Urls with strings like “?filter_kataskevastis=” are indexed by google

Hello,

We apologize for the issue you are facing with unwanted URLs being indexed by Google. To prevent these types of URLs from being indexed and to remove them from Google Search Console, you can follow these steps:

1. Block URLs Using Robots.txt

You can block these specific query strings in your robots.txt file. Add the following lines to disallow indexing of URLs containing those parameters:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /*?filter_kataskevastis=
Disallow: /*?query_type_kataskevastis=

This will instruct search engines not to crawl any URLs that contain these query parameters.

2. Use the URL Removal Tool in Google Search Console

To remove already indexed URLs:

• Go to Google Search Console.
• Navigate to the Removals section.
• Click on New Request and enter the URL you want to remove.
• Submit the request.

3. Set Up Canonical Tags

If these URLs are duplicates of other content, consider setting canonical tags on the preferred version of the page. This tells search engines which version to index.

4. Use Noindex Meta Tag

For pages that should not be indexed at all, you can add a noindex meta tag in the HTML of those pages:

This will prevent search engines from indexing those pages.

5. Monitor and Analyze

After implementing these changes, monitor your Google Search Console for any updates on indexing status and ensure that the unwanted URLs are no longer appearing in search results.

For more detailed guidance, you can refer to our article on Internal Site Search Spam.

Thank you for raising this concern! If you have further questions or need assistance, feel free to reply to this ticket, and a human agent will assist you.

Sources:
Is Your Site the Victim of Internal Site Search Spam? » Rank Math

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us and bringing your concern to our attention.

You can use the URL inspection tool of your GSC account to check the URLs and view the referring page to make sure from where they are coming.

Once you know the referring page, you can unlink or remove them so Google won’t discover the URLs again.

Alternatively, you can add the following disallow rules to prevent Google from crawling these URLs:

Disallow: *?filter_kataskevastis=*
Disallow: *?query_type_kataskevastis=*

Here’s a guide on how to edit your robots.txt using Rank Math:
https://rankmath.com/kb/how-to-edit-robots-txt-with-rank-math/

Once done, allow Google some time to re-crawl your site to reflect the changes.

Hope that helps and please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any other questions.