Noindex vs. page removal - Panda recovery
-
I'm wondering whether there is a consensus within the SEO community as to whether noindexing pages vs. actually removing pages is different from Google Pandas perspective?Does noindexing pages have less value when removing poor quality content than physically removing ie. either 301ing or 404ing the page being removed and removing the links to it from the site?
I presume that removing pages has a positive impact on the amount of link juice that gets to some of the remaining pages deeper into the site, but I also presume this doesn't have any direct impact on the Panda algorithm?
Thanks very much in advance for your thoughts, and corrections on my assumptions
-
I think it can get pretty complicated, but a couple of observations:
(1) In my experience, NOINDEX does work - indexation is what Google cares about primarily. Eventually, you do need to trim the crawl paths, XML sitemaps, etc., but often it's best to wait until the content is de-indexed.
(2) From an SEO perspective (temporarily ignoring Panda), a 301 consolidates link juice - so, if a page has incoming links or traffic, that's generally the best way to go. If the page really has no value at all for search, either a 404 or NOINDEX should be ok (strictly from an SEO perspective). If the page is part of a path, then NOINDEX,FOLLOW could preserve the flow of link juice, whereas a 404 might cut it off (not to that page, but to the rest of the site and deeper pages).
(3) From a user perspective, 301, 404, and NOINDEX are very different. A 301 is a good alternative to pass someone to a more relevant or more current page (and replace an expired one), for example. If the page really has no value at all, then I think a 404 is better than NOINDEX, just in principle. A NOINDEX leaves the page lingering around, and sometimes it's better to trim your content completely.
So, the trick is balancing (2) and (3), and that's often not a one-sized fits all solution. In other words, some groups of pages may have different needs than others.
-
Agreed - my experience is that NOINDEX definitely can have a positive impact on index dilution and even Panda-level problems. Google is mostly interested in index removal.
Of course, you still need to fix internal link structures that might be causing bad URLs to roll out. Even a 404 doesn't remove a crawl path, and tons of them can cause crawler fatigue.
-
I disagree with everyone The reason panda hit you is because you were ranking for low quality pages you were telling Google wanted them to index and rank.
When you
a) remove them from sitemap.xmls
b) block them in robots.txt
c) noindex,follow or noindex, nofollow them in metas
you are removing them from Googles index and from the equation of good quality vs low quality pages indexed on your site.
That is good enough. You can still have them return a 200 and be live on your site AND be included in your user navigation.
One example is user generated pages when users signup and get their own URL www.mysite.com/tom-jones for example.Those pages can be live but should not be indexed because they have no content usually other than a name.
As long as you are telling Google - don't index them I don't want them to be considered in the equation of pages to show up in the index, you are fine with keeping these pages live!
-
Thanks guys
-
I would agree noindex is not as good as removing the content but it still can work as long as there are no links or sitemaps that lead Google back to the low quality content.
I worked on a site that was badly affected by Panda in 2011. I had some success by noindexing genuine duplicates (pages that looked really alike but did need to be there) and removing low quality pages that were old and archived. I was left with about 60 genuine pages that needed to be indexed and rank well so I had to pay a copywriter to rewrite all those pages (originally we had the same affiliate copy on there as lots of other sites). That took about 3 months for Google to lift or at least reduce the penalty and our rankings to return to the top 10.
Tom is right that just noindexing is not enough. If pages are low quality or duplicates then keep them out of sitemaps and navigation so you don't link to them either. You'll also nned redirects in case anyone else links to them. In my experience, eventually Google will drop them from the index but it doesn't happen overnight.
Good luck!
-
Thanks Tom
Understand your points. The idea behind noindexing is that you're telling Google not to take any notice of the page.
I guess the question is whether that works:
- Not at all
- A little bit
- A lot
- Is as good as removing the content
I believe it's definitely not as good as actually removing the content, but not sure about the other three possibilities.
We did notice that we got a small improvement in placement when we noindexed a large amount of the site and took several hundred other pages actually down. Hard to say which of those two things caused the improvement.
We've heard of it working for others, which is why I'm asking...
Appreciate your quick response
Phil
-
I don't see how noindexing pages would help with regards to a Panda recovery if you're already penalised.
Once the penalty is in place, my understanding is that it will remain so until all offending pages have been removed or changed to unique content. Therefore, noindexing would not work - particularly if that page is accessible via an HTML/XML sitemap or a site navigation system. Even then, I would presume that Google will have the URL logged and if it remained as is, any penalty removable would not be forthcoming.
Noindexing pages that has duplicate content but hasn't been penalised yet would probably prevent (or rather postpone) any penalty - although I'd still rather avoid the issue outright where possible. Once a penalty is in place, however, I'm pretty sure it will remain until removed, even if noindexed.
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
-
Big page of clients - links to individual client pages with light content - not sure if canonical or no-follow - HELP
Not sure what best practice here is: http://www.5wpr.com/clients/ Is this is a situation where I'm best off adding canonical tags back to the main clients page, or to the practice area each client falls under? No-following all these links and adding canonical? No-follow/No-index all client pages? need some advice here...
Technical SEO | | simplycary0 -
Switchboard Tags - Multiple desktop pages pointing to one mobile page
I have recently started to implement switchboard tags to connect our mobile and desktop pages, and to ensure that our mobile pages show up in rankings for mobile users. Because our desktop site is much deeper in content than our mobile site, there are a number of desktop pages we would like to have point to one mobile page. However, with the switchboard tags, this poses a problem because it requires multiple rel=canonical tags to be placed on the one mobile page. I'm assuming this will either confuse the search engines, or they will choose to ignore the rel=canonical tag altogether. Any ideas on how to approach this situation other than creating an equivalent mobile version of every desktop page or implementing a user agent detection redirect?
Technical SEO | | JBlank0 -
Home page URL
Hi, I work on this site: http://www.towerhousetraining.co.uk/about-us. This is the home page URL. Should this be 301'd to: http://www.towerhousetraining.co.uk? I have created a site map, which I submitted to Google Webmaster Tools, which includes these URL's: /about-us, /training-we-offer & /contact-us. There are a total of 3 pages on the website. Webmaster tools has only indexed 2 out of 3 pages. I think this is something to do with the /about-us URL, as when I do a site: search, these pages appear: www.towerhousetraining.co.uk/, /training-we-offer & /contact-us. I am not sure why Google has indexed the home page as www.towerhousetraining.co.uk/ and not /about-us? Is it a bad idea in general not to have your homepage as your root domain? I added a to the homepage, but am wondering if this was the right thing to do? Any help would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | CWseo0 -
Testimonial pages
Is it better to have one long testimonial page on your site, or break it down into several smaller pages with testimonials? First time I've posted on the forum. But I'm excited! Ron
Technical SEO | | yatesandcojewelers0 -
Page for Link Building
Hello Guys, My question is about a link building process. We all know that some directories/sites do require a reciprocal link. Does it make any sense to creat a page in website exclusively to reciprocal links? And what we do with this webpage in terms of indexing, do folow, crawling...etc. Any sugestions are more then welcome 🙂 Tks in advance! PP
Technical SEO | | PedroM0 -
Have a client that migrated their site; went live with noindex/nofollow and for last two SEOMoz crawls only getting one page crawled. In contrast, G.A. is crawling all pages. Just wait?
Client site is 15 + pages. New site had noindex/nofollow removed prior to last two crawls.
Technical SEO | | alankoen1230 -
Consolidate page strength
Hi, Our site has a fair amount of related/similiar content that has been historically placed on seperate pages. Unfortuantely this spreads out our page strength across multiple pages. We are looking to combine this content onto one page so that our page strength will be focused in one location (optimized for search). The content is extensive so placing it all on one page isn't ideal from a user experience (better to separate it out). We are looking into different approaches one main "tabbed" page with query string params to seperate the seperate pages. We'll use an AJAX driven design, but for non js browsers, we'll gracefully degrade to separate pages with querystring params. www.xxx.com/content/?pg=1 www.xxx.com/content/?pg=2 www.xxx.com/content/?pg=3 We'd then rel canonical all three pages to just be www.xxx.com/content/ Same concept but useAJAX crawlable hash tag design (!#). Load everything onto one page, but the page could get quite large so latency will increase. I don't think from an SEO perspective there is much difference between options 1 & 2. We'll mostly be relying on Google using the rel canonical tag. Have others dealt with this issue were you have lots of similiar content. From a UX perspective you want to separate/classifiy it, but from an SEO perspective want to consolidate? It really is very similiar content so using a rel canonical makes sense. What have others done? Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | NicB10 -
Remove Deleted (but indexed) Pages Through Webmaster Tools?
I run a blog/directory site. Recently, I changed directory software and, as a result, Google is showing 404 Not Found crawling errors for about 750 non-existent pages. I've had some suggest that I should implement a 301 redirect, but can't see the wisdom in this as the pages are obscure, unlikely to appear in search and they've been deleted. Is the best course to simply manually enter each 404 error page in to the Remove Page option in Webmaster Tools? Will entering deleted pages into the Removal area hurt other healthy pages on my site?
Technical SEO | | JSOC0