Indexing Hidden Categories

#442646
  • Resolved accountschalmersgemscom

    3 years, 3 months ago

    Rank Math pro

    Hello

    We have a big issue which we need your help with please.

    Our website http://www.chalmergems.com has product categories that we want indexed on Google.

    However, we also have a couple of Categories which are hidden (coded) to Google but we have (accidentally) been indexing them in Rank Math instead of no-indexing. The reason being that we thought that the code prevented the entire categories being crawled.

    We have 6,000 products in these product categories which need no-indexing and we can not see a way of doing this easily – even with Pro. We can not to a Global no-index as we have products we need indexing.

    We can export all our products via CSV but there is no meta field/column that shows us whether it is indexed or not. If there were a meta field we could push it into the CSV but there isnt one.

    This is now causing us GDPR issues as these exposed products contain personal information as they are actually invoices for Live Selling shows.

    Our developers have assured us that the site code should be hiding these categories from Google & all other settings are ‘hidden’. But RM is overriding that.

    It is the setting in Rank Math that needs setting to no-indexing but its impossible to do this individually.

    Can you please help us resolve this asap?

    Many thanks
    Sheena

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Jeremy

    3 years, 3 months ago

    Hello,

    Thank you for contacting Rank Math support, and sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.

    I would like to check the URL you shared and I can’t seem to open it. Can you please verify?

    As for your issue, if you wish to hide specific categories via code, you may refer to this filter:

    add_filter( 'rank_math/frontend/robots', function( $robots ) {
	$robots['index'] = 'noindex';
	$robots['follow'] = 'nofollow';
	return $robots;
});

    With this filter, you have full control of our robots meta. You just need to add the logic to apply the modification to specific pages.

    Hope that helps.

    Thank you.

    accountschalmersgemscom

    3 years, 3 months ago

    Rank Math pro

    Hi Thank you

    My apologies – the URL is http://www.Chalmersgems.com

    We don’t think that code will work.

    When we say Categories, we mean product categories. Such as Beads & Strands, Cabochons, Selenite (as you can see on the website).

    We NEED these categories (& the products in them) to Index.

    However, we have Hidden Categories (called Facebook Live, Instagram Love & Direct Invoices) in the back end that we create products in to send to private buyers with their purchase details on. The products in these Hidden Categories are being indexed. And they shouldn’t be. Moving forward we are using the No Index in Rank Math but we have over 6,000 of these products that we have to retrospectively No-Index. So, we either have to hide these Categories or all the products from Google.

    For example

    https://chalmersgems.com/product/nigel-limming-fb262705/

    This url is being Indexed on Google yet it is in the hidden Category: Facebook Live. Which is hidden.

    We are struggling to find a solution in Rank Math to do this retrospectively on the (3) hidden categories or on the 6000 products themselves. As you can see from the above IRL the customers name is on it so this is an issue for us.

    Is there a way, either in RM or within the website code to do this please?

    Thanks
    Sheena

    Anas

    3 years, 3 months ago

    Rank Math business

    Hello,

    You can use the second filter in this guide to noindex all products in a category:
    https://rankmath.com/kb/how-to-noindex-all-posts-in-a-category/

    Hope this helps.

    Thank you.

    RankBot

    3 years, 2 months ago

    Hello,

    Since we did not hear back from you for 15 days, we are assuming that you found the solution. We are closing this support ticket.

    If you still need assistance or any other help, please feel free to open a new support ticket, and we will be more than happy to assist.

    Thank you.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The ticket ‘Indexing Hidden Categories’ is closed to new replies.