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    4. Meta tag "noindex,nofollow" by accident

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    Meta tag "noindex,nofollow" by accident

    Technical SEO
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    • Zitana
      Zitana last edited by

      Hi,

      3 weeks ago I wanted to release a new website (made in WordPress), so I neatly created 301 redirects for all files and folders of my old html website and transferred the WordPress site into the index folder. Job well done I thought, but after a few days, my site suddenly disappeared from google.

      I read in other Q&A's that this could happen so I waited a little longer till I finally saw today that there was a meta robots added on every page with "noindex, nofollow". For some reason, the WordPress setting "I want to forbid search engines, but allow normal visitors to my website" was selected, although I never even opened that section called "Privacy".

      So my question is, will this have a negative impact on my pagerank afterwards?

      Thanks,

      Sven

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Zitana
        Zitana @blu42media last edited by

        I uploaded the sitemap, let's hope in a few days everything will be normal again and that I'll will regain my PR1 keyword.

        Thanks John, and Ryan for your correction!

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

          Reconsideration requests are for when Google removes a site from it's index for spam or other reasons. There would not be any reason to use one in this instance.

          First and foremost, fix the setting. Then verify the noindex tag is removed by visiting a few of your site's pages. Right-click, choose View Page Source and ensure the tag is gone.

          Next, as John suggested create a fresh site map and submit it to Google. Log into Google WMT to ensure they have received the updated map. Since this is a new site and you seem anxious to fix this issue, take a moment and check your robots.txt file from Google WMT to ensure there are not any issues.

          If your site is large, it may take time for all your pages to re-appear. If your site is small, you will see results faster.

          If there is any 1 or 2 articles you feel are critically important to be indexed fast, then I would suggest tweeting a link for the page to help increase it's visibility to Google. I have no knowledge of this working but I even heard of a person tweeting a link to their site map to get indexed faster. I have no idea if it worked but I love the creativity.

          Good luck.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • blu42media
            blu42media last edited by

            Do you have a Google account with Webmaster Tools?  If not, go ahead and sign up for one (it's free!) then submit your site for reconsideration to Google.  While you're at it, make sure your XML site map is working.  You should be back on Google within a few days to a week.

            It sounds like this is a short-term nofollow situation, so that shouldn't be too much of an issue.

            -John

            Zitana 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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