Seomoz bar: No Follow and Robots.txt
-
Should the Mozbar pickup 'nofollow" links that are handled in robots.txt ?
the robots.tx blocks categories, but is still show as a followed (green) link when using the mozbar.
Thanks!
Holly
ETA: I'm assuming that- disallow: myblog.com/category/ - is comparable to the nofollow tag on catagory?
-
Thank you Cyrus for that great article link. And like that article states near the end, it touches on a common problem for those of us that assume all the info at SeoMoz is accurate even though it may not be current. (not only seomoz to be fair) I've found several instances where even authorities change their mind or google changes is for them?
But anyways, it appears using canonical or meta tags would be the better solution. Unfortunately,neither is possible in Squarespace. I had just about decided to change the robots.txt , get rid of the disallow: /category/ , and call it a day. But then I found an example where the noindex was used in the robots.txt file of a squarespace website (specializing in SEM among other things). Probably the "longest" robots list I've ever seen!
http://www.hunchfree.com/robots.txt
Would it be a good idea to use noindex, FOLLOW in the robots.txt for /category/
(if that's even possible) or just keep with my "call it a day" solution...at least where robots.txt is concerned.
BTW- I posted a similar question on the reasoning behind the robots.txt for ss websites at the developers forum- nothing but crickets. Unless it's about design, things pretty much drop like a rock. Oh well.
-
As Phil pointed out, blocking a URL with robot.txt may keep search engines from crawling your pages, but that doesn't mean they wont index those pages. The meta robots NOINDEX, FOLLOW tag is a much better choice.
Highly recommend the following article that explains this in more detail:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/serious-robotstxt-misuse-high-impact-solutions
Unfortunately, Sqarespace isn't all that flexible when it comes to meta tags. For the most part, Google is getting better at figuring this kind of duplicate content out, but it's best to address it when you can.
-
Thank you so much for the detailed reply. It's REALLY appreciated. The blog you are referring to is the Squarespace company's blog. This disallow: categories IS however on any site that uses their service. But I've done a similar search with my personal blog on Squarespace and a couple of categories still show up in the SERPs anyways. You can edit the robot file if you want, but you have to do a redirect as you don't have root access.
Unfortunately, (at least I don't think we can), include meta tags for noindex on a page by page basis. You can use it in robots.txt.
It seems their would be a lot more duplicate content issue with tags rather than categories as it's more granular than categories.
The point of all this is I'm creating new websites for some of our homeschool students and want to get it right from the start with the site architecture and how we use tags and categories with a balanced focus on usability as well as optimizing for search. These kids are super interested in all the reasoning behind things and their questions are tougher than any client! Ha!
Again, Thanks so much and take care,
Holly
-
Thanks for providing some more detail Holly. I definitely think it's applicable to leave here and I'm happy to help.
Some people like to prevent search engines from crawling category pages out of a fear of duplicate content. For example, say you have a post that's at this URL:
site.com/blog/chocolate-milk-is-great.html
and it's also the only post in the category "milk" with this url:
then search engines see the same exact content (your blog post) on two different URLs. Since duplicate content is a big no-no, many people choose to prevent the engines from crawling category pages. Although, in my experience, it's really up to you. Do you feel like your category pages will provide value to users? Would you like them to show up in search results? If so, then make sure you let Google crawl them.
If you DON'T want category pages to be indexed by Google, then I think there's a better choice than using robots.txt. Your best bet is applying the noindex, follow tag to these pages. This tag tells the engines NOT to index this page, but to follow all of the links on it. This is better than robots.txt because robots.txt won't always prevent your site from showing up in search results (that's another long story), but the noindex tag will.
If I'm not making sense at all then please just let me know :).
Lastly, from what I can see on your site and blog, it doesn't look like the category pages for your blog are actually in your robots.txt file. Have someone do a double check.
To check this myself, I just did a google search for this URL:
http://blog.squarespace.com/blog/?category=Roadmap
And it showed up in Google right away. Looks like something isn't going according to plan. Don't worry though, that happens all of the time and it should be an easy fix.
-
I know one day i may wakeup one morning and this will all click, but for now perhaps an example will help me get past this initial hurdle.
Squarespace disallows categories in the robots.txt, but using the mozbar I see the category links are green.
So if I understand (partly anyways), the disallow in robots keeps the bots from crawling those pages when they come knocking at my site. However, the category links in a blog post are being crawled? or what's the point?
I'm just trying to understand the reasoning behind disallowing categories and how that should impact the tagging and categorizing of blog posts.
Perhaps I should of started a new question? or is it applicable to leave it here..
-
The nofollow attribute and robots.txt file serve different purposes.
Nofollow Attribute
This attribute is used to tell search engines, "Don't follow this link", or even "Don't follow any links on this page." It doesn't prevent pages from being indexed, just prevents the search engines from following that link from that particular page.
Robots.txt
This file contains a list of pages that the search engine should not access and should not index.
To read more about robots.txt check out this page: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/controlling-how-search-engines-access.html
For more on Nofollow, check out this page: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=96569
Hope this helps!
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
-
Keyword rankings are not updating from past two weeks? Is there any issue in SEOmoz tool ?
I have added 215 keywords to my account. From past two weeks i am waiting to see the rankings, however it's not updating.
Moz Pro | | Sasank0 -
Is it me or is SEOMOZ Q&A slow
I try and answer many questions here on SEOMoz Q&A, but the page load speed seems so slow I think my browser is going to time out. I don't remember it being this slow. Anybody else noticing slow loading (especially when asking, answering, or replying to questions)?
Moz Pro | | Francisco_Meza1 -
One Follow Link from each subdomain/domain best for SEO?
Hi there, we have a lot of customers linking to our homepage from a subdomain of our domain or from an external domain. From SEO point of view is it best that they all only have one DoFollow Link and the rest of the links are NoFollow? Or does this have no matter at all? The problem is that we have like 900.000 links but only from round about 1000 different root domains. If we put like half of the links on NoFollow our ratio of links/ different root domains gets better. Thanks for answering! Sebastian
Moz Pro | | Sebastian230 -
Why does Seomoz report other values then Google Webmaster?
Dear Seomoz Community I check my Seomoz ranking from time to and today I saw a big discrepancy between the reported domains linking to my site in the Site Explorer and Google Webmaster tools. Seomoz reports 19 linking domains
Moz Pro | | menelik
Google shows 150 domains linking to my site. Is there an explanation for this discrepancy? Thank for helping me out 😉0 -
SEOmoz v's Google Webmaster Keyword Ranking
Hi, how accurate is SEOmoz keyword ranking v's Google Webmaster? Some Keywords in SEOmoz say I'm in position 3 in Ireland for some Keywords and in Google Webmaster they are figures like 16. I understand in Google Webmaster that the keyword position is an Average What should I be going by and what is the credibility of both ranking estimators?
Moz Pro | | Socialdude0 -
"Powered by SEOMOZ" at the bottom of White Label reports?
I'd like to upgrade to Pro Plus for the white label / own branding option. However, I have just noticed that the "white label" pdf reports still feature "Powered by SEOMOZ" at the bottom of each page. Is this a mistake? $2400 / year should be enough to remove SEOMOZ branding completely, surely?
Moz Pro | | AndieF1 -
301 redirect in SEOMoz campaigns tool
I did a 301 redirect to another domain and I would like to change the domain name in SeoMoz campaigns tool to continue to track the keywords, is it possible ?
Moz Pro | | mhenriques0 -
Why is blocking the SEOmoz crawler considered a red "error?"
Why is blocking the SEOmoz crawler considered a red "error?" Please see attached image... Y3Vay.png
Moz Pro | | vkernel0