Hello,
Thank you for your query and we are so sorry about the trouble this must have caused.
Please refer to this guide to determine why Google hasn’t indexed your pages: https://rankmath.com/kb/google-index/
If that doesn’t help, please share those affected URLs here so we can take a closer look at them.
Looking forward to helping you.
Believe it or not there are apparently more than 3000 pages not indexed. However, I have looked at a few of them and it would appear that many of them might be tags and categories and things. Is there a way to deal with that as I don’t think I need tags and categories crawled do I?
Hello,
Thank you for your patience.
If there are any issues reported on your URLs that prevent them from being indexed or affect your rankings, then you should see them in the coverage section report of your GSC:
https://support.artlogic.net/hc/en-gb/articles/360016851260-Google-Search-Console-errors-and-coverage-issues
Moreover, archive pages like category and tags can help your website’s SEO:
https://rankmath.com/kb/optimize-a-category-page/
On the other hand, it’s still a good choice to have certain links set to noindex, especially for “Misc. Pages”, “Authors”, “Tags” and empty archive pages. Ideally, you don’t want them to be indexable because it might create duplicate or thin content issues and dilute your website’s authority.
Looking forward to helping you.
I did see them in GSC, that’s how I was alerted of this. That’s what I was explaining in the original enquiry.
So are you saying its a good choice to have things like categories, tags, taxonomies set to no index? If so can I make that setting in bulk or would I have to do that manually for every tag, taxonomy and category?
Alternatively would the easiest thing to do be to just leave it if GSC says those links aren’t being indexed? If I just leave them is any cause for concern regards SEO or is it better to set them as noindex?
Hello,
Thank you for getting back to us.
If you share some examples of the URL with us, we can help take a look. But in many cases, especially when your categories/tags archive pages only list their pages – and don’t have any custom content, it is not a good idea to index them as it might cause duplicate content issues.
So are you saying its a good choice to have things like categories, tags, taxonomies set to no index? If so can I make that setting in bulk or would I have to do that manually for every tag, taxonomy and category?
Yes, you can set this by going to Rank Math > Titles & Meta > Post: > Categories then enable Category Archives Robots Meta to set it to nondex. This would set all your category archives to noindex, you can do the same for your Tags OR if you’d rather noindex only empty category and tag archives, you can do that from Rank Math > Titles > Meta > Global Meta and enable Noindex Empty Category and Tag Archives
Alternatively would the easiest thing to do be to just leave it if GSC says those links aren’t being indexed? If I just leave them is any cause for concern regards SEO or is it better to set them as noindex?
What’s most likely happening is those pages are already set to noindex and Google is only letting you know – this isn’t an error and if you just let it be, it wouldn’t cause any harm to your SEO efforts – as long as the noindex is intentional.
We hope this helps clarify the issue. If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us again. We are always happy to assist you.
Thanks for the messaged. I’ve exported reports from GSC in batches related to why they werent indexed. Eacg file has links in them. Hopefully that gives you the information you need. You can download them from here Not indexing links
Hello,
Thank you for sharing those reports.
I can see that most of them are indeed archives and pagination and they served thin content that resulted in a soft 404. I would suggest then to noindex them and if they are already set to noindex, you can wait for Google’s next website crawl and these URLs should disappear from the GSC report.
Hope that helps and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need my assistance with anything else.
Thanks Jeremy
Based on the advice above I believe everything is already set to no index, I would assume it was set this way by default when I installed the plugin or I set it this way when I set up the plugin.
“Rank Math > Titles & Meta > Post: > Categories then enable Category Archives Robots Meta to set it to nondex. This would set all your category archives to noindex”
That being the case would that suggest that this setting isnt the issue or that I just need to wait for google to craawl the site again?
I’m not sure I understand the choice in doing this but if Ihave done the above for categories and tags is that all I need to do?
“you can do the same for your Tags OR if you’d rather noindex only empty category and tag archives, you can do that from Rank Math > Titles > Meta > Global Meta and enable Noindex Empty Category and Tag Archives”
Thanks
Andrew
Hi there,
We appreciate your response. The reason why Google notified you about those pages being noindex is because you already had that setting enabled. The alert is just Google letting you know that those pages are not being indexed, in case you didn’t mean to do that. But since you did it on purpose, you can ignore the notice.
Also, the option to noindex empty category and tag archives is for when you only want to exclude those pages that have nothing on them. You don’t need to worry about that since you are excluding all your archive pages.
We hope this clears up the issue. If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us again. We are always here to assist you.
Thank you for choosing Rank Math
OK, that’s great, thnk you for cofirming
I’ll mark this ticket as resolved
Hello again,
We are glad to hear that this issue has been resolved. Thank you for letting us know. This ticket will be closed now, but you can always open a new one if you have any other questions or concerns. We are here to help you with anything related to Rank Math.
We appreciate your patience and cooperation throughout this process.
Thank you for choosing Rank Math.
