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Wordpress plugin files on my site being indexed by Google - How to remove?

by Matt.Lake
3 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hello,

I recently installed a plugin to my wordpress site, didn't like it, and subsequently deleted it shortly after. It can't of been active for more than a couple of days. It is now firmly deactivated and deleted.

However, I noticed when I do a site:mydomain.com search for my website, files from this plugin are showing up in Google's index, along with my posts and pages.

Files from the /wp-content/plugins/ directory are being indexed. It's messy and I think it could potentially cause problems. No other plugin files are being indexed... just this particular one that isn't even on the site any more.

Incidentally all the indexed file urls now point to 404 errors as they no longer exist.

How can I remove these file urls from Google's index without using Webmaster Tools (I don't use that or want to on this particular site)?

Or will this sort itself out given that all the urls now point to 404 errors?

Should I 301 redirect these urls to clean up the 404 errors?

Thank you for your help.
#files #google #indexed #plugin #remove #site #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author pororo
    Originally Posted by Matt.Lake View Post

    Hello,

    I recently installed a plugin to my wordpress site, didn't like it, and subsequently deleted it shortly after. It can't of been active for more than a couple of days. It is now firmly deactivated and deleted.

    However, I noticed when I do a site:mydomain.com search for my website, files from this plugin are showing up in Google's index, along with my posts and pages.

    Files from the /wp-content/plugins/ directory are being indexed. It's messy and I think it could potentially cause problems. No other plugin files are being indexed... just this particular one that isn't even on the site any more.

    Incidentally all the indexed file urls now point to 404 errors as they no longer exist.

    How can I remove these file urls from Google's index without using Webmaster Tools (I don't use that or want to on this particular site)?

    Or will this sort itself out given that all the urls now point to 404 errors?

    Should I 301 redirect these urls to clean up the 404 errors?

    Thank you for your help.
    Having a 404 page is normal for a site.

    Google will removed the non-existing pages on SERP soon, just wait for it. Sometime it took week or so.
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  • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
    Originally Posted by Matt.Lake View Post

    Files from the /wp-content/plugins/ directory are being indexed. It's messy and I think it could potentially cause problems. No other plugin files are being indexed... just this particular one that isn't even on the site any more.
    Well, that should not happen. I've seen some badly coded plugins that show some kind of pages under /plugins/. No script under that directory should, in my opinion, execute unless you're running them from WordPress.

    People often have /wp-content/plugins/ disallowed in robots.txt for this reason, but you really should not need to do that.
    Signature
    Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
    Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

    What's your excuse?
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Originally Posted by Matt.Lake View Post

    Hello,

    I recently installed a plugin to my wordpress site, didn't like it, and subsequently deleted it shortly after. It can't of been active for more than a couple of days. It is now firmly deactivated and deleted.

    However, I noticed when I do a site:mydomain.com search for my website, files from this plugin are showing up in Google's index, along with my posts and pages.

    Files from the /wp-content/plugins/ directory are being indexed. It's messy and I think it could potentially cause problems. No other plugin files are being indexed... just this particular one that isn't even on the site any more.

    Incidentally all the indexed file urls now point to 404 errors as they no longer exist.

    How can I remove these file urls from Google's index without using Webmaster Tools (I don't use that or want to on this particular site)?

    Or will this sort itself out given that all the urls now point to 404 errors?

    Should I 301 redirect these urls to clean up the 404 errors?

    Thank you for your help.

    You need to tell Google to ignore files/folders that don't have content for your traffic, example, block plugin folders, login page, etc...

    Add all the code below to your robots.txt file, this will also tell Google to ignore the files in your WP plugin folder.
    • User-agent: *
    • Disallow: /wp-content/cache/
    • Disallow: /wp-content/themes/
    • Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
    • Disallow: /wp-admin/
    • Disallow: /wp-includes/
    • Disallow: /wp-login.php

    Google will eventually self correct removing the unwanted files from the SERPs after you add the above code to your robots.txt & also stop indexing unnecessary files/folders in the future.

    After you add the above code to the robots.txt file go to Webmaster Tools & Fetch as Google on the robots.txt URL to get Google's attention & show them ASAP that you're now blocking the plugin folder/files. That should help speed up the process of removing the unwanted plugin files from Google SERPs.

    Do not do a 301 redirect on the old deleted URLs, the 2 day old internal pages have no value for links.
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