Deactivate a Page

[lesliekirk]

I have looked and searched (with Google) but can't seem to find anyone else asking this question - is there a way to turn off a Page the way products, categories and ReadyTheme components can be? Google has started barked about pages that have redirects and after so long a time it would be nice to just turn the page off (but keep it for historical reference).

[Brennan]

No there is no concept of turning off a page, only deleting it. You could export it either via mmt or just copy and paste the template to save it for archive purposes then delete it.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Another idea is to just redirect it to another page.

[lesliekirk]

Another idea is to just redirect it to another page.

Google is starting to bark about redirects. That's why I'd rather turn the page off. It's too bad a page can't be "unpublished" like it can be in WordPress. So I guess my only choice is to delete the pages to make Google happy

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Google is starting to bark about redirects.

Where did you hear about that? I can't imagine why google whould have an issue with exactly what, in part, redirects are for.

[quote]
a page can't be "unpublished" like it can be in WordPress
[/qoute]

what happens when a user tries to navigate to an unpublished page in WordPress?

[SidFeyDesigns]

Yeah you might want to check and clarify what they are barking about redirect wise.

Usually Google barks when there is a chain of multiple redirects.

Might want to check the urls in question and make sure to there aren't multiple redirects to get to a single page.

Check for hard coded links to old urls as well.

Tools like or similar to SEMRush are great for identifying stuff like this.

[lesliekirk]

Yeah you might want to check and clarify what they are barking about redirect wise.

Usually Google barks when there is a chain of multiple redirects.

Might want to check the urls in question and make sure to there aren't multiple redirects to get to a single page.

Check for hard coded links to old urls as well.

Tools like or similar to SEMRush are great for identifying stuff like this.

Thanks - SEMRush has been blocked (by this site) because it was just going bot crazy on this site. It's not hard coded URL. The store had some old products that they were not going to get any more of so the URI Management was used to 301 redirect them to others. A couple of them were Pages being redirected to Blog entry pages.

So I had to dig around to understand why all these links were not indexed

Redirected pages will not be indexed but the pages where they redirect to will.

That makes sense to not index the old URL/URI but when you see that Google hasn't indexed a couple thousand links you start to panic. These pages that don't get indexed can include something as innocent as an http being redirected to https

I still need to find the other reason I found because it made it sound more like Google didn't like redirects because they could mislead the visitor.

[William Davis]

Leslie, you might want to consider adding those pages to your robots.txt with a "disallow" entry. Then, manually request for Google to update, there use to be a feature for that, don't recall if its still available.

[SidFeyDesigns]

lesliekirk Is it just the 1 page in question or is Google barking about more than that?

If its more pages causing issues perhaps it might be worth seeing if they can unblock SEMRush temporarily and set up a site audit and run a crawl.

It could prevent a big headache in pinpointing the major issues.

Another option would be to use Google's URL inspection tool in Google Search Console if they have Google Search Console set up and properly verified.

As I'm sure you know, there are a lot of reasons google may choose not to index a page such as duplicate content, improper canonicals, etc. and a site audit or URL inspection should help make the issues more clear.

[lesliekirk]

Leslie, you might want to consider adding those pages to your robots.txt with a "disallow" entry. Then, manually request for Google to update, there use to be a feature for that, don't recall if its still available.

I started rereading what Google was trying to tell me. It does make perfect sense that Google is not going to index a page with a redirect. Why would I want Google to index it? The whole point is for Google to find the redirect to the new page and not index the old page that has been redirected. That's what got me thinking and why I asked about being able to turn off a Page. When you use the URI Management to redirect a product or category, after the 301 redirect is in place you reactivate the old product or category because if you don't Google can still find it. This is where I might be wrong on how the 301 redirect works within Miva, in order to use it do you still have to keep the old product or category in Miva?

Any who, Google is now letting you know if you have any links with redirects. It may wind up being helpful so that you can go back and start deleting all those old redirected items because hopefully Google has finally found the new ones.

FYI - SidFeyDesigns - I'm a huge fan of ScreamingFrog.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

The only reason to deactivate or delete old cats and products that have a redirect, is so MIVA search can't find them. Since Miva doesn't search pages....that's not necessary.

[lesliekirk]

The only reason to deactivate or delete old cats and products that have a redirect, is so MIVA search can't find them. Since Miva doesn't search pages....that's not necessary.

That's only part of it. If the redirected product or category remains active, it can appear in the SMAP with the old long-style URL or any other sitemap. Then Google picks it up.

[SidFeyDesigns]

lesliekirk I've heard good things about screaming frog but haven't tried it out yet.

Anytime you're redirecting a product or category it's best to delete it or make it inactive. You do not have to keep the old product or category in Miva. Either option will work and will keep the long url from being accessible.

For a page template you can assign the sitemap exclude item to the old page to keep it out of the XML sitemap. The redirect will keep the old url out of Google's index.

Once you finish deleting/deactivating categories/products or assigning the sitemap exclude item from the page templates, run the sitemap feed, double check the sitemap in your browser if you wish, and then submit it to Google. This will notify Google of the new url and help with getting it indexed a bit faster.

[lesliekirk]

lesliekirk I've heard good things about screaming frog but haven't tried it out yet.

Anytime you're redirecting a product or category it's best to delete it or make it inactive. You do not have to keep the old product or category in Miva. Either option will work and will keep the long url from being accessible.

For a page template you can assign the sitemap exclude item to the old page to keep it out of the XML sitemap. The redirect will keep the old url out of Google's index.

Once you finish deleting/deactivating categories/products or assigning the sitemap exclude item from the page templates, run the sitemap feed, double check the sitemap in your browser if you wish, and then submit it to Google. This will notify Google of the new url and help with getting it indexed a bit faster.

LOL, thanks yes, I know the additional steps way to do all this. I was just trying to KISS it

[SidFeyDesigns]

lesliekirk Haha I gotcha. Well hopefully it helps someone else that stumbles upon this thread then...