This should be indexed :
but not this :
In other words, it is possible to automatically index the subpages, without a page to link them all ?
1 Answer
Simple way to prevent crawling /products in your situation would be to,
- Make no reference (Link) to /products or /products/
- If you fetch /products or /products/ return 404
Depending on your website build, Google may or may not attempt to crawl or find pages in between. If you will ensure above 2 points, you should be fine.
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Yes but how would google know about (=index) the individual products pages then ? (
http://example.com/products/3984239) which are automatically generated ?– lapinCommented May 24, 2018 at 2:07 -
As well, noindex for these pages if possible would suffice. I realize not all CMS make this easy. Cheers!! Commented May 24, 2018 at 2:21
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@closetnoc I'm not sure I understand you comment right. My goal is to index
products/3984239without having to link them from the top page,/productsmiddle page wouldn't even exist in my case. How is it possible ?– lapinCommented May 24, 2018 at 2:23 -
That means if you can't ensure 404 on /products then its worth having noindex when the page /products loads. support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710?hl=en– TopQnACommented May 24, 2018 at 2:52
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@TopQnA Again, I don't think this is relevant : /products page doesn't exist. I just want to index the subpages but not page actually link to them– lapinCommented May 24, 2018 at 6:27