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.
How can I make a list of all URLs indexed by Google?
-
I started working for this eCommerce site 2 months ago, and my SEO site audit revealed a massive spider trap.
The site should have been 3500-ish pages, but Google has over 30K pages in its index. I'm trying to find a effective way of making a list of all URLs indexed by Google.
Anyone?
(I basically want to build a sitemap with all the indexed spider trap URLs, then set up 301 on those, then ping Google with the "defective" sitemap so they can see what the site really looks like and remove those URLs, shrinking the site back to around 3500 pages)
-
If you can get a developer to create a list of all the pages Google has crawled within a date range then you can use this python script to check if the page is indexed or not.
http://searchengineland.com/check-urls-indexed-google-using-python-259773
The script uses the info: search feature to check the urls.
You will have to install Python, Tor and Polipo for this to work. It is quite technical so if you aren't a technical person you may need help.
Depending on how many URL's you have and how long you decide to wait before checking each URL, it can take a few hours.
-
Thanks for your input guys! I've almost landed on the following approach:
- Use this http://www.chrisains.com/seo-tools/extract-urls-from-web-serps/ to collect a number (3-600) of URLs based on the various problem URL-footprints.
- Make XML "problem sitemaps" based on above URLs
- Implement 301s
- Ping the search engines with the XML "problem sitemaps", so that these may discover changes and see what the site really looks like (ideally reducing the # of indexed pages by about 85%)
- Track SE traffic as well as index for each URL footprint once a week for 6-8 weeks and follow progress
- If progress is not satisfactory, then go the URL Profiler route.
Any thoughts before I go ahead?
-
URL profiler will do this, as well as the other recommend scraper sites.
-
URL Profiler might be worth checking out:
It does require that you use a proxy, since Google does not like you scraping their search results.
-
Im sorry to confirm you that google does not want to everyine know that they have in their index. We as SEOs complain about that.
Its hard to belive that you couldnt get all your pages with a scraper. (because it just searches and gets the SERPS)
-
I tried thiss and a few others http://www.chrisains.com/seo-tools/extract-urls-from-web-serps/. This gave me about 500-1000 URLs at a time, but included a lot of cut and paste back and forth.
I imagine there must be a much easier way of doing this...
-
Well, There are some scrapers that might do that job.
To do it the right way you will need proxies and a scraper.
My recommendation is Gscraper or Scrapebox and a list of (at list) 10 proxies.Then, just make a scrape whit the "site:mydomain.com" and see what you get.
(before buying proxies or any scraper, check if you get something like you want with the free stuff) -
I used Screaming to discover the spider trap (and more), but as far as I know, I cannot use Screaming to import all URLs that Google actually has in its index (or can I?).
A list of URLs actually in Googles index is what I'm after
-
Hi Sverre,
Have you tried Screaming Frog SEO Spider? Here a link to it: https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
It's really helpfull to crawl all the pages you have as accesible for spiders. You might need the premium version to crawl over 500 pages.
Also, have you checked for the common duplicate pages issues? Here a Moz tutorial: https://cloudz.click/learn/seo/duplicate-content
Hope it helps.
GR.
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
-
Google indexed "Lorem Ipsum" content on an unfinished website
Hi guys. So I recently created a new WordPress site and started developing the homepage. I completely forgot to disallow robots to prevent Google from indexing it and the homepage of my site got quickly indexed with all the Lorem ipsum and some plagiarized content from sites of my competitors. What do I do now? I’m afraid that this might spoil my SEO strategy and devalue my site in the eyes of Google from the very beginning. Should I ask Google to remove the homepage using the removal tool in Google Webmaster Tools and ask it to recrawl the page after adding the unique content? Thank you so much for your replies.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ibis150 -
Displaying Vanity URL in Google Search Result
Hi Moz! Not sure if this has been asked before, but is there any way to tell Google to display a vanity URL (that has been 301d) instead of the actual URL in the SERP? Example: www.domainA.com is a vanity URL (bought specifically for Brand Identity reasons) that redirects to www.domainB.com. Is it possible to have the domainA Url show up in Google for a Branded search query? Thanks in advance! Arjun
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Lauriedechaseaux0 -
Should I use noindex or robots to remove pages from the Google index?
I have a Magento site and just realized we have about 800 review pages indexed. The /review directory is disallowed in robots.txt but the pages are still indexed. From my understanding robots means it will not crawl the pages BUT if the pages are still indexed if they are linked from somewhere else. I can add the noindex tag to the review pages but they wont be crawled. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-do-not-use-noindex-in-robots-txt-20873.html Should I remove the robots.txt and add the noindex? Or just add the noindex to what I already have?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tylerj0 -
If Robots.txt have blocked an Image (Image URL) but the other page which can be indexed has this image, how is the image treated?
Hi MOZers, This probably is a dumb question but I have a case where the robots.tags has an image url blocked but this image is used on a page (lets call it Page A) which can be indexed. If the image on Page A has an Alt tags, then how is this information digested by crawlers? A) would Google totally ignore the image and the ALT tags information? OR B) Google would consider the ALT tags information? I am asking this because all the images on the website are blocked by robots.txt at the moment but I would really like website crawlers to crawl the alt tags information. Chances are that I will ask the webmaster to allow indexing of images too but I would like to understand what's happening currently. Looking forward to all your responses 🙂 Malika
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Malika11 -
Do I need to re-index the page after editing URL?
Hi, I had to edit some of the URLs. But, google is still showing my old URL in search results for certain keywords, which ofc get 404. By crawling with ScremingFrog it gets me 301 'page not found' and still giving old URLs. Why is that? And do I need to re-index pages with new URLs? Is 'fetch as Google' enough to do that or any other advice? Thanks a lot, hope the topic will help to someone else too. Dusan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chemometec0 -
Is Google indexing Mp3 audio and MIDI music files? Can that cause any duplicate problems?
Hello, I own virtualsheetmusic.com website and we have several thousands of media files (Mp3 and MIDI files) that potentially Google can index. If that's the case, I am wondering if that could cause any "duplicate" issues of some sort since many of such media files have exact file names or same meta information inside. Any thoughts about this issue are very welcome! Thank you in advance to anyone.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Wordpress blog in a subdirectory not being indexed by Google
HI MozzersIn my websites sitemap.xml, pages are listed, such as /blog/ and /blog/textile-fact-or-fiction-egyptian-cotton-explained/These pages are visible when you visit them in a browser and when you use the Google Webmaster tool - Fetch as Google to view them (see attachment), however they aren't being indexed in Google, not even the root directory for the blog (/blog/) is being indexed, and when we query:site: www.hilden.co.uk/blog/ It returns 0 results in Google.Also note that:The Wordpress installation is located at /blog/ which is a subdirectory of the main root directory which is managed by Magento. I'm wondering if this causing the problem.Any help on this would be greatly appreciated!AnthonyToTOHuj.png?1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tone_Agency0 -
Google News URL Structure
Hi there folks I am looking for some guidance on Google News URLs. We are restructuring the site. A main traffic driver will be the traffic we get from Google News. Most large publishers use: www.site.com/news/12345/this-is-the-title/ Others use www.example.com/news/celebrity/12345/this-is-the-title/ etc. www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/12345/this-is-the-title/ www.example.com/celebrity-news/12345/this-is-the-title/ (Celebrity is a channel on Google News so should we try and follow that format?) www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/this-is-the-title/12345/ www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/this-is-the-title-12345/ (unique ID no at the end and part of the title URL) www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/celebrity-name/this-is-the-title-12345/ Others include the date. So as you can see there are so many combinations and there doesnt seem to be any unity across news sites for this format. Have you any advice on how to structure these URLs? Particularly if we want to been seen as an authority on the following topics: fashion, hair, beauty, and celebrity news - in particular "celebrity name" So should the celebrity news section be www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/celebrity-name/this-is-the-title-12345/ or what? This is for a completely new site build. Thanks Barry
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Deepti_C0