Why Google ranks a page with Meta Robots: NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW?
-
Hi guys,
I was playing with the new OSE when I found out a weird thing:
if you Google "performing arts school london" you will see w w w . mountview . org. uk at the 3rd position. The point is that page has "Meta Robots: NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW", why Google indexed it?
Here you can see the robots.txt allows Google to index the URL but not the content, in article they also say the meta robots tag will properly avoid Google from indexing the URL either.
Apparently, in my case that page is the only one has the tag "NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW", but it's the home page.
so I said to myself: OK, perhaps they have just changed that tag therefore Google needs time to re-crawl that page and de-index following the no index tag. How long do you think it will take to don't see that page indexed? Do you think it will effect the whole website, as I suppose if you have that tag on your home page (the root domain) you will lose a lot of links' juice - it's totally unnatural a backlinks profile without links to a root domain?
Cheers,
Pierpaolo
-
Hi
This is a really interesting article by Matt Cutts
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/96569?hl=en
I think this will help you to clarify your concerns on syntax etc
Bruce
-
Bruce, to be honest I have started thinking it's due to a syntax error, as - although I wasn't able to find something to confirm it - I suppose the right syntax is "nofollow, noindex", that site's tag is "NO FOLLOW, NO INDEX". So Google reads that tag like "follow, index" or directly discards it.
I'd like to understand if "no-follow, no-index" works, instead.
Finally, if I'm right, do you think it's an error, a CMS's glitch or something done on purpose?
I don't think it's due to WM site preferences, as a CMS usually makes all the alternative versions equals therefore that tag should be live on every possible alternative site, parked domain included.
Pierpaolo
-
Could it be that the domain WM has not set their site preferences in GWT and therefore Google are crawling alternative version?
w w w . mountview . org and mountview . org need to have their preferences set equaly in GWT for Both domain versions or Google with see them as two different sites.
Bruce
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
-
Why google does not remove my page?
Hi everyone, last week i add "Noindex" tag into my page, but that site still appear in the organic search. what other things i can do for remove from google?
Technical SEO | | Jorge_HDI0 -
404 Errors for Form Generated Pages - No index, no follow or 301 redirect
Hi there I wonder if someone can help me out and provide the best solution for a problem with form generated pages. I have blocked the search results pages from being indexed by using the 'no index' tag, and I wondered if I should take this approach for the following pages. I have seen a huge increase in 404 errors since the new site structure and forms being filled in. This is because every time a form is filled in, this generates a new page, which only Google Search Console is reporting as a 404. Whilst some 404's can be explained and resolved, I wondered what is best to prevent Google from crawling these pages, like this: mydomain.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TopCategoriesDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=90&catalogId=1008&homePage=Y Implement 301 redirect using rules, which will mean that all these pages will redirect to the homepage. Whilst in theory this will protect any linked to pages, it does not resolve this issue of why GSC is recording as 404's in the first place. Also could come across to Google as 100,000+ redirected links, which might look spammy. Place No index tag on these pages too, so they will not get picked up, in the same way the search result pages are not being indexed. Block in robots - this will prevent any 'result' pages being crawled, which will improve the crawl time currently being taken up. However, I'm not entirely sure if the block will be possible? I would need to block anything after the domain/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TopCategoriesDisplay?. Hopefully this is possible? The no index tag will take time to set up, as needs to be scheduled in with development team, but the robots.txt will be an quicker fix as this can be done in GSC. I really appreciate any feedback on this one. Many thanks
Technical SEO | | Ric_McHale0 -
Issues with getting a web page indexed
Hello friends, I am finding it difficult to get the following page indexed on search: http://www.niyati.sg/mobile-app-cost.htm It was uploaded over two weeks back. For indexing and trouble shooting, we have already done the following activities: The page is hyperlinked from the site's inner pages and few external websites and Google+ Submitted to Google (through the Submit URL option) Used the 'Fetch and Render' and 'Submit to index' options on Search Console (WMT) Added the URL on both HTML and XML Sitemaps Checked for any crawl errors or Google penalty (page and site level) on Search Console Checked Meta tags, Robots.txt and .htaccess files for any blocking Any idea what may have gone wrong? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | RameshNair
Ramesh Nair0 -
How to make my good sub-page rank ahead of my generic home page?
I have an ecommerce site for the clothes drying racks my family business makes, and it sells a few other laundry items also. It's about 5 years old. We used to rank on the first page for basic phrases like "clothes drying rack" and "umbrella clothesline". About 1.5 years ago we fell hard in the rankings. Since then "umbrella clothesline" has moved back to the first page, but "clothes drying rack" is stuck on the 3rd page and always with the result being the generic homepage instead of the good sub-page (which used to rank on the first page) that really shows-n-tells about our drying rack. Here are the three pages I am talking about. Home page = http://www.bestdryingrack.com/ Drying rack page = http://www.bestdryingrack.com/clothes-drying-rack-main.html and umbrella clothesline page = http://www.bestdryingrack.com/umbrella-clotheslines.html Any ideas on how to get the drying rack page to start ranking well again? (hopefully better than the generic homepage ranks) A little technical background: the Moz campaign on this site says that the home page has a PA = 42 with 190 LRD's and 344 external links. Both the umbrella clothesline page and the clothes drying rack page have almost equal statistics of PA = 35 with 20 LRD's and 23 external links. My anchor text distribution is maybe unbalanced. The drying rack page has 15 external links with the anchor of "Clothes Drying Rack". But the umbrella clothesline page has 14 external links with the anchor of "outdoor umbrella clothesline" and it ranks on the first page for that search. I can't figure out how to get OSE to tell me anchor text stats for just the homepage and not the whole site since www.bestdryingrack.com/index.html 301's to the plain www.bestdryingrack.com (if you know how, please share) What's wrong with my poor neglected clothes drying rack page? The only way I can get it to show up on the first page is to do a real specific search like "round wooden clothes drying rack" Your help could save a faltering family business. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | GregB1230 -
How Does Google's "index" find the location of pages in the "page directory" to return?
This is my understanding of how Google's search works, and I am unsure about one thing in specific: Google continuously crawls websites and stores each page it finds (let's call it "page directory") Google's "page directory" is a cache so it isn't the "live" version of the page Google has separate storage called "the index" which contains all the keywords searched. These keywords in "the index" point to the pages in the "page directory" that contain the same keywords. When someone searches a keyword, that keyword is accessed in the "index" and returns all relevant pages in the "page directory" These returned pages are given ranks based on the algorithm The one part I'm unsure of is how Google's "index" knows the location of relevant pages in the "page directory". The keyword entries in the "index" point to the "page directory" somehow. I'm thinking each page has a url in the "page directory", and the entries in the "index" contain these urls. Since Google's "page directory" is a cache, would the urls be the same as the live website (and would the keywords in the "index" point to these urls)? For example if webpage is found at wwww.website.com/page1, would the "page directory" store this page under that url in Google's cache? The reason I want to discuss this is to know the effects of changing a pages url by understanding how the search process works better.
Technical SEO | | reidsteven750 -
Has Google stopped rendering author snippets on SERP pages if the author's G+ page is not actively updated?
Working with a site that has multiple authors and author microformat enabled. The image is rendering for some authors on SERP page and not for others. Difference seems to be having an updated G+ page and not having a constantly updating G+ page. any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | irvingw0 -
.COM vs .CA rankings - .CA ranks on Google.com
Hi SEOMOZers, We have a fairly large retail client with both .COM and .CA domains. Each of the sites are almost identical in design and, in most cases, content (these would be product pages). The .US site has been live for nearly 2.5 years while the Canadian probably over a year younger or so. Both sites are hosted in the US. What we're starting to see as of the last few months are searches that used to rank .COM product pages now rank the Canadian page above the US page on Google.com. We've checked Webmaster Tools for each site and they target the appropriate country. With nearly all examples we've seen, we haven't noticed any more links pointing to the Canadian page, and where this is becoming a widespread occurence we're not convinced it's a linking issue. My question is why Google might see both versions but rank the Canadian page above the US page on Google.com for a search being performed in the US? Does anyone have any ideas on why this may be happening?
Technical SEO | | HarborOneBank0 -
Importance of an optimized home page (index)
I'm helping a client redesign their website and they want to have a home page that's primarily graphics and/or flash (or jquery). If they are able to optimize all of their key sub-pages, what is the harm in terms of SEO?
Technical SEO | | EricVallee340