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://moz.rainyclouds.online/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
-
Trying to get Google to stop indexing an old site!
Howdy, I have a small dilemma. We built a new site for a client, but the old site is still ranking/indexed and we can't seem to get rid of it. We setup a 301 from the old site to the new one, as we have done many times before, but even though the old site is no longer live and the hosting package has been cancelled, the old site is still indexed. (The new site is at a completely different host.) We never had access to the old site, so we weren't able to request URL removal through GSC. Any guidance on how to get rid of the old site would be very appreciated. BTW, it's been about 60 days since we took these steps. Thanks, Kirk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kbates0 -
How to stop URLs that include query strings from being indexed by Google
Hello Mozzers Would you use rel=canonical, robots.txt, or Google Webmaster Tools to stop the search engines indexing URLs that include query strings/parameters. Or perhaps a combination? I guess it would be a good idea to stop the search engines crawling these URLs because the content they display will tend to be duplicate content and of low value to users. I would be tempted to use a combination of canonicalization and robots.txt for every page I do not want crawled or indexed, yet perhaps Google Webmaster Tools is the best way to go / just as effective??? And I suppose some use meta robots tags too. Does Google take a position on being blocked from web pages. Thanks in advance, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Google doesn't index image slideshow
Hi, My articles are indexed and images (full size) via a meta in the body also. But, the images in the slideshow are not indexed, have you any idea? A problem with the JS Example : http://www.parismatch.com/People/Television/Sport-a-la-tele-les-femmes-a-l-abordage-962989 Thank you in advance Julien
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Julien.Ferras0 -
Does Google Index URLs that are always 302 redirected
Hello community Due to the architecture of our site, we have a bunch of URLs that are 302 redirected to the same URL plus a query string appended to it. For example: www.example.com/hello.html is 302 redirected to www.example.com/hello.html?___store=abc The www.example.com/hello.html?___store=abc page also has a link canonical tag to www.example.com/hello.html In the above example, can www.example.com/hello.html every be Indexed, by google as I assume the googlebot will always be redirected to www.example.com/hello.html?___store=abc and will never see www.example.com/hello.html ? Thanks in advance for the help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommRulz0 -
Pages are Indexed but not Cached by Google. Why?
Here's an example: I get a 404 error for this: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.qjamba.com/restaurants-coupons/ferguson/mo/all But a search for qjamba restaurant coupons gives a clear result as does this: site:http://www.qjamba.com/restaurants-coupons/ferguson/mo/all What is going on? How can this page be indexed but not in the Google cache? I should make clear that the page is not showing up with any kind of error in webmaster tools, and Google has been crawling pages just fine. This particular page was fetched by Google yesterday with no problems, and even crawled again twice today by Google Yet, no cache.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood2 -
How to find all indexed pages in Google?
Hi, We have an ecommerce site with around 4000 real pages. But our index count is at 47,000 pages in Google Webmaster Tools. How can I get a list of all pages indexed of our domain? trying to locate the duplicate content. Doing a "site:www.mydomain.com" only returns up to 676 results... Any ideas? Thanks, Ben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
How long does google take to show the results in SERP once the pages are indexed ?
Hi...I am a newbie & trying to optimize the website www.peprismine.com. I have 3 questions - A little background about this : Initially, close to 150 pages were indexed by google. However, we decided to remove close to 100 URLs (as they were quite similar). After the changes, we submitted the NEW sitemap (with close to 50 pages) & google has indexed those URLs in sitemap. 1. My pages were indexed by google few days back. How long does google take to display the URL in SERP once the pages get indexed ? 2. Does google give more preference to websites with more number of pages than those with lesser number of pages to display results in SERP (I have just 50 pages). Does the NUMBER of pages really matter ? 3. Does removal / change of URLs have any negative effect on ranking ? (Many of these URLs were not shown on the 1st page) An answer from SEO experts will be highly appreciated. Thnx !
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PepMozBot0 -
Google is indexing wordpress attachment pages
Hey, I have a bit of a problem/issue what is freaking me out a bit. I hope you can help me. If i do site:www.somesitename.com search in Google i see that Google is indexing my attachment pages. I want to redirect attachment URL's to parent post and stop google from indexing them. I have used different redirect plugins in hope that i can fix it myself but plugins don't work. I get a error:"too many redirects occurred trying to open www.somesitename.com/?attachment_id=1982 ". Do i need to change something in my attachment.php fail? Any idea what is causing this problem? get_header(); ?> /* Run the loop to output the attachment. * If you want to overload this in a child theme then include a file * called loop-attachment.php and that will be used instead. */ get_template_part( 'loop', 'attachment' ); ?>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TauriU0