Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI
      Moz Local

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Moz Tools
    3. Moz Pro
    4. Should I set blog category/tag pages as "noindex"? If so, how do I prevent "meta noindex" Moz crawl errors for those pages?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Should I set blog category/tag pages as "noindex"? If so, how do I prevent "meta noindex" Moz crawl errors for those pages?

    Moz Pro
    3
    6
    7398
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • NichGunn
      NichGunn Subscriber last edited by

      From what I can tell, SEO experts recommend setting blog category and tag pages (ie. "http://site.com/blog/tag/some-product") as "noindex, follow" in order to keep the page quality of indexable pages high. However, I just received a slew of critical crawl warnings from Moz for having these pages set to "noindex." Should the pages be indexed? If not, why am I receiving critical crawl warnings from Moz and how do I prevent this?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • LoganRay
        LoganRay @VERBInteractive last edited by

        In the situation outline by the OP, these pages are noindexed. There’s no value to clutterig up crawl reports  on these pages. Block rogerbot from non-critical parts of your site, unless you want to be alerted of issues, then don’t.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • VERBInteractive
          VERBInteractive last edited by

          Thanks, I'm not concerned about the crawl depth of the search engine bots, there is nothing in your fix that would affect that, I'm curious of the decrease in crawl depth of the site with the Moz as we use that to spot issues with the site.

          One of the clients I implemented the fix on went from 4.6K crawled pages to 3.4K and the fix would have removed an expected 1.2K pages.

          The other client went from 5K to 3.7K and the fix would have removed an expected 1.3K pages.

          TL;DR - Good News everybody, the robots.txt fix didn't reduce the crawl depth of the moz crawler!

          LoganRay 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • LoganRay
            LoganRay @VERBInteractive last edited by

            I agree, unfortunately Moz doesn't have an internal disallow feature that gives you the option to feed them info on where rogerbot can and can't go. I haven't come across any issues with this approach, crawl depth by search engine bots will not be affected since the user-agent is specified.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • VERBInteractive
              VERBInteractive last edited by

              Thanks for the solution! We have been coming across a similar issue with some of our sites and I although I'm not a big fan of this type of workaround, I don't see any other options and we want to focus on the real issues. You don't want to ignore the rule in case other pages that should be indexed are marked noindex by mistake.

              Logan, are you still getting the depth of crawls after making this type of fix? Have any other issues arisen from this approach?

              Let us know

              LoganRay 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • LoganRay
                LoganRay last edited by

                Hi Nichole,

                You're correct in noindexing these pages, they serve little to no value from an SEO perspective. Moz is always going to alert you of noindex tags when they find them since it's such a critical issue if that tag shows up in unexpected places. If you want to remove these issues from your crawl report, add the following directive to your robots.txt file, this will prevent Moz from crawling these URLs and therefore reporting on them:

                User-agent: rogerbot
                Disallow: /tag/
                Disallow: /category/

                *edit - do not prevent all user-agents from crawling these URLs, as it will prevent search engines from seeing your noindex tag, they can't obey what they aren't permitted to see. If you want, once all tag & category pages have been removed from the index, you can update your robots.txt to remove the rogerbot directive and add the disallows for tag & category to the * user agent.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • gokimedia

                  Pages with Duplicate Content Error

                  duplicate content crawl errors seo audit

                  Hello, the result of renewed content appeared in the scan results in my Shopify Store. But these products are unique. Why am I getting this error? Can anyone please help to explain why? screenshot-analytics.moz.com-2021.10.28-19_53_09.png

                  Moz Pro | | gokimedia
                  0
                • scienceisrad

                  What to do with a site of >50,000 pages vs. crawl limit?

                  What happens if you have a site in your Moz Pro campaign that has more than 50,000 pages? Would it be better to choose a sub-folder of the site to get a thorough look at that sub-folder? I have a few different large government websites that I'm tracking to see how they are fairing in rankings and SEO.  They are not my own websites.  I want to see how these agencies are doing compared to what the public searches for on technical topics and social issues that the agencies manage.  I'm an academic looking at science communication.  I am in the process of re-setting up my campaigns to get better data than I have been getting -- I am a newbie to SEO and the campaigns I slapped together a few months ago need to be set up better, such as all on the same day, making sure I've set it to include www or not for what ranks, refining my keywords, etc. I am stumped on what to do about the agency websites being really huge, and what all the options are to get good data in light of the 50,000 page crawl limit.  Here is an example of what I mean: To see how EPA is doing in searches related to air quality, ideally I'd track all of EPA's web presence. www.epa.gov has 560,000 pages -- if I put in www.epa.gov for a campaign, what happens with the site having so many more pages than the 50,000 crawl limit?  What do I miss out on?  Can I "trust" what I get? www.epa.gov/air has only 1450 pages, so if I choose this for what I track in a campaign, the crawl will cover that subfolder completely, and I am getting a complete picture of this air-focused sub-folder ... but (1) I'll miss out on air-related pages in other sub-folders of www.epa.gov, and (2) it seems like I have so much of the 50,000-page crawl limit that I'm not using and could be using.  (However, maybe that's not quite true - I'd also be tracking other sites as competitors - e.g. non-profits that advocate in air quality, industry air quality sites - and maybe those competitors count towards the 50,000-page crawl limit and would get me up to the limit? How do the competitors you choose figure into the crawl limit?) Any opinions on which I should do in general on this kind of situation?  The small sub-folder vs. the full humongous site vs. is there some other way to go here that I'm not thinking of?

                  Moz Pro | | scienceisrad
                  0
                • NutcrackerBalletGifts

                  Items listed based on size - Use "inches" or " " "

                  I sell Decorative nutcrackers of various sizes. At this time, I use the term "inches". I was looking at my competitor the other day, and when I did a search on his site, using the term inches did not provide me with a result. I was forced to use ex. "10" nutcracker" instead of "10 inch nutcracker". Is there a preferable usage for seo purposes. Thanks! my site: http://www.nutcrackerballetgifts.com/category/5/10-Inch-Nutcrackers.html his ite: http://www.kurtadler.com/Search?search=10"+nutcracker

                  Moz Pro | | NutcrackerBalletGifts
                  0
                • Highline_Ideas

                  Need help understanding search filter URL's and meta tags

                  Good afternoon Mozzers, One of our clients is a real estate agent and on that site there is a search field that will allow a person to search by filtered categories. Currently, the URL structure makes a new URL for each filter option and in my Moz reports I get the report that there is missing meta data. However, the page is the same the filter options are different so I am at a loss as to how to proper tag our site to optimize those URL's. Can I rel canonical the URL's or alt rel them? I have been looking for a solution for a few days now and like I said I am at a loss of how to properly resolve these warning messages, or if I should even be concerned with the warning messages from Moz (obviously I should be concerned, they are warning messages for a reason). Thank you for your assistance in advance!

                  Moz Pro | | Highline_Ideas
                  0
                • EEE3

                  Moz Pro vs. Moz Analytics

                  Beta version has been out for awhile. Curious to know what people think of Moz Analytics. Personally, I'm having a hard time making the switch from Pro to Moz Analytics because I'm so used to the navigation and layout of Pro. What does everyone else think of the new Moz Analytics? Advantages? Disadvantages?

                  Moz Pro | | EEE3
                  1
                • johnny122

                  Noindex/nofollow on blog comments; is it good or bad ?

                  Hi, I changed the design of one my wordpress website at the beginning of the month. I also added a "facebook seo comments" plugin to rewrite facebook comments as normal comments. As most of the website comments are facebook comments, I went from 250 noindex/nofollow comments to 950; URL's are ?replytocom=4822 etc. Moz campaign noticed it and I'm asking myself : is it good to have comments in noindex/nofollow ? Should I do something about this ? Erwan.

                  Moz Pro | | johnny122
                  0
                • catalinmoraru

                  Problem crawling a website with age verification page.

                  Hy every1, Need your help very urgent. I need to crawl a website that first has a page where you need to put your age for verification and after that you are redirected to the website. My problem is that SEOmoz, crawls only that first page, not the whole website. How can I crawl the whole website?, do you need me to upload a link to the website? Thank you very much Catalin

                  Moz Pro | | catalinmoraru
                  0
                • Caseman

                  What Exactly Does "Linking Root Domains" mean??

                  What Exactly Does "Linking Root Domains" mean?? And how does it affect your ranking for certain Keywords?? Thanks

                  Moz Pro | | Caseman
                  57

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                • Digital Marketers
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.