Does meta "Expires" tag affect website cacheing or indexing?
-
One of our client has a meta expire tag across all pages of their website.
Does that tag affect the website overall caching or indexing?
Their website pages including home page is crawled every 10 days, however the website is popular high traffic websites, receiving 240,000 visits/month.
Please advise what impact this tag will have on the website indexing and caching?
Thanks
Atomic Team
-
It's most likely that Google is ignoring this, and will continue to ignore it.
There are just too many meta tags that you can include, and Google knows they're often used manipulatively. Unless you were using the meta expiry tag a lot and completely correctly, search engines will probably ignore it. (By correctly, I mean, use it for pages that actually do expire, then cutting off internal links after this date.)
That said, it's probably best to remove this tag.
-
Hi James,
The tag mentioned in itself is wrong and hence is not taken into consideration by search engines.
The correct tag should have been
Correct Format is :- Weekday followed with Date (Day Month Year) followed with Time Format as GMT/EST . This is basically the standard RFC format
Refer - http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2068/rfc2068 for more details on RFC Format.
The tag if put correctly states an indication for search engine to delete expired documents from a search engine, unless been followed with a revisit tag
So, had the correct tag would have been put in place - all the pages would have been deleted from Google Index - as the tag states that the document is expired. It's a kind of 'nofollow' indication to Google. However, most of the Search marketers do not use meta expire tag, rather
- they 301 it, if the page has become redundant
or follow it it with revisit tag to let search engines to start crawling it from specified date onwards.
-
Thanks Gagan for the reply. However, you reply is more towards where to use, whereas my query is one of our clients has already used this tag on their website. So, would it affect their website's indexing or caching? Thanks.
-
To the best of my knowledge, Ideally Meta Expires is used for an Event. Suppose there is a music show or event - it may be wise to use Meta Expires as it indicates to Google to delete the page from index when the expiry time meets.
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
-
Website Server Issue?
I'm getting error messages that a website cannot be crawled and it might be due to the following issues: Couldn't access the webpage because the server either timed out or refused/closed the connection before our crawler could receive a response. How to fix: Please contact your web hosting technical support team and ask them to fix the issue Could Possibly Be:
Web Design | | PrimeMediaConsulting
1. DDoS protection system.
OR
2. Overloaded or misconfigured server They asked me to talk to my hosting company about this issue and he's at a loss (I don't think he knows everything he needs to know potentially). Have you seen these issues before? Where is the best spot to start troubleshooting this issue?0 -
Traffic Dropping To Website
Hi In Google Analytics:
Web Design | | SEOguy1
I have noticed up to 50% of traffic coming to the website drops off at the home page point,
and drops further from other pages on the site. I realise some may possibly say that this could be down to various factors such as server issues, poor web design, or the wrong traffic reaching the site I have did corrected the following: There was an issue with there being www.domain.com and www.domain.com/home, Screaming Frog and Moz showed that these both had duplicate meta tagging issues. Initially I had created a separate page called 'home' to include in the main nav bar under the slider, but yesterday I replaced this page with a request in the functions.php to place 'home' in the nav bar as a redirect back to the home www.domain.com page. This works great. So I now have the following 301 permanent redirects: non-www to www resolve in the htaccess file, plus 2 permanent 301 redirects in the nav bar. I wonder if this is acceptable protocol re the nav bar redirects, and I wonder if you could possibly advise if the actions that I have taken will have any negative impact on the web seo, link structure, crawlability or indexing. Thanks.0 -
Why is my homepage not indexed by Google or Bing
http://www.schoppnutritionclinic.com/ Home page is not indexed by Google or Bing but all other pages are indexed. I know that currently i am missing the robot.TXT file and the sitemap. This is something i am woking on as a possible solution. I would have thought Google/Bing would have still indexed this page regardless of the lack of sitemap/robot.txt files not being present. I attempted to run a fetch and render in Webmaster tools and received a Not Found status.
Web Design | | ChrisSams0 -
Is it still necessary to have a "home" page button/link in the top nav?
Or is it not necessary to have a "home" tab/link because everybody by this time knows you can get to the home page by clicking on the logo?
Web Design | | FindLaw0 -
Title Tag Suggestion
Short title tag is more useful so if we just use our targeted keyword in home page title then is it useful.? for example my website: http://www.topnotchlawsuitloans.com/ i am targeting lawsuit loans keyword so if i use <title>TNF - Lawsuit Loans | Lawsuit Funding</title> is batter to use for main page or <title>Lawsuit Loans | Lawsuit Funding | As Low As 1% | PreSettlement Funding</title> can we have to use main targeting keyword on all webpage title tag ? my website have 200+ page and i have to use different title tag for that pages including targated keyword so if i am targeting lawsuit loans in that title, what is best to divide title pipe, hyphen or comma ? does capitalization in title tag wrong effect ? Lawsuit Loans - As low as 1% Lawsuit Loans | As low as 1% Lawsuit Loans, As low as 1% (or i have to use smaller cash in title) for all different page i want to place this kind of title is it best for SEO purpose Lawsuit Loans - Lawsuit Loans Fargo Lawsuit Loans - Lawsuit Loans Escondido Lawsuit Loans - Lawsuit Loans Erie Lawsuit Loans - Lawsuit Loans Flint Lawsuit Loans - Lawsuit Loans Fort Wayne Lawsuit Loans - Lawsuit Loans Fresno Lawsuit Loans - Lawsuit Loans Gainesville Lawsuit Loans - Lawsuit Loans Grand Rapids Lawsuit Loans - Lawsuit Loans Gilbert Lawsuit Loans - Lawsuit Loans Gresham Lawsuit Loans - Lawsuit Loans High Point Lawsuit Loans - Lawsuit Loans Hialeah Lawsuit Loans - Lawsuit Loans Huntsville if i am using this kind of different title for all page then it can effective for SEO or it will be come in keyword stuffing
Web Design | | JulieWhite0 -
Does DNS location affect international SEO?
Hi All Smart SEOmozers! I have another dumb question =] I have almost no knowledge on how DNS works and all the website background work. I understand that DNS is the server that translates a domain name to the IP address. Furthermore, I also know that IP Address location or web host location plays a small factor in international SEO. Webhosts usually provide the DNS service as well but for this case ABC Company uses a different domain service, diferent DNS service and different webhost service so things get complicated. So the question, does the location of DNS service we use affect International SEO like how the location of the webhost does. Thank you in advance for your help!
Web Design | | TommyTan0 -
How to Add canonical tags on .ASPX pages?
What is the proper way (or is it possible) to add canonical tags on website pages that end in .aspx? If you add a canonical tag to the Master Page it will put that exact canonical tag on every page, which is bad. Is there a different version of the tag to put on individual pages? And one to put on the home page without the Master Page error?
Web Design | | Ryan-Bradley0