How To Check To See If Blocked Pages Are Indexed

blocked web page

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Share This

You put a robots.txt on your site expecting it to keep Google out of certain pages. But you worry – did you do it correctly? Is Google following it? Is the index as tight as it could be?

Here’s a question for you. If you have a page blocked by robots.txt, will Google put it in the index? If you answered no, you’re incorrect. Google will indeed index a page blocked by robots.txt if it’s being linked by one of your pages (that do not have a rel=”nofollow”), or if it’s linked from another website.  It doesn’t usually rank well because Google can’t see what’s on the page, but it does get PageRank passed through it. What a waste! Google will probably give you a snippet like this:

robots.txt snippet

2 Ways To Check For Indexed Pages You Thought Were Blocked

Don’t worry, I have a couple relatively painless ways to check your own indexation.

Using Google.com (More Manual)

Visit your robots.txt file and look at the blocked directories.  Let’s use Toys R Us for example:

  1. Check http://www.toysrus.com/robots.txt
  2. Take the first blocked directory (as of 3/22/2015, it’s /search/)
  3. Query Google.com using site:toysrus.com inurl:/search/ (this will attempt to find any URL that has /search/ on the toysrus.com site)
  4. Take note of any listings stating a description for this result is not available because of this site’s robots.txt 
  5. Repeat with all the other blocked directories
  6. Find all linking pages and determine your best course of action (eg, a nofollow attribute, a meta-noindex, the “remove URL” from Google Webmaster Tools)

In some cases, this trick will result in noisy results. If you tried this example above, you probably didn’t find blocked URLs until about page 5, where you see “In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 47 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.” Since Toys R Us uses “search” as a parameter, Google tries to show it. This is not the “search” we’re looking for.

Summary

SERPitude is certainly a great tool for purposes as well, but solid for understanding what the SERPs are showing your searchers. Now that you identified your blocked pages, the real fun comes in tracking them down, deindexing them, and plugging the links with a rel=”noindex”.  Go to it, Sherlock!

Share This
Bill Sebald

Authored by:

Managing Partner

I've been doing SEO since 1996. Blogger, speaker, and occasionally teaching at Drexel and Philadelphia University. I started Greenlane in 2005 to help clients leverage search marketing to hit business goals. I love this stuff. Visit my profile page.

Follow Me on Twitter

Leave a Reply

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

More Related Articles

Why you should optimize for Visual Search
SEO

Why You Should Optimize for Visual Search

Every year, it seems like there’s a new “next big thing” in SEO – some big release that causes a bunch of chatter – it’s the future of search! Some become an integral part of the ranking algorithm, like BERT…
Continue Reading

SEO Search Engine Optimization - Flat Style Design
Analytics Digital Marketing SEO

How to Use Google Analytics to Build a Useful Website Performance Report

Part 2 of a series on SEO reporting best practices (ICYMI: Part 1) Traffic data, found in Google Analytics, helps you quantify your site’s engagement level. Using this data, you can understand more than just how many users visit  your…
Continue Reading

Learn the basics of SEO reporting
Analytics SEO

How to Use Google Search Console to Build an Impactful SEO Report

Part One of a series on reporting best practices Marketers rely on metrics and KPIs, whether it’s to manage expectations, track progress, or just establish a common internal vocabulary to discuss projects and goals. Understanding the sources and limitations of…
Continue Reading