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.
How long til meta robots noindex takes effect?
-
I have a wordpress site with about 3,000 posts and over 1,000 tags. All of the tag archives are currently indexed in Google and I don't want them to be.
I just set the meta robots to no-index all the tag archives and was wondering how long it will take til they're out of the search engines?
Since there are close to 1,500 of these and they are duplicate content it would be nice to have them gone asap.
I noticed Webmaster Tools allows me to resubmit my site to index if my site has changed significantly... should I try that??
Any other advice would be greatly appreciated!
-
Thanks for the responses! The pages just got noindexed today... it took almost exactly a week.
-
I personally would update your robots.txt and then submit a sitemap with the URLs in question via GWMT - this will result in your pages being crawled very quickly (within 48 hours) and then dropped out.
I would also look at either using 301's if you see link-juice from those URLs or using 404s/410s.
I personally found that resubmitting takes longer than pushing an updated sitemap.
-
There's no set time, typically it can take a week or two, I've seen it take a month or longer though to completely noindex all desired results on bigger sites.
There's no harm in re-submtting the site, try submitting URL and all linked pages via webmaster tools, it may help get crawled a little faster.
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
-
Massive unexplained organic traffic drop; disappeared from Google
Hi there,
Search Behavior | | katelynroberts
Our site has experienced a huge organic traffic drop, specifically from Google. The drop occurred on Feb 19 and I've got no clue why it happened. We have not made any significant changes to the website and it doesn't look like there was an algorithm update last week. We don't have any Google penalties or indexing issues noted, and the drop isn't specific to any particular segment/region/keyword. What am I missing? Any advice or insight is super duper appreciated. Our site is a Wordpress/WooCommerice e-commerce site with a blog and long-standing #1 ranks for keywords related to our main product offering. Screen Shot 2024-02-26 at 3.12.25 PM.png
Screen Shot 2024-02-26 at 3.07.52 PM.png0 -
Strange Traffic Movements
Hi there, I'm wondering if anyone can shed some light on this... I'm working with a client whose website is experiencing some odd organic traffic patterns. See screenshot attached. As you can see, there was a sudden cliff fall about a month ago, and then it recovered (almost) entirely. Then, a month to the day later, the same thing happened again. What is the likelihood that this is a data glitch vs an algorithm thing? Any light you can shed on this would be appreciated. Thanks,
Search Behavior | | mhenshall
Marc
Screenshot 2023-08-18 at 09.37.26.png image url)0 -
Ways to Identify Popular Search Terms
Certain searches seem intuitively like they would be popular, but don't appear so in my keyword research on Moz Pro. For example, I am a therapist and would have guessed that a lot of people would be searching for "online therapy California" during this pandemic, but actually those terms are not popular. I looked at Google Trends to see if I could understand this better, but It wasn't very helpful. Any other suggestions for where to get more information when search terms you would expect to be high volume don't appear to be so?
Search Behavior | | LPantell0 -
Where are these "phantom visitors" and are they dangerous?
My Google Analytics always shows visitors on my site that do not show up with a location. They are always shown as being referred from "ads.google.com". Our service is exclusively domestic in the U.S., yet my user location map will show 1 domestic visitor, but 19 total visitors. PLease see attached linked image. Is there some sort of malware that is being exploited on my pages somewhere that these people are accessing? Is there some way of blocking them from my site? Should I? Aren't they skewing my Google Analytics results? Are they potentially dangerous? Thanks in advance for all replies. mKEjs2H.jpg
Search Behavior | | TTR10 -
My e-commerce competes with my own wholesalers
Hi guys, I run a wholesale program, frequently my e-commerce competes with my own wholesalers on many websites like Etsy for example. Usually, the wholesaler displays the exact same picture of my website. May Google find that I have duplicate content? Is there any alternative solution for this instead of asking the wholesaler to make their own pictures? Thanks
Search Behavior | | Tiedemann_Anselm1 -
I changed my home title and meta description but on google, i still see the old title and meta description. Whats the problem here?
I basically changed the title and meta description of my homepage and when i search on google, it still shows old. Whats the issue?
Search Behavior | | prestigeluxuryrentals.com0 -
Trailing slash at end of URLs?
Hi, I'm just about to put up a new site and I need to decide between having no trailing slash at the end of the all the URLs, or putting one in there. I think Matt Cutts has a slight preference for them, as stated here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-interview-googles-matt-cutts-on-redirects-trust-more "Matt says he would slightly advocate for using a trailing slash simply because it clearly indicates that a URL is a folder and not a document." However, I'm really wondering. I mean, if people link to my site, they'll tend not to insert a trailing slash, I'm thinking... Your thoughts would be welcome on this one! Cheers, Luke
Search Behavior | | McTaggart0 -
Studies on influence of meta description on CTR
After having answered quite a lot of questions here, I figured it was about time to ask one of my own. Can anybody point me to decent (experimental) research articles or blogs that actually show variations in meta descriptions influence the Click Through Rate (CTR) of searchers? On dozens of websites on the internet it is stated that 'meta descriptions affect CTR', but (good scientific) sources for those statements are nowhere to be found. The only research I can find that comes closest to providing any evidence is a translated study by dynamical.biz, which states that searchers LOOK a lot at the meta description, but this study (atleast in the translation) mentions nothing of searchers actually CLICKING it. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Search Behavior | | Theo-NL0