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
    • 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.

    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
    • 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. SEO Tactics
  3. Technical SEO
  4. Should I nofollow search results 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 nofollow search results pages

Technical SEO
3
6
3.2k
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.
  • spiralsites
    spiralsites last edited by Nov 24, 2012, 8:44 AM

    I have a customer site where you can search for products they sell

    url format is:

    domainname/search/keywords/

    keywords being what the user has searched for.

    This means the number of pages can be limitless as the client has over 7500 products.

    or should I simply rel canonical the search page or simply no follow it?

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • spiralsites
      spiralsites @spiralsites last edited by Nov 25, 2012, 7:09 AM Nov 25, 2012, 7:09 AM

      cheers

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Cyrus-Shepard
        Cyrus-Shepard last edited by Nov 25, 2012, 3:52 AM Nov 24, 2012, 8:45 PM

        Hi there,

        You've got the right idea, but let me suggest another tactic.

        It's true that search functions can generate 1000's of urls that all tend to look like one another. Google suggests that you keep search result pages non-indexed, as these pages offer very little value and create tons of duplicate content.

        http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/duplicate-content

        Here's one way to handle your situation:

        1. Put a meta "noindex,follow" tag in your search pages header, like this:

        This tells search engines not to index the page, but allows them to follow the links on the page and flow link juice.

        2. Hopefully you have a good site architecture and ways for search engines to discover your content. After step one, you can put a directive in your robots.txt file to block that directory from being crawled.

        Something like:

        User-agent: *
        Disallow: /search/
        

        Which blocks anything in the search directory.

        3. Find out if search engines have already indexed a lot of your search pages by performing a site: search in Google, like so:

        site:yourdomain.com/search

        If you find pages in Google's index that shouldn't be there, you can use Google Webmasters URL removal tool to take these out of the index. You can remove the entire search directory with a single request.

        http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1663427

        This is a powerful and sometimes dangerous tool, so be careful!

        4. Finally, if you'd like to add "nofollow" to your search results pages, this should be fine, but only after you've completed the steps above.

        Keep in mind, this is only one possible solution. If you have significant link juice flowing through your search results, this strategy may not be the best. But in general, you want to keep search results out of Google's index, so I'm comfortable recommending this strategy for 90% of all cases.

        Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • SEO5Team
          SEO5Team @spiralsites last edited by Nov 24, 2012, 2:10 PM Nov 24, 2012, 2:10 PM

          yes i would leave them.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • spiralsites
            spiralsites @SEO5Team last edited by Nov 24, 2012, 2:05 PM Nov 24, 2012, 2:05 PM

            so even though the search could generate lots of extra pages you think I should leave the pages as is?

            SEO5Team spiralsites 2 Replies Last reply Nov 25, 2012, 7:09 AM Reply Quote 0
            • SEO5Team
              SEO5Team last edited by Nov 24, 2012, 2:11 PM Nov 24, 2012, 1:34 PM

              Don't use the "no follow" attribute. The only time i'd recommend using "no follow" is on pages where you have external links . Blog comment pages, resources page etc.

              spiralsites 1 Reply Last reply Nov 24, 2012, 2:05 PM Reply Quote 0
              • 1 / 1
              1 out of 6
              • First post
                1/6
                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

              • vivekrathore

                Is it good to redirect million of pages on a single page?

                My site has 10 lakh approx. genuine urls. But due to some unidentified bugs site has created irrelevant urls 10 million approx.  Since we don’t know the origin of these non-relevant links, we want to redirect or remove all these urls. Please suggest is it good to redirect such a high number urls to home page or to throw 404 for these pages.  Or any other suggestions to solve this issue.

                Technical SEO | Nov 21, 2014, 6:47 PM | vivekrathore
                0
              • whis

                Doubleclick and NoFollow

                Hi, I'm trying to work out whether a group of links to my site are Follow or NoFollow. There is no rel=noFollow on the link but they do appear to go through Doubleclick (the link begins with this http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/), will this automatically cut-off any link juice? Thanks.

                Technical SEO | Jun 20, 2013, 12:20 PM | whis
                0
              • JoaoPdaCosta-WBR

                Splitting Page Authority with two URLs for the same page.

                Hello guys, My website is currently holding two different URLs for the same page and I am under the impression such set up is dividing my Page Authority and Link Juice. We currently have the following page with both URLs below: www.wbresearch.com/soldiertechnologyusa/home.aspx
                www.wbresearch.com/soldiertechnologyusa/ Analysing the page authority and backlinks I identified that we are splitting the amount of backlinks (links from sites, social media and therefore authority). "/home.aspx"
                PA: 67
                Linking Root Domains: 52
                Total Links: 272 "/"
                PA: 64
                Linking Root Domains: 29
                Total Links: 128 I am under the impression that if the URLs were the same we would maximise our backlinks and therefore page authority. My Question: How can I fix this? Should I have a 301 redirect from the page "/" to the "/home.aspx" therefore passing the authority and link juice of “/” directly to “/homes.aspx”? Trying to gather thoughts and ideas on this, suggestions are much appreciated? Thanks!

                Technical SEO | Nov 12, 2012, 12:58 PM | JoaoPdaCosta-WBR
                0
              • Dan-Lawrence

                Can you 301 redirect a page to an already existing/old page ?

                If you delete a page (say a sub department/category page on an ecommerce store) should you 301 redirect its url to the nearest equivalent page still on the site or just delete and forget about it ? Generally should you try and 301 redirect any old pages your deleting if you can find suitable page with similar content to redirect to. Wont G consider it weird if you say a page has moved permenantly to such and such an address if that page/address existed before ? I presume its fine since say in the scenario of consolidating departments on your store you want to redirect the department page your going to delete to the existing pages/department you are consolidating old departments products into ?

                Technical SEO | Nov 5, 2012, 1:05 PM | Dan-Lawrence
                0
              • Romana

                Why are Google search results different if you are log'd into Google or not?

                I get different results when I'm log'd into my Google account associated with my website than if I'm not.  The same country is occurring. So how can I rely on the google results I'm seeing? For instance my site is page 1 with the improvements I made based on SEOMOZ if I'm log'd in.  Yet I'm not on the first 25 pages if I'm not logged in.

                Technical SEO | Oct 6, 2012, 8:02 PM | Romana
                0
              • WEB-IRS

                No Search Results Found - Should this return status code 404?

                A question came up today on how to correctly serve the right status code on pages where no search results are found. I did a couple searches on some major eccomerce and news sites and they were ALL serving status code 200 for No Search Results Found http://www.zappos.com/dsfasdgasdgadsg http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=sdafasdklgjasdklgjsjdjkl http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=dfjakljgdkslagklasd&_sacat=0 http://www.cnn.com/search/?query=sdgadgdsagas&x=0&y=0&primaryType=mixed&sortBy=date&intl=false http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=sdagasdgasdgasg I thought I read somewhere were it was recommended to serve a status code 404 on these types of pages.  Based on what I found above, all sites were serving a 200, so it appears this may not be the best practice. Any thoughts?

                Technical SEO | Jun 20, 2012, 10:36 PM | WEB-IRS
                0
              • reallyitsme

                Adding 'NoIndex Meta' to Prestashop Module & Search pages.

                Hi Looking for a fix for the PrestaShop platform Look for the definitive answer on how to best stop the indexing of PrestaShop modules such as "send to a friend", "Best Sellers" and site search pages. We want to be able to add a meta noindex ()to pages ending in: /search?tag=ball&p=15 or /modules/sendtoafriend/sendtoafriend-form.php We already have in the robot text: Disallow: /search.php
                Disallow: /modules/ (Google seems to ignore these) But as a further tool we would like to incude the noindex to all these pages too to stop duplicated pages. I assume this needs to be in either the head.tpl or the .php file of each PrestaShop module.? Or is there a general site wide code fix to put in the metadata to apply' Noindex Meta' to certain files. Current meta code here: Please reply with where to add code and what the code should be. Thanks in advance.

                Technical SEO | Apr 5, 2012, 1:59 PM | reallyitsme
                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.