Robots
-
I have just noticed this in my code
name="robots" content="noindex">
And have noticed some of my keywords have dropped, could this be the reason?
-
It was everypage on the site.
I also noticed the pages that are not indexed no longer, they have no PR, is that expected?
-
Was the homepage one of the pages that included the noindex meta tag?
Even if it was, pages will not all be crawled at the same time or in a particular order. The homepage may have already been crawled before the change was made on your site, your homepage may not have even be crawled at all today if it was visited yesterday for example.
Crawling results can vary hugely based on a number of factors.
-
The only thing that does not make sense to me is if the sitemap was processes today, why is the homepage still indexed?
-
Yes because that is what caused them to take notice of the meta noindex and drop your pages from their search results.
Best of luck with it, feel free to send me a PM if your pages haven't reappeared in Google's search engine over the next few days.
-
Oh! I also noticed that in Webmaster tools that the sitemap was processed today, does that mean Googlebot has visited the website today?
-
Thanks Geoff, will do what you recommended.
I noticed in Google webmaster tools this:
Blocked URLs - 193
Downloaded - 13 hours ago
Status - 200 (success)
-
Hi Gary,
If the pages dropped from Google's index that quickly, then chances are, they will be back again almost as quick. If your website has an XML sitemap, you could try pinging this to the search engines to alert them to revisit your site as soon as possible again.
It's bad luck that the meta tag was inserted and this caused immediate negative effects, but it will be recoverable, and likely your pages should re-enter the index at the same positions as they were prior to today.
The key is to just bring Google's bot back to your website as soon as possible to recrawl, publishing a blog post could do this, creating a backlink from a high traffic site (a forum is a good example for this) are some methods of encouraging this.
Hope that helps.
-
Hi Geoff,
The developer had said it got added this morning when we rolled out a discount feature on our website, I think it was the CMS adding it automatically, however now a lot of the keywords that were ranking top 3 are no longer indexed, is it just bad luck? will Google come back?
-
If you are using a content management system, these additional meta tags can often be controlled within your administration panel.
If the meta tag is hard coded into your website header, this will appearing on every page of your website and will subsequently result in you not having any pages indexed in search engines.
As Ben points out, the noindex directive instructs search engine robots not to index that particular page. It would recommended to address this issue as quickly as possible, especially if you have a high traffic website that is getting crawled frequently.
-
Thanks for your quick reply Ben.
It does not seem to be all my pages that have fallen off, just some, the developer said that it only got added this morning by mistake.
I actually typed in the full URL into Google and it does not appear anymore, I was ranked no.2 for that particular keyword, receiving about 150 click per day, not happy!
-
Actually on second thoughts - YES. Yes it probably is the reason your terms are dropping.
-
Could be.
That's a directive that tells search engines no to include that page in their indexes.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Robots blocked by pages webmasters tools
a mistake made in software. How can I solve the problem quickly? help me. XTRjH
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mihoreis0 -
Robots.txt and redirected backlinks
Hey there, since a client's global website has a very complex structure which lead to big duplicate content problems, we decided to disallow crawler access and instead allow access to only a few relevant subdirectories. While indexing has improved since this I was wondering if we might have cut off link juice. Since several backlinks point to the disallowed root directory and are from there redirected (301) to the allowed directory I was wondering if this could cause any problems? Example: If there is a backlink pointing to example.com (disallowed in robots.txt) and is redirected from there to example.com/uk/en (allowed in robots.txt). Would this cut off the link juice? Thanks a lot for your thoughts on this. Regards, Jochen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Online-Marketing-Guy0 -
Robots.txt for Facet Results
Hi Does anyone know how to properly add facets URL's to Robots txt? E.g. of our facets URL - http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/platform-trolleys-trucks#facet:-10028265807368&productBeginIndex:0&orderBy:5&pageView:list& Everything after the # will need to be blocked on all pages with a facet. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Massive URL blockage by robots.txt
Hello people, In May there has been a dramatic increase in blocked URLs by robots.txt, even though we don't have so many URLs or crawl errors. You can view the attachment to see how it went up. The thing is the company hasn't touched the text file since 2012. What might be causing the problem? Can this result any penalties? Can indexation be lowered because of this? ?di=1113766463681
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moneywise_test0 -
Whole site blocked by robots in webmaster tools
My URL is: www.wheretobuybeauty.com.auThis new site has been re-crawled over last 2 weeks, and in webmaster tools index status the following is displayed:Indexed 50,000 pagesblocked by robots 69,000Search query 'site:wheretobuybeauty.com.au' returns 55,000 pagesHowever, all pages in the site do appear to be blocked and over the 2 weeks, the google search query site traffic declined from significant to zero (proving this is in fact the case ).This is a Linux php site and has the following: 55,000 URLs in sitemap.xml submitted successfully to webmaster toolsrobots.txt file existed but did not have any entries to allow or disallow URLs - today I have removed robots.txt file completely URL re-direction within Linux .htaccess file - there are many rows within this complex set of re-directions. Developer has double checked this file and found that it is valid.I have read everything that google and other sources have on this topic and this does not help. Also checked webmaster crawl errors, crawl stats, malware and there is no problem there related to this issue.Is this a duplicate content issue - this is a price comparison site where approx half the products have duplicate product descriptions - duplicated because they are obtained from the suppliers through an XML data file. The suppliers have the descriptions from the files in their own sites.Help!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rrogers0 -
How to Disallow Tag Pages With Robot.txt
Hi i have a site which i'm dealing with that has tag pages for instant - http://www.domain.com/news/?tag=choice How can i exclude these tag pages (about 20+ being crawled and indexed by the search engines with robot.txt Also sometimes they're created dynamically so i want something which automatically excludes tage pages from being crawled and indexed. Any suggestions? Cheers, Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | monster990 -
New server update + wrong robots.txt = lost SERP rankings
Over the weekend, we updated our store to a new server. Before the switch, we had a robots.txt file on the new server that disallowed its contents from being indexed (we didn't want duplicate pages from both old and new servers). When we finally made the switch, we somehow forgot to remove that robots.txt file, so the new pages weren't indexed. We quickly put our good robots.txt in place, and we submitted a request for a re-crawl of the site. The problem is that many of our search rankings have changed. We were ranking #2 for some keywords, and now we're not showing up at all. Is there anything we can do? Google Webmaster Tools says that the next crawl could take up to weeks! Any suggestions will be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 9Studios0 -
Negative impact on crawling after upload robots.txt file on HTTPS pages
I experienced negative impact on crawling after upload robots.txt file on HTTPS pages. You can find out both URLs as follow. Robots.txt File for HTTP: http://www.vistastores.com/robots.txt Robots.txt File for HTTPS: https://www.vistastores.com/robots.txt I have disallowed all crawlers for HTTPS pages with following syntax. User-agent: *
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit
Disallow: / Does it matter for that? If I have done any thing wrong so give me more idea to fix this issue.0