how to remove site_content URLs from google index

Hi

Can I simply unpublish the site_content item in the menu? I have four other sites that need to be indexed by google but have them blocked at the moment because google seems to have stopped removing them from its index. I don't want google to index any more links with site_content. I have site_content set as a single item and have it blocked in the robots.txt.

Thanks,
Chris

Hello

you can rename the menu alias to something else (to any unique menu alias)

e.g. rename it to
contents

Please don't forget

that Joomla needs a menu item for SEF urls, so having no "last choice" menu item will mean that

- a random should be selected, which maybe even less desired
- and in the case that you do not create any FLEXIcontent menu item, or we just do not do the above then SEF menu items will need to use component name so

'/site_content/' will be replaced by: /component/flexicontent/

what you can do, and should do is rename it, e.g. rename the menu alias to "content"
this way you will also invalidate any remaing links in google index,

although forcing google to remove indexed pages is not always possible
google index maybe finding this URLs from some other webiste that is linking to your website

best would be to use a 301 directive in your .htaccess

Hi

Thanks for the reply. Would it have a negative effect on flexicontent if I did a directory redirect in the htaccess file, ie /site_content/ to / (root) so all urls for all sites would be redirected to the root.

Thanks,

Hello

so
- if you have renamed the menu item alias from site_content to ... e.g 'content'
- or if you have made sure that you have better choice menu items for all cases

then you can redirect it, to catch any old indexed URLs

PS: i have renamed 'site_content' menu alias to 'content_page'
i mean if default name "site_content" is not desirable by users, maybe "content_page" is better?

in any case we need a ALIAS name for the default menu item, what would that be ? or we may check if "content" menu item exists and use that instead ?

Hi

I'm thinking to change that to 'pages', something generic. Perhaps if blocking /pages/ in the robots file before changing that so in theory it will keep Google out. I think it must be more difficult to remove URLs once indexed rather than have them blocked from the start.

I did see the Advanced flexicontent search module allows for custom fields to be included or excluded. Is it possible to modify that to add flexicontent categories to be included or excluded? Having the two options in one module might just work. Since we have slave sites we could create a database table for each to hold the search results or use one module per site.

Thanks