undefined
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
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • 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.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    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
    • 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.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • 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. SEO Tactics
  3. Technical SEO
  4. Which pages to "noindex"

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.

Which pages to "noindex"

Technical SEO
5
7
12.6k
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.
  • mmaes
    mmaes last edited by Mar 29, 2011, 11:45 AM

    I have read through the many articles regarding the use of Meta Noindex, but what I haven't been able to find is a clear explanation of when, why or what to use this on.

    I'm thinking that it would be appropriate to use it on:

    legal pages such as privacy policy and terms of use
    search results page
    blog archive and category pages

    Thanks for any insight of this.

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • KeriMorgret
      KeriMorgret @mmaes last edited by Apr 6, 2011, 4:09 PM Mar 30, 2011, 2:01 PM

      Here are two posts that may be helpful in both explaining how to set up a robots.txt for wordpress, and the thinking behind setting up which parts to exclude.

      http://www.cogentos.com/bloggers-guide-to-using-robotstxt-and-robots-meta-tags-to-optimise-indexing/

      http://codex.wordpress.org/Search_Engine_Optimization_for_WordPress#Robots.txt_Optimization

      The wordpress link (second link) has a link to several other resources as well.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • mmaes
        mmaes @KeriMorgret last edited by Mar 30, 2011, 10:11 AM Mar 30, 2011, 10:11 AM

        Yes I'm using wordpress.

        KeriMorgret 1 Reply Last reply Mar 30, 2011, 2:01 PM Reply Quote 0
        • KeriMorgret
          KeriMorgret last edited by Mar 29, 2011, 6:44 PM Mar 29, 2011, 6:44 PM

          You also want to block any admin directory, plugin directory, etc. Are you using Wordpress or a specific CMS? There are often best-practice posts for robots.txt files for specific platforms.

          mmaes 1 Reply Last reply Mar 30, 2011, 10:11 AM Reply Quote 0
          • TellThemEverything
            TellThemEverything last edited by Mar 29, 2011, 12:20 PM Mar 29, 2011, 12:20 PM

            yes, generally you would noindex your about us, contact us, privacy, terms pages since these are rarely searched and in fact are so heavily linked to internally that they would rank well if indexed.

            all search results should be noindexed - google wants to do the search 🙂

            definitely NOT blog/category pages - these are your gold content!

            I also noindex any URL accessed by https

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote -4
            • CPU
              CPU last edited by Mar 29, 2011, 12:12 PM Mar 29, 2011, 12:12 PM

              As well as pagination pages I have read, but not done it myself, that you should consider using it on low value pages that you are wouldn't want to rank above other pages on the site (hopefully they wouldn't anyway) and also sitemaps as don't necessarily want them to appear in the index but definitely want them followed.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Theo-NL
                Theo-NL last edited by Mar 29, 2011, 11:59 AM Mar 29, 2011, 11:59 AM

                Noindexed pages are pages that you want your link juices flowing through, but not have them rank as individual entries in the search engines.

                • I think your legal pages should rank as individual pages. If I wanted to find your privacy policy and searched for 'privacy policy company name', I'd expect to find an entry where I can click and find your privacy policy

                • Your search results page (the internal ones) are great candidates for a noindex attribute. If a search engine robot happens to stumble upon one (via a link from somebody else for example), you'd want the spider to start crawling pages from there and spreading link juice over your site. However, under most circumstances you don't want this result page to rank on itself in the search engines, as it usually offers thin value to your visitors

                • Blog archive and category pages are useful pages to visitors and I personally wouldn't noindex these

                Bonus: your paginated results ('page 2+ in a result set that has multiple pages') are great candidates for noindex. It'll keep the juices running, without having all these pretty much meaningless (and highly dynamic) pages in the search index.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • 1 / 1
                1 out of 7
                • First post
                  1/7
                  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

                • webbeemoz

                  I want to move some pages of my website to a folder and nav menu in those pages should only show inner page links, will it hurt SEO?

                  seo consulting seo expert seo page treatment

                  Hi, My website has a few SaaS products, to make my website simple i want to move my website some pages to its specific folder structure , so eg website.com/product1/features
                  website.com/product1/pricing
                  website.com/product1/information and same for product2 and so on, the website.com/product1/.. menu will only show the links of product1 and only one link to homepage (possibly in footer). Please share your opinion will it be a good idea, from UI perspective it will be simple , but i am not sure about SEO perspective, please help thanks

                  Technical SEO | Oct 13, 2023, 2:10 AM | webbeemoz
                  1
                • AdenaSEO

                  Link rel="prev" AND canonical

                  Hi guys, When you have several tabs on your website with products, you can most likely navigate to page 2, 3, 4 etc...
                  You can add the link rel="prev" and link rel="next" tags to make sure that 1 page get's indexed / ranked by Google. am I correct? However this still means that all the pages can get indexed, right? For example a webshop makes use of the link rel="prev" and ="next" tags. In the Google results page though, all the seperate tabs pages are still visible/indexed..
                  http://www.domain.nl/watches/?tab=1
                  http://www.domain.nl/watches/?tab=24
                  http://www.domain.nl/watches/?tab=19
                  etc..... Can we prevent this, and make sure only the main page get's indexed and ranked,  by adding a canonical link on every 'tab page' to the main page --> www.domain.nl/watches/ I hope I explained it well and I'm looking forward to hearing from you. Regards, Tom

                  Technical SEO | Jul 14, 2015, 3:03 PM | AdenaSEO
                  1
                • Webrevolve

                  What is the difference between "Referring Pages" and "Total Backlinks" [on Ahrefs]?

                  I always thought they were essentially the same thing myself but appears there may be a difference? Any one care to help me out? Cheers!

                  Technical SEO | Apr 3, 2014, 5:21 PM | Webrevolve
                  0
                • reidsteven75

                  How Does Google's "index" find the location of pages in the "page directory" to return?

                  This is my understanding of how Google's search works, and I am unsure about one thing in specific: Google continuously crawls websites and stores each page it finds (let's call it "page directory") Google's "page directory" is a cache so it isn't the "live" version of the page Google has separate storage called "the index" which contains all the keywords searched.  These keywords in "the index" point to the pages in the "page directory" that contain the same keywords. When someone searches a keyword, that keyword is accessed in the "index" and returns all relevant pages in the "page directory" These returned pages are given ranks based on the algorithm The one part I'm unsure of is how Google's "index" knows the location of relevant pages in the "page directory".  The keyword entries in the "index" point to the "page directory" somehow. I'm thinking each page has a url in the "page directory", and the entries in the "index" contain these urls.   Since Google's "page directory" is a cache, would the urls be the same as the live website (and would the keywords in the "index" point to these urls)? For example if webpage is found at wwww.website.com/page1, would the "page directory" store this page under that url in Google's cache? The reason I want to discuss this is to know the effects of changing a pages url by understanding how the search process works better.

                  Technical SEO | Jun 2, 2013, 12:00 PM | reidsteven75
                  0
                • franchisesolutions

                  What is the best way to find missing alt tags on my site (site wide - not page by page)?

                  I am looking to find all the missing alt tags on my site at once. I have a FF extension that use to do it page by page, but my site is huge and that will take forever. Thanks!!

                  Technical SEO | Nov 12, 2015, 4:17 PM | franchisesolutions
                  1
                • TOMMarketingLtd.

                  Home Page .index.htm and .com Duplicate Page Content/Title

                  I have been whittling away at the duplicate content on my clients' sites, thanks to SEOmoz's pro report, and have been getting push back from the account manager at register.com (the site was built here and the owner doesn't want to move it).  He says these are the exact same page and he can't access one to redirect to the other.  Any suggestions? The SEOmoz report says there is duplicate content on both these urls: Durango Mountain Biking | Durango Mountain Resort - Cascade Village http://www.cascadevillagehotel.com/index.htm Durango Mountain Biking | Durango Mountain Resort - Cascade Village http://www.cascadevillagehotel.com/ Your help is greatly appreciated! Sheryl

                  Technical SEO | Sep 18, 2012, 7:32 PM | TOMMarketingLtd.
                  0
                • slangdon

                  Google is Showing Website as "Untitled"

                  My freelance designer made some changes to my website and all of a sudden my homepage was showing the title I have in Dmoz. We thought maybe the NOODP tag was not correct, so we edited that a little and now the site is showing as "Untitled". The website is http://www.chemistrystore.com/. Of course he didn't save an old copy that we can revert to. That is a practice that will end. I have no idea why the title and description that we have set for the homepage is not showing in google when it previously was. Another weird thing that I noticed is that when I do ( site:chemistrystore.com ) in Google I get the https version of the site showing with the correct title and description. When I do ( site:www.chemistrystore.com ) in Google I don't have the hompage showing up from what I can tell, but there are 4,000+ pages to the site. My guess is that if it is showing up, it is showing up as "Untitled". My question is.... How can we get Google to start displaying the proper title and description again?

                  Technical SEO | Feb 2, 2012, 7:47 PM | slangdon
                  0
                • wparlaman

                  What's the difference between a category page and a content page

                  Hello, Little confused on this matter. From a website architectural and content stand point, what is the difference between a category page and a content page? So lets say I was going to build a website around tea. My home page would be about tea. My category pages would be: White Tea, Black Tea, Oolong Team and British Tea correct? (  I Would write content for each of these topics on their respective category pages correct?) Then suppose I wrote articles on organic white tea, white tea recipes, how to brew white team etc...( Are these content pages?) Do I think link FROM my category page ( White Tea) to my ( Content pages ie; Organic White Tea, white tea receipes etc) or do I link from my content page to my category page? I hope this makes sense. Thanks, Bill

                  Technical SEO | May 22, 2011, 5:03 PM | wparlaman
                  0

                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
                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.