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 to change noindex to index?
-
Hey,
I've recently upgraded to a pro SEOmoz account and have realised i have 14574 issues to do with 'blocked by meta-robot' and that 'This page is being kept out of the search engine indexes by the meta tag , which may have a value of "noindex", keeping this page out of the index.'
How can i change this so my pages get indexed?
I read somewhere that i need to change my privacy settings but that thread was 3 years old and now the WP Dashboard has updated..
Please let me know
Many thanks, Jamie
P.s Im using WordPress 3.5
And i have the XML sitemap plugin
And i have no idea where to look for this robots.txt file..
-
Answered below as well, but wanted to drop this here in case anyone else is looking. WP has changed the location of what used to be "Privacy" under settings. The functionality (which blocks search engines from your wordpress installation) is now under Settings->Reading
[Screenshot](Hi Mark Did you find it? I struggled too for a bit, but it's moved to Settings->Reading See this screenshot -Dan)
-Dan
-
Hi Mark
Did you find it? I struggled too for a bit, but it's moved to Settings->Reading
-Dan
-
Just updated it to this: http://gyazo.com/4a8a008055abbd563f96bf29b6b259a6.png?1357651763
And then checked my page sources and they're still 'noindex' - why can't i correct this?!
-
Just installed it and now its added this field into my settings>Reading
http://gyazo.com/0be601793fc1cb866d918ea61e7d8ec1.png?1357649141
What do i need to change to allow it to index all my pages?
(Don't want to type something in that will block all my pages
) -
Just asked the WordPress Forums and one of their reply was to install this plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-robots-txt/
Just seems to add the privacy tab again so i can set the settings to: I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Bing, Technorati) and archivers
Like you first stated
Will install it now and see how it goes
-
It could be that the older wordpress had a setting that this new version has decided to ignore. This is typical of programmers!
The next possibility is to look in the database, but the options part of the database is hard to read.
Another idea is to look in the code of the the theme and hack it, so it is permanently index, follow or just remove that altogether.
Maybe someone else has a better idea?
Alan
-
If i remember correctly my pages were still not being indexed before i installed the all in one SEO pack.
Here is my settings for the SEO pack: http://gyazo.com/6b4dddacb307bdacfdd7741894e0356b.png?1357647136
As you can see they are as you explained.
Any other ideas?
-
Yes, I would have them indexed in that case too.
I think it is the categories that are noindex.
I think this is an 'All in one SEO pack' adjustable feature.
In the setup for that, look for a checkbox:
"use noindex for categories"
uncheck that if it is checked.
If that isn't it, I don't know the answer
-
Thanks again for your reply Alan.
Currently the site is still in its final stages of development and once my automated system is finally built and implemented then I won't need to be changing any of the index pages except posting a few blogs once in a week or so.
So i think it would benefit me more to have each of my index pages getting indexed but then again I'm not sure on how to go about allowing them to be indexed due to WordPress' update.
My plugins are all highly downloaded and i use the 'All in one SEO pack' - if that may be the problem? I've gone through all the settings and the noindex buttons are all anticked.
Perhaps it could be the initial theme i used?
-
Thank you Mark
Nice looking site!
Your front page is index, follow.
Index pages are noindex, follow
Final pages are index, follow
I do something very close to this on my site.
Often, index pages are useless to searchers, because the index page changes so quickly that by the time the info gets into a search result, the information is no longer on that page, and the searcher will either just click away, cursing you and your site, or they will go looking through a few index pages and then curse you when they can't find what they wanted.
So I agree with the way you're doing that - if it is the case that the content changes quickly. If the index pages are just collectors of groups of items, then index, follow would be better, provided that you have enough text on the page to make it worthwhile.
As to how to make that happen, it isn't obvious.
I need to upgrade some of my sites to 3.5.
It could be that you have a plugin or a "custom field" that sets the index follow.
I suggest you edit a post and a page and scroll down to see if you have a field that handles it, such as "robotsmeta" that is set to "noindex,follow" for those pages
-
Hi Alan, thanks for your quick response.
My website is: www.FifaCoinStore.com
Here is a printscreen of my settings: http://gyazo.com/0cd3d21c5ec1797873a5c7cacc85a588.png?1357600674
I believe since the WordPress 3.5 update they have removed this privacy option which is why i can't seem to find it. I read this page from WordPress on it: http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Reading_Screen
Or am i just looking in the wrong place?
Thanks again
-
Hello Mark.
Please send me a bitly shortened link to your website so I can see what you are seeing
It probably isn't your robots file.
First try this.
In the Admin section, you should see "Settings" on the left navigation
Click that and you should see "Privacy"
Click that and you should see two radio buttons
<label for="blog-public">I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Bing, Technorati) and archivers</label>
<label for="blog-norobots">I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors</label>
Obviously, choose the top one and save it.
Then, refresh your front page or inner pages and look in the code to see if it still says noindex
If you have a cache, you will need to flush it.
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
-
Indexing Issue of Dynamic Pages
Hi All, I have a query for which i am struggling to find out the answer. I unable to retrieve URL using "site:" query on Google SERP. However, when i enter the direct URL or with "info:" query then a snippet appears. I am not able to understand why google is not showing URL with "site:" query. Whether the page is indexed or not? Or it's soon going to be deindexed. Secondly, I would like to mention that this is a dynamic URL. The index file which we are using to generate this URL is not available to Google Bot. For instance, There are two different URL's. http://www.abc.com/browse/ --- It's a parent page.
Technical SEO | | SameerBhatia
http://www.abc.com/browse/?q=123 --- This is the URL, generated at run time using browse index file. Google unable to crawl index file of browse page as it is unable to run independently until some value will get passed in the parameter and is not indexed by Google. Earlier the dynamic URL's were indexed and was showing up in Google for "site:" query but now it is not showing up. Can anyone help me what is happening here? Please advise. Thanks0 -
Indexed pages
Just started a site audit and trying to determine the number of pages on a client site and whether there are more pages being indexed than actually exist. I've used four tools and got four very different answers... Google Search Console: 237 indexed pages Google search using site command: 468 results MOZ site crawl: 1013 unique URLs Screaming Frog: 183 page titles, 187 URIs (note this is a free licence, but should cut off at 500) Can anyone shed any light on why they differ so much? And where lies the truth?
Technical SEO | | muzzmoz1 -
Vanity URLs are being indexed in Google
We are currently using vanity URLs to track offline marketing, the vanity URL is structured as www.clientdomain.com/publication, this URL then is 302 redirected to the actual URL on the website not a custom landing page. The resulting redirected URL looks like: www.clientdomain.com/xyzpage?utm_source=print&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=printcampaign. We have started to notice that some of the vanity URLs are being indexed in Google search. To prevent this from happening should we be using a 301 redirect instead of a 302 and will the Google index ignore the utm parameters in the URL that is being 301 redirect to? If not, any suggestions on how to handle? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | seogirl221 -
URL path randomly changing
Hi eveyone, got a quick question about URL structures: I'm currently working in ecommerce with a site that has hundreds of products that can be accessed through different URL paths: 1)www.domain.com/productx 2)www.domain.com/category/productx 3)www.domain.com/category/subcategory/productx 4)www.domain.com/bestsellers/productx 5)... In order to get rid of dublicate content issues, the canoncial tag has been installed on all the pages required. The problem I'm witnessing now is the following: If a visitor comes to the site and navigates to the product through example 2) at time the URL shown in the URL browser box is example 4), sometimes example 1) or whatever. So it is constantly changing. Does anyone know, why this happens and if it has any impact on GA tracking or even on SEO peformance. Any reply is much appreciated Thanks you
Technical SEO | | ennovators0 -
Can you noindex a page, but still index an image on that page?
If a blog is centered around visual images, and we have specific pages with high quality content that we plan to index and drive our traffic, but we have many pages with our images...what is the best way to go about getting these images indexed? We want to noindex all the pages with just images because they are thin content... Can you noindex,follow a page, but still index the images on that page? Please explain how to go about this concept.....
Technical SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
301 Redirect with index.asp
I am very new to all of this so forgive the newbie questions I will get better. Ok so after starting a campaign I see that I have many issues including where some pages are being deemed as duplicate content. 1. The report says the http://lucid8.com has duplicate content on 2 other pages 2. When I look at them it shows that http://lucid8.com/index.asp and http://www.lucid8.com are duplicates. 3. Really these are the exactly the same page because the default page that is opened for www.lucid8.com http://www.lucid8.com etc always opens the index.asp page. 4. Now I read that I should do permanent redirects and how to do this via IIS and I tried to do a redirect from index.asp to www.lucid8.com but that does not work because www.lucid8.com is pointing to index.asp and so we end up in a circle. So the question is how do I get rid of these duplicate page references without causing problems. Thanks
Technical SEO | | TroyW0 -
Pages removed from Google index?
Hi All, I had around 2,300 pages in the google index until a week ago. The index removed a load and left me with 152 submitted, 152 indexed? I have just re-submitted my sitemap and will wait to see what happens. Any idea why it has done this? I have seen a drop in my rankings since. Thanks
Technical SEO | | TomLondon0 -
De-indexed from Google
Hi Search Experts! We are just launching a new site for a client with a completely new URL. The client can not provide any access details for their existing site. Any ideas how can we get the existing site de-indexed from Google? Thanks guys!
Technical SEO | | rikmon0
