed by google few days back. How long does google take to display the URL in SERP once the pages get indexed ? 2. Does google give more preference to websites with more number of pages than those with lesser number of pages to display results in SERP (I have just 50 pages). Does the NUMBER of pages really matter ? 3. Does removal / change of URLs have any negative effect on ranking ? (Many of these URLs were not shown on the 1st page) An answer from SEO experts will be highly appreciated. Thnx !
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PepMozBot0 -
Best way to get pages indexed fast?
Any suggestion on best ways to get new sites pages indexed? Was thinking getting high pr inbound links on fiverr but always a little risky right? Thanks for your opinions.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mweidner27820 -
How To 301 Redirect .html pages
I need to redirect a page/URL that is purely .html to a new location. I don't know how to do this. All the redirects I can find are for server side code pages .php/.aspx etc. From my understanding I can't put a server side redirect in a .html file. I am hosting on a microsoft server, however the new page I am redirecting to is .php. I am running some WordPress (.php) files on the server. I need to make it redirect before the old page loads so visitors don't start reading something that is about to get redirected Can someone please help me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyNet0 -
Should I prevent Google from indexing blog tag and category pages?
I am working on a website that has a regularly updated Wordpress blog and am unsure whether or not the category and tag pages should be indexable. The blog posts are often outranked by the tag and category pages and they are ultimately leaving me with a duplicate content issue. With this in mind, I assumed that the best thing to do would be to remove the tag and category pages from the index, but after speaking to someone else about the issue, I am no longer sure. I have tried researching online, but there isn't anything that provided any further information. Please can anyone with any experience of dealing with issues like this or with any knowledge of the topic help me to resolve this annoying issue. Any input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PaulRogers0 -
Should I Allow Blog Tag Pages to be Indexed?
I have a wordpress blog with settings currently set so that Google does not index tag pages. Is this a best practice that avoids duplicate content or am I hurting the site by taking eligible pages out of the index?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JSOC0