Why Are These Pages Being Indexed

Marketing
1

I have a page. I know there is more than 1 that is being indexed

It shouldn’t be indexed at all. There are no external links to this page, no sitemaps pointing to this page and no internal links pointing to this page. Nothing

Why is Google indexing it? This actually could cause issues. As one it’s duplicate data and images are missing on these pages that I think it’s indexing. Also it’s coming up 1st in the search before the correct page.

The only reference to this page is the 1606 ID in a database.

2

What would be the best thing to do here. There will be around 1500 of these pages. I don’t want to have to manage them in Robots.

It’s just one file loading ID’s e.g profile.html?ID={x}

Should I do a 301 redirect to the correct page or will this count as 1500 301 redirects and is that baaaad.

Thanks

3

If it’s actually one page with multiple permutations then it should be easy to exclude in robots.txt or by putting nofollow in the <head>. Or are there some IDs that you want to be indexed and others not? Would a canonical tag be a better solution?

4

Thanks for the reply.

I want some included. With the canonical the wrong page would still show but just point to the right page? It’s ridiculous. For example the correct pages were added to the site way before the incorrect pages making them the original pages, like 6 months older, have images and no broken image links, yet the incorrect page comes top when I do a search.

I’ve done a 302 redirect for now but not sure if that will hurt me in anyway.

There is no reference/links at all anywhere telling google to crawl and index this page. As far as google should be concerned this ID number of the page should not even exist.

5

I think There is only one way that is Disallow them by Robots,txt.

6

There a nearly 2000 of them.

Ideally I would like to also understand HOW google is indexing them when there is no reference to them.

7

Sorry, I know I’m missing something here, but I’m having a bad day and my brain’s not functioning. :slight_smile: What is the purpose of these pages, if there is apparently no way to find them?

8

They are needed but just internally via the database and code. we never show these pages and they are not referenced from anywhere. No links to them e.t.c the ID numbers that we need purely exist in the database but google is indexing them and turning them into pages e.g

www.weddingphotographyselect.co.uk/international/profile.html?id=1606

This should never happen.