topic Google still indexing pages that shouldn't be in Content Strategy & SEO

Google still indexing pages that shouldn't be

JSmith1996 — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 14:22:28 GMT

Hi,

I'm reviewing webpages that were created by previous members of staff and have been auditing our site on Google Search Console preparing for a migration exercise.

We have a knowledge base in our sitemap that is set to remain in Hubspot. The knowledge base is set in our settings to "Block knowledge base search result pages from appearing in Google and other search engines", as we do not want these pages indexed - they are private to clients who use our SaaS platform and this software is not integrated with Hubspot CRM.

However, I was bemused when I noticed this week that we are getting organic traffic on those pages on our Search Console, and confirmed that on the last crawl of our sitemap this month Google has reindexed our entire knowledge base. Is this an issue on Hubspot's end? As far as I am concerned these pages should all be tagged with noindex on our sitemap but this is not happening. How can I fix this?

Many thanks

Re: Google still indexing pages that shouldn't be

PamCotton — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 21:57:37 GMT

Hey @JSmith1996, thank you for posting in our Community!

Sometimes, Google caches old data, so requesting removal through the Search Console might help.

Also, if these pages are linked from other public sources, Google may still crawl them. If everything looks correct on your end would you be able to provide us a specific example?

I want to share some helpful knowledge base articles with more information:

I hope this information helps,

Pam

Re: Google still indexing pages that shouldn't be

SanjayKumar — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 12:27:50 GMT

So here’s what’s likely happening: setting the “Block knowledge base search result pages from appearing in Google and other search engines” in HubSpot only applies to search results pages within your knowledge base, not to individual article pages themselves. That’s a bit misleading, but it’s how HubSpot has designed it.

If your knowledge base articles are getting indexed, it probably means those individual articles don’t have a noindex meta tag applied, and Google is finding them through the sitemap or external links. HubSpot doesn’t automatically add noindex to individual KB articles even when you choose that setting, so you'll need to manually block them.

Here’s how you can fix it:

Go to your knowledge base articles in HubSpot.
Edit each article and go to the Settings tab.
Scroll down and check the “Prevent search engines from showing this page in search results” box — this will add the noindex tag.
You’ll need to do this for each article you want to block.

Also, if your sitemap is still listing those articles, Google may keep crawling them even after applying noindex. So you might also consider removing the knowledge base from your sitemap altogether (this needs to be done via HubSpot support if you're using the default sitemap).